ZDNet just posted their review of the official Release Candidate 1 of the popular Netscape"s core - Mozilla, which has been catching lots of attention lately.
We"ve waited more than four years for Mozilla, the Netscape-backed open-source browser--and we"re still waiting for the completed version. But Mozilla has finally posted its official Release Candidate 1 (RC 1) and plans to release the final soon.
In our unofficial tests, RC 1 ran nearly as fast as Internet Explorer 6. Plus, it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, which no other browser does, and it promises a greater ability to customize than competing browsers do.
Best of all, Mozilla is completely free: no fees and no strings attached. Sure, we found some flies in the ointment, but we"re hoping that the gold code cleans them up. Stay tuned for our final word.
Steals from the best
Netscape"s 6.x browser borrowed Mozilla"s back end. Hence, the similarities abound, from their interfaces to their e-mail clients, which can handle multiple POP/IMAP accounts.
But Mozilla"s open-source heritage promises greater flexibility than its sister app. For example, anybody with a cool idea for a new feature or add-on can tweak the source code and send it to Mozilla.org.
Similarly, if the browser does a task too slowly, anyone could locate and correct the problem in the source code. And Mozilla does have a few new, if not entirely original, tricks up its sleeve.
For instance, Mozilla"s Web page tabs look an awful lot like Opera"s similarly convenient tool. It consists of a little row of tab icons between the menu bars and the main browser window that let you load multiple Web pages into one browser window, then switch quickly between pages. It"s a clean alternative to opening multiple browsers or hitting the Back button. (To set a tab, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking a link.)