Jumping version numbers
Netscape 7 prerelease is out.
Can this be good?
On the one hand, new version of Netscape. On the other hand: a new *major*
version? Hello! Are you mental? NN6.01 was based on Mozilla
0.9.4, I believe. The new NN7 is based on Mozilla 1.0RC2. Now, I’m all for
keeping NN up-to-date, because Mozilla clocks over really fast. But a whole
version number? It’s a point release over NN6.2.2.
Having said this, given the fact that NN6.0 was a train-wreck that was full of
bugs, an awful lot of users who tried it went back to NN4. So, although this
new release isn’t much over the most recent Netscape version, it’s a big
improvement over what users may have most recently seen from Netscape Corp.
There is also the point that, since Netscape are now part of AOL, this brings
the Netscape browser version in line with the AOL client software version, and
this looks good given the rumours about AOL dropping IE in favour of Netscape.
But, like, a whole version number? Blimey. This is a pretty big dislocation
between IE and Netscape, the first we’ve seen, despite the debacle of there
being no Netscape 5 at all. It’ll be interesting to see how MS reacts.
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