Netizens were supposed to get their first crack at the beta version of Netscape 8 February 17, but Netscape parent America Online said that release would wait until the end of the month to get some "last minute bugs" out of the program.
Based somewhat on the increasingly-popular Firefox, Netscape 8 is aimed at protecting surfers from phishing and malicious code while surfing—but when IDG News Service tested an early version in late January, that version crashed under normal use several times.
AOL announced the Netscape 8 beta delay in an e-mail circulated around the Internet and technological media but didn't offer details on the bugs in question. Netscape 8 is aimed at both challenging still-dominant and still-buggy Internet Explorer while also trying to catch a little Firefox lightning, what with that open-source Mozilla-made browser showing over 25 million downloads since its full-version release.
Netscape 8 is also designed to work only on Windows computers, since it uses the engine that is included in Windows though not the one in Internet Explorer.
The news of Netscape 8 beta's delay came in the same week that Microsoft announced its first Internet Explorer browser version in four years. Microsoft had originally planned to hold it back until the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, was released next year, but the new IE is also believed to be tackling the security issues that have sullied IE's reputation despite the product's continued if slipping market dominance.
