Inside View on the New XUL-Powered Browser: Netscape 8.0

Hello,

   Kurt Cagle - author of the upcoming Apress book titled "Pro Firefox 
Extension and Application Development" - writes in the blog story 
"Netscape Emergent":

   Impartiality is a hard won concept, and even harder to retain once 
possessed. Last night, I celebrated with a team of about eighty others 
the release of the Netscape 8.0 browser, the project which has occupied 
my life for the last two months and many of my colleagues for the last 
year or more. As a member of the Mercurial team, I cannot be impartial 
on Netscape, but I feel as a blogger it is incumbant upon me to put out 
something that isn't a sales tool either.

The Netscape 8.0 browser is an odd beast. Initiated by the Netscape 
division of America Online, the Netscape Browser serves several purposes 
- providing the foundation for AOL to build an independent browser, 
getting away from the security headaches of IE, and more recently taking 
advantage of the advances on the Mozilla Firefox side, which has a 
step-sibling relationship with AOL/Netscape.

The target for Netscape was an easy to use browser that provided strong 
security while at the same time taking advantage of the many features 
that Mozilla opened up, including the underlying XUL model, the ability 
to update the browsers with individual components utilizing XPIs, most 
of the services,and the security model.

Given that, there was also a lot that was added into the mix - fixing 
many of the holes that existed in the Firefox API (there were more than 
a few places where there were empty stub functions that were referred to 
by other pieces of code, and in several places documentation for 
functions which bordered the cryptic) - most of these have in turn been 
passed to Mozilla Foundation for the Firefox 1.1 build.

One of the interesting facets that were included there were the notion 
of server-side programming user interfaces - or as we refer to them 
affectionately here - SPUIs. The first model that we helped incorporate 
into Netscape 8.0 reflects what I see as an increasingly important 
concept - remote XUL components. What exists there now is solid, though 
as with any such concept significant innovations are expected in this 
area, and when I get the chance I will be outlining a few thoughts on 
remote XUL components for this column.

Another facet worth exploring, has been the use of a dual gecko/trident 
engine, with the option of being able to switch in real time between 
them. This was a difficult decision for a lot of us to make, as the 
existing Trident base is still some distance from being compliant with 
anything approaching contemporary standards, but ultimately it comes 
down to the ability to shape the user experience - there are pages that 
cannot be run from Firefox because they rely upon IE extensions or 
functionality, and as such the Trident engine was a nod to the reality 
of the web as it stands. I am hoping that we get a chance to work with 
the Microsoft 7.0 browser and get the opportunity to incorporate it into 
the next major release of the browser, as in my experience it has proven 
to be handy being able to run IE within a more secure environment from 
time-to-time.

Netscape is a browser undergoing intense, on-going development at this 
stage, and the synergy between Firefox and Netscape will continue for 
some time. I have my own personal wish list for Netscape that I came in 
too late to have much effect with, but moving it so that it is working 
with ALL contemporary open standards is definitely on the plate for near 
future releases.

While I am somewhat hampered by I can say by the dread NDA, I ask that 
if you have questions about the new Netscape Browser, please contact me 
at [email protected]. I can't promise an answer, but I will try to 
answer as much as I can.

 Kurt Cagle
 Open Standards Evangelist

   Source: 
http://www.understandingxml.com/archives/2005/05/netscape_emerge_1.html



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