Just downloaded Netscape 6 PR 1 and there’s about a 6:1 annoyance to possibly interesting feature ratio. It’s small in size, but takes longer than Photoshop to install. It’s too slow on my humble PowerMac 8500, the initial registration procedure is lifted verbatum from the frustrating procedure on NetCenter, and they changed the command key shortcuts like F for Find (at least they didn’t change command-q for quit).
I wonder how, with the open source, distributed development method, they developed the user interface? Did they do user testing (or is that what the preview release is all about?)? I’m suspicious that the process of making a great user interface can be done in a distributed, free way.