I'm a sucker for new versions of Netscape. It brings back the days of downloading Netscape betas in my dorm room every few days during my freshman year of college. Those were the heady days when the Internet was young and the possibilities seemed endless.
So today when I heard that Netscape (or AOL, or TimeWarner or whoever) had released Netscape 8.0 I rushed over to the Netscape site to download the browser. And what image was I greeted with?
Now, I understand that Netscape probably has to work pretty hard to get people to want to download their browser, but I have to say, calling Firefox 1.04 (which I just updated a few days ago) outdated is pretty silly. Again, this is all marketing crap, but it is the worst kind of marketing crap. These fake error messages that are used in pop-up ads are intended to confuse users and make them think that something is actually wrong with their computer. This is the kind of tactics that malware companies use to get unsuspecting user to download their crappy spyware. It is pretty sad that Netscape feels like it has to trick people into downloading their browser in the same way.
Of course, I'm only moments away from installing it. I'll let you know what I think.
Posted by Noah Brimhall at May 19, 2005 11:01 AM