Netscape 8 does Canada, soon France

NETSCAPE VERSION EIGHT (currently v8.02) is outsourced by AOL to a Canadian company named Mercurial Communications.

And, while we're on clean and friendly Canada, tech site Techhawk recently reported the release of a Canadian version of NS 8. We downloaded it and confirmed that it's the same Netscape 8.02 but uses the Netscape.ca site as the default home page and is also "customized with preferences suiting the users in Canada", by which they mean the ability to show Canadian news on the default RSS feeds and also perform searches on Canadian maps.

According to Techhawk, the company will be launching a French language version soon as well. Find the Canadian Bacon-flavoured version of Netscape 8 here.

Netscape 8.02 Canada

We couldn't help noticing how the Netscape.ca portal shows much more and faster than its USian counterpart, and how Netscape.co.uk is frozen in time, still showing links to download the ancient Netscape 7.0-UK version, dated 2002.

Michael Moore is apparently not involved in Netscape's Canadian release.

On a related note, Netscape is trying something different to promote the virtues of its Firefox-based, dual-engine web browser eight: humour. The company has featured a link in its U.S. portal that leads to a Flash-based "Netscape cubicle", a web page that shows a "virtual cubicle" which features links to humorous video clips - well, if you consider office-bound jackass style staged clips amusing when they are really adverts promoting Netscape's "safe" browsing. It also features links to the company's free web mail service, five Flash based games, and twelve Flash based "e-cards" that you can send to your friends by e-mail.

The Only Netscape Cubicle left, looks like this:

Personally, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. "Netscape Cubicle" seems like a reminder that there's probably only one cubicle left in what used to be a great company in Mountain View. Then one cost-cutting manager decided to lay off the entire programing staff - the very people that, with AOL's funding, helped create Mozilla 0.x to 1.4 versions and the web browser engine used today by Firefox. However, "Netscape Cubicle" is not inspired by those events of a dark day late July, 2003 nor its associated outbreak of downsizing flu.

Hey, who knows, maybe with Mercurial Communications, AOL really has a browser division after all. µ

Related reading:
The Netscape timeline
Top 61 reasons to move to Canada