Sometimes, nostalgia and a nagging curiosity just gets the better of you. I've been quietly ignoring Netscape Navigator for a good 2-3 years now but one fine day not too long ago I gave in to the temptation and installed the Navigator 9.0.0.5. What I found is not too surprising and mildly amusing at best.

I remember a time when the Netscape Communicator suite was the pioneer in cutting edge internet software. And now I see the new Navigator being just a cosmetic change on Mozilla Firefox. All they've managed to achieve is throw a green theme and reorder some buttons in the toolbar. The rest sadly, is all Firefox. But what is more annoying that most of the Firefox plugins are not working in version 9.0.0.5 and throw up a incompatible version message. The only plugin I've got working is Adblock Plus which is quite handy if you get annoyed by flashy adverts.

By default, the Navigator has three visible changes from Firefox in terms of functionality. One is a 'New Tab' button in the toolbar, a LinkPad in the sidebar which is nothing but a URL clipboard and finally a installed plugin called Weather Bug which shows you the current weather conditons in the status bar at the bottom. This brings us to an interesting question, shouldn't Netscape have atleast *tried* to make a sincere effort to reclaim its glory days? Well I think so and am saddened to see how the mighty have fallen from their throne.