Did you know there's a Netscape 8 beta about? If you're like me you like to think it died at version 4 and had no idea there were ever versions 5, 6 and 7. Well, I've installed version 8 nonetheless and had a play.

Now, to me, Netscape is a product I will never feel comfortable with using. I still think back to NN4 and the nightmares that that one browser caused us all for so many years. Is NN8 any better though? Well, essentially it's just a jazzed-up version of Firefox. If your sites work in Firefox they'll work in Netscape 8, so nothing to worry about there. If your sites don't work in Firefox then the NN8 user has a snazzy new feature to rely on: you can switch "rendering engines" between Gecko (name of the one used by the Mozilla suite) and IE. This one feature is something I'm growing to like and can see myself almost coming to rely on.

Right click a page in NN8 and you see an additional menu item which lets you easily toggle the browser engine used. Netscape 8 is, in effect, two browsers in one!

Best of all you can have NN8 remember which browser to use for which site. If you prefer to use the default Firefox engine on most sites, but your online banking requires IE, you can have NN8 remember this for the next time you visit the site.

Here's the Site Control settings. Noticed it's remember the setting for my site because I opted to switch browser engines. AFAIK it won't create an entry for every site you visit. Just those you change the default options for.

So, you can do all your browsing from one interface. And what an interface it is! Not my cup of tea at all and the one thing that will put me off using it more than I have done already in writing this. Just like Real Player it looks like it's designed to appeal to teenagers, hungry for a little eye candy.

Not only does it look bad but it's slow-loading too. And there's a certain amount of AOL-style information overload: Weather forecast for Ohio, plus recent localised US news and other stuff I really don't want as defaults with my install.

However, with the use of a half decent theme, which tones it down a little, I've got to admit I can almost see myself using Netscape as a primary browser. Now there's something I never thought I'd hear myself say. If only I wasn't so pig-headed that I refuse to use something called Netscape!

So is this the future of the browser then? One browser with multiple engines? Although it's still probably a lot to ask of a user that they understand the need to switch engines when they have a problem. Maybe, as web developers, we could use a meta tag to tell the browser which engine our site works best with.