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Can Netscape take on IE and Firefox?

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Netscape

Paul Festa CNET News.com

Published: 01 Dec 2004 15:35 GMT

"There are trade-offs you can make in constructing a browser," said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for Mozilla. "Firefox has made a number of them so that you can still have a small download."

Among the 159 extensions posted to the Firefox extension site -- a site published in its test or "beta" version -- is one that lets Firefox users view sites in IE, just as the new Netscape does.

A tit-for-tat extension lets IE users view pages in Firefox.

Few worries for Microsoft
Microsoft welcomed the news that Netscape would be letting people browse with IE and said it fit with the company's vision of IE as a software development platform.

"We are very pleased to see a vibrant ecosystem involving hundreds of partners and independent software vendors continue to develop on the IE platform," Microsoft said in a statement. "The applications they are building deliver some of the most popular browser features and add-ons for customers to download and enjoy today."

One analyst said Netscape might be on the right track with the hybrid engine approach, but cautioned that it could also be targeting a very small sliver of the market.

"They must be trying the 'best of both worlds' strategy," said Ross Rubin, analyst with the NPD Group in New York City. "Sometimes that works, like when Sony supported both 'dash' and 'plus' DVD rewriteable formats. But if you're willing to put up with IE's security weaknesses for the sake of compatibility, that diminishes the motivation to switch."

"I know of another browser that can switch into IE mode," Rubin added. "It's called Internet Explorer."

Sources close to the Netscape browser responded that the default Gecko setting would not expose surfers to IE-based traps and vulnerabilities.

They also said, responding to a report by BetaNews, that much of the development work on the new Netscape browser was done by Canadian software company Mercurial Communications, and that future versions of the browser would bring in development by other technology partners.

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