what's the difference between mozilla and netscape

I see very little, in fact, they look and act alike and share search, etc.

[Shadows Papa]

I just downloaded and installed Mozilla 1.5. I was sort of shocked to see that it looks and feels just like an earlier version of Netscape I had - which I vowed I'd never install on this clean computer since it did nothing but trash things and act weird.
Seems to me they share much! When I search, it pulls up Netscape search, the tool bars look and feel similar, the names of componants are the same, such as "navigator", "composer" and so on. Icons are so similar it looks like one group took icons from the other, changed them a tad in paintshop then resaved them.

what gives? Are they really the same in different clothing - which isn't really so different?
I've always hated netscape, will I feel the same about mozilla?
The composer parts look a lot alike as well.
Either they are the same in different skins, or there is a good case for code theft!

Shadows Papa

[DrDoc]

Netscape is based on the Mozilla browser.
They both use the same engine (Gecko) and they both share pretty much all components.

No, I don't think you will hate Mozilla. You were refering to an "earlier version" of Netscape. How early are we talking? Netscape 4.x was a pain in the tail, and Netscape 6 was their first attempt to make a new generation browsers. However, version 6 was extremely buggy at first.

In my opinion -- Mozilla is more lightweight than Netscape.

[Shadows Papa]

Doc,

Netscape - everything from 4 -> 6 I had problems with.
I decided NS was junk.
I now have 7.1 only on a machine that is a "second" or backup and typically servers as a server for me.
I put NS 7.1 on that one only to see/test how my pages looked in non-IE browsers, and it's really necessary to do so as there are major differences.

Until today, I had ONLY IE on this main computer, a 1.8 with XP.
I was afraid I was trashing my main machine with Mozilla when I saw how much it looked and felt like NS - didn't want a repeat of past problems.
Lightweight - meaning faster/leaner, or not as capable as NS?
So far, it's working fine, and it and firebird showed me some very minor issues I had with a page where IE showed it fine, NS showed it ok, mozilla showed a shift in a div that took a bit of tinkering to figure out. Hmmmmm.

Firebird is interesting - NO installation! Unzip and run it.
I like that..........

Shadows Papa

[DrDoc]

No worries. Mozilla (or even Netscape 7+) won't mess up your computer.

With "lightweight" I mean "leaner"... Leaves less of a footprint in your RAM. Firebird is definitely faster than Netscape too. Just as capable as Netscape (if not more).

I never test in Netscape anymore. I test in Mozilla, Opera, and IE. Since Netscape and Mozilla are using the exact same engine, though Mozilla is stricter (which is because AOL tweaked Netscape slightly), I have never had a problem with a page in Netscape if it showed up fine in Mozilla.

[peterdaly]

Firebird is based on the Mozilla Gecko engine as well. It is Mozilla, with everything but the browser stipped out.

Netscape 6.X was based on a beta version of Mozilla. 6.0 was a release of pre-1.0 Mozilla that was known to have problems. The release seemed to be driven more by marketing than having a product that was ready. The 6+ Netscapes take the "current at the time" version of Mozilla, and add Netscape branding, and other mostly marketing features. Usually due to the time it takes to add the "features", Netscape was usually a code version or two behind Mozilla by the time the Netscape version was released. In one case Netscape actually took away functionality...popup blocking...from the Netscape version.

I have always liked recent versions of Mozilla, but hated their Netscape counterparts with all the added crap.

I currently use Firebird as my main browser.

I wish you the best of luck, I think Mozilla (and Firebird) are MUCH better than IE, I hope you'll agree. (Hint: start using tabs)

[Mohamed_E]

I do not care too much about details of how a browser works (as long as it works) but dumped IE simply because of the huge number of security issues. In Netscape 7.1 I got, as a bonus, tabs, a popup blocker and a reasonable cookie blocker.

I still run Ad-Aware out of habit, it rarely turns up any garbage.

[leoo24]

yes so do i , i think it's a good habit to run ad aware though! falls into the same cat as running your antivirus

[hartlandcat]

Netscape 7 is perfectly safe. I've been using it for most of almost every day for the past year, and seem to love it even more every day.

Treat Netscape and Mozilla as the same browser. Most Netscape users use version 7.x, which is based on Mozilla 1.x, even though most stats will report them both as "Netscape 5" or "Netscape 6".

[Timotheos]

I just started using Mozilla and I'm appreciating the extra little features such as tabs, pop up blocker and the junk mail filter, etc. I'm not looking back ;-)

So far, it's working fine, and it and firebird showed me some very minor issues I had with a page where IE showed it fine, NS showed it ok, mozilla showed a shift in a div that took a bit of tinkering to figure out.

I recently had a little difference too and thought it was a Mozilla problem. Turned out it was the other way around that IE has an issue with CSS border compability. Sigh.