Metropol

I see where your coming from there.

One thing I hate with IE is when you have lots of windows open and then the taskbar splits itself into 2 view you have to scroll between to see all items in the bar, you cant see replies to instant messages in the above level.

Of course I should mention there are plenty of IE shells that add plenty stuff like tabs onto the IE engine. Although one of the most popuplar - myIE2 - has recently added experimental support for Gecko.

I'm surprised MS haven't added tabs yet as they are a great idea. Of course it might be undermining that silly "group taskbar" feature in XP so they don't want to prove themselves wrong...

Hymagumba wrote:...that silly "group taskbar" feature in XP ...

I think its quite a useful feature. Its easier to close large numbers of windows that way, unfortunatly, theres no way to close the sub windows of a program and leave the main one open. eg Closing all MSN IM windows, leaving MSN open.

I don't like tabs so far as browsing goes either. I do much prefer having multi taskbar buttons to indicate how many windows are open. Although I suppose when XP sees fit to collapse them all into one taskbar button it's the nearest to a tabbed interface I reckon.

I just think it could have been better excuted really but I don't usually have so many simliar windows open that end up being grouped anyway so so far as I'm concerned it's more of a minor niggle. Nice option though.

Perhaps a better method would be for XP to collapse the related windows into one icon, but when you mouse-over any place on the taskbar, they unfold vertically; like so:

Is it me or are you visiting Minges & Associates?

More evidence that AOL is "revitalising" their Netscape brand, although some Netscape loyalists
(yes, there are still quite a few of those around!) have referred to these as "brand necrophilia".


Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer:

No, your eyes do not deceive you, there really is a Netscape branded toolbar for IE! It's similar
in layout to the Google Toolbar for IE, and has pretty much the same popup blocking feature.
IMO, this could create a fair bit of awareness for the Netscape brand, from the many IE users
that have either never used any Netscape products or even heard of Netscape before.



If AOL market this thing right, once they release Netscape 7.2, it could well persuade some
of those users to try out the new Netscape browser, and maybe even ditch IE in it's favour.
I know this ain't likely to turn the tide in Netscape's favour overnight, but if AOL market
this thing to the hilt (IMO at least) it'll certainly be a step in the right direction.


Netscape Desktop Navigator:

This is a very small app that may well be included as an optional extra with Netscape 7.2.



As you can see from this screengrab, it looks like a NS branded coffee coaster, but it's a bit
more than that. It includes a built in Google search feature in the centre area, and on the
outer circle, a bunch of links to various areas of AOL's Netscape Network web portal.

Again, if AOL market this thing right, it should also create brand awareness for Netscape.

Unfortunately, although this app is designed to respect whatever is set as your default
browser, be that IE, Mozilla, Opera, or even a version of Netscape, some parts of this
thing will actually attempt to open an IE window, whether IE is your default or not!
Since it's in only in beta at the moment, this bug should eventually be rectified.


More info available from the links below:

Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer

Netscape Desktop Navigator (Preview)

I really don;t know about either of those things really. It's like sticking a Chinese flag in North Korea and calling it America.

AOL have the problem of being an ISP mainly for that wonderful thing; the n00b. "Netscape" implies NS4 and therefore shite while Mozilla = geeky and difficult. They do have the ability to make NS big again but they need to trim the crap from mozilla and try and keep their own garbage to a minimum.

They really need to plug the browser more though. NS.com was just one of those old fashioned "portal" sites with a hidden away They need to really publicise this both at NS and at AOL and have big "why 7.2 iis fab" pages if they want it to take off. Otherwise it'll just be another waste of time.