It's the end of the road for what used to be the best web browser in the world. AOL have decided to end support of Netscape at version 9.0.0.6.
Netscape very much resembles Firefox in its features and functions, all in a clear light turquoise interface. From tabbed browsing, to RSS feeds, sidebar and bookmark organizing, Netscape is just like Firefox. You can also manage your own search engines on the top right and add all sorts of Mozilla extensions.
In terms of performance, you can also expect identical speed and memory usage as Firefox. Netscape also has a number of similar security features like master password and SSL and TLS encryption.
Two features that Netscape offers that you won't find in Firefox though are the link pad and mini browser. Both appear in the sidebar on the left. I quite like the link pad, which lets you drag and drop any link in the sidebar. I found this quite useful for things I didn't really wanted to bookmark but still wanted to store somewhere.
The mini browser, on the other hand, seems a bit out of place. It essentially shows websites in simple text, in case there's some pages you just want to browse through quickly. However I felt it all looked a little cluttered, especially when you can open pages in multiple tabs instead.
Ending support for Netscape essentially means this version will slowly turn into a museum piece. The browser even includes a link to both Firefox and Flock. Download it only out of curiosity.
