I have never really like Netscape.  It was slow and unstable the first time I used it, and it lacked a lot of features found in other browsers.  Nonetheless I do, from time to time, look at it’s progress.

I went to the download site where they make you accept some terms and conditions before you download, and I noticed this above the little box with the agreement (click thumbnail for full image): 
By default, Netscape will download crapware when you install it.  Here is the dialog box in the installer that ties to this crapware: 
Netscape itself is spyware as you are notified durning the installation:
It’s also a challenge to install Netscape if you intend to install on a drive other than C:, as you have to manually navigate the filesystem and make your own install directory.

After you install Netscape you are greeted with this shwank interface:
The first thing I noticed is the security.  Netscape has an index of known trusted sites and known malicious sites and disables or enables accordingly.  It will also allow you to make these settings manually, as well as choose what rendering engine to use on a given site.  The sidebar is easy to access, instead of getting to it from a menu on the menubar, you simply click a button on the side of the screen.  There is a feature called MultiBar, which is like a toolbar, but allows you to change it’s contents by using the arrows or a dropdown menu, it’s like many toolbars in one.  Another feature called Live Content, allows you to access live content (go figure) such as weather, stocks, and even RSS feeds from buttons on the MultiBar, this goes away as soon as you do something else as no to clutter your screen.  For those who are paranoid you can cover your tracks with the little eraser button in the upper-right corner of the screen which will clear the history of pages visited.  Like Firefox, you can add themes and extentions, but none are available at this time, Mozilla extentions and themes aren’t compatible.  I noticed many dialogs that looked strangly the same as the ones found in Firefox.

My official rating for Netscape 8 is a “meh”, it’s not bad, but with the crapware and statistics tracking, it’s not that good either.