Tech Review

Netscape Navigator with the often shunned mini-browser open

I like Avant and Opera's side-by-side tabs in the same window, but I need Firefox' real time spell check. Until they combine those two features, the perfect browser remains out of our grasp.

Enter Netscape Navigator which you can download here (remember buying it in a box?). I started using it and I think it's a keeper. It's exactly the same as Firefox except:

1. It has something called the "Link Bar." At first I thought it was a kind of built-in social bookmarking tool like Del.isio.us or Digg which would have been kind of cool, actually; they could have done it so that it sends it to an online bookmark repository. The way they sell it, however, the Linkbar is for those web pages one wants to save, but that doesn't merit admission into that exclusive club, bookmarks. Some may object to this bookmark elitism, but, as a blogger, I can see the utility of such a feature. I often encounter things I later wish to comment upon, but not visit every day.

2. Navigator dips its toe into side-by-side browsing with something called Mini browser. Keeping with the browsing-discrimination theme, it's just like the regular browser except that you it can't open pages from the bookmark tool bar.

3. For those in underground bunkers, it has a weather bar.

It's important to note that the above two Navigator features may be replicated in Firefox with Add-ons.