Hmmm, you do know about how Mozilla and Netscape 7.x are connected don't you?
Uh, yeah, I thought that was implied in my message, i.e. concern that without the official Netscape team, development would be solely on the backs of whoever wanted to do the development. Not that that is necessarily a bad situation, but making cash has proven to be a wonderful motive for productivity! :-)
In fact you'd probably have a more stable browser free of all the crap that AOL slapped onto Netscape if you went with Moz.
Such as? Okay, there's the IM which I have no need for and the various AOHell ads (severely limited in the 7.1 release, btw), but I don't see anything else other than helper apps, which one can take or leave.
As I mentioned above, I think you'd likle Firebird if you gave it a go.
Go given. Ennnh. I don't notice the much touted speed increase, though the rendering engine does allow for smoother scrolling via mouse wheel. I like how there's less space allocated to controls, but then again I miss the niceties of having a throbber (sometimes the only way you can tell the browser is working!), being able to print a page by just clicking the icon, and the useful aspect of not needing a separate search box other than the URL box. These are probably configurable with either the right theme or adding to a config file or something, but if so, then why not just make such configurability a part of the interface? The themeing, which would otherwise be a compelling reason to switch, is more than a little wonky, and shared codebase or no, NS 7.1 has actually added useful functions that don't exist in Firebird 0.6 (one example: having your homepage come up when NS starts, but not when you open a new window or a tab). Maybe Firebird surpasses NS 7.1 eventually, but in my humble, it ain't ready for prime-time yet.
