November 15th 2007

Netscape Messenger 9 Alpha 1 Released

Posted by Chris Finke

› tags: alpha, mail, Netscape Messenger, news, release, rss

Netscape is pleased to announce the availability of the first public alpha of Netscape Messenger 9, a mail and news client, to complement the Netscape Navigator Web browser. This release is now available for download from mailnews.netscape.com for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The release notes for 9.0a1 are here; they include download and installation instructions.

NOTICE: This alpha release is an early developer milestone of the next major version of Messenger. It is being made available for testing purposes only. If you are currently using a previous Netscape mail client, you should not switch to Messenger 9a1 as your primary mail and news client. Feel free, however, to install and test it so that you can help shape the future of this product.

Report any bugs, or request any features, via this feedback form.

Netscape Messenger 9a1 is based on Thunderbird 2.0.0.9, giving it a secure and efficient base, as well as allowing it to support Thunderbird-compatible extensions. As we move through the alpha period with this product, we look forward to adding the most-requested features from the community, allowing us to improve on an already great product.

Along those lines, we have two questions for you:

1. What is the #1 killer feature that you'd like to see in the final release of Messenger 9?

2. Google and Yahoo have recently made announcements to the effect that they'll be building social networking features into their webmail clients. Are you interested in seeing social features added to Messenger?

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Comments

(Page 4)

5:28AMDoug Stewart

There are lots of messenger services out there, and which are evolving new functionality. Rather than try each of them out individually (time consuming), where can one find a summary feature comparision? Perhaps Netscape could add a feature comparision page that shows its messenger functionality versus the main competition.

6:12AMCorey

This is very obvious, but you may too do it.

4:08PMRichard Boom

Wish it was a suite, Messenger and Navigator. Much of my email has links and was easy going back and forth with just a click as with 7. What might be of use is to include in the Messenger and Navigator a link in the tool bar or such. Maybe this is just a Mac problem, but keeping both active, the simple switch would solve my problem and no need for a suite.

6:41PMDM Robin

This looks really nice. I'm a first time Netscape user, and have just went to Navigator 9. One thing I would LOVE to have in Messenger 9 is tabbed email, so if we click on a message it will open in a tab instead of a new window. Everything else looks great! :D