New features The Beta releases of Netscape Navigator 9 included enhanced
newsfeed support and were more integrated with the
Netscape.com Internet portal, including enhanced methods of discussion, submission and voting of Web pages. However, starting with Netscape Navigator 9 beta 3, the Netscape.com integration was optional, and certain aspects of integration could be manually enabled or disabled, with integration being totally removed in Navigator 9.0rc1 as the portal relaunched as
Propeller. The
user interface of the program was also updated, and the theme was also later released for use on Mozilla Firefox. Like Netscape version 8.x, Navigator 9 was based upon the
Mozilla Firefox, this time version 2.0, and should have had full support of all Firefox
add-ons and
plugins, some of which Netscape was providing. Netscape also released some of its features as extensions for Firefox, including the Site Mail Notifier and Friends' Activity Sidebar, the Digg Tracker, as well as Netstripe, the new default theme for Netscape 9. The browser also included
URL self-correction, which corrected common URL misspellings, and a dedicated
News menu with integration to the Netscape.com news portal. A quick "link pad" was also included so Web pages could quickly be added to the pad for later viewing without adding to the bookmark lists. Navigator 9 also sees the browser return to multi-platform support across
Windows,
Linux and
Mac OS X. Netscape's signature splash screen also reappeared in the release candidate of the final program.
Removed features Unlike Netscape 8, the browser did not use
Internet Explorer's
Trident layout engine as an alternative engine option. Netscape Navigator did not include any
newsgroup,
instant messaging, or
Email clients as Netscape 6 and 7 did. Netscape did, however, plan to produce a companion email client to complement the Navigator, confirmed as
Netscape Messenger 9. While that software was in development, Netscape advised its users to use the
Netscape 7 series of
suites, which includes an email client, alongside Navigator 9 for browsing purposes. Based on user feedback, Netscape decided to return the
splash screen to Navigator 9. On September 10, 2007, Netscape decided to give its design team a break and let users submit their own idea for how the splash screen should look. The winning image would be used as the splash screen in the final 9.0 release of Navigator, and the designer would be listed in the browser credits. Many designs were submitted. In the end, Mario Herbert was chosen the winner and his design used as the final Navigator 9 splash screen. ==Response==