Netscape is readying a browser beta with an emphasis on security features. Apparently Netscape is in talks with various security companies to obtain blacklists of sites that are suspected of harboring spyware, phishing scams and other nasties.

The browser will display warnings when visiting blacklisted sites and disable features like ActiveX, scripting and cookies. Conversely, whitelisted sites will be highlighted with a green light icon.

For the first time, Netscape is referring to its forthcoming browser revision as Netscape 8. In November, Netscape released an initial prototype of its future software to a limited set of registered testers under the name Netscape Browser; a minor update followed earlier this month.

Both prototypes were based on Mozilla Firefox rather than the Mozilla Application Suite and sported the ability to switch between the Microsoft Internet Explorer rendering engine and Gecko.

A new Site Controls feature let users enable and disable potentially risky technologies like ActiveX, JavaScript and cookies on a site-by-site basis. It sounds like Netscape 8's new blacklists and whitelists are intended to build on this by removing the guesswork involved in deciding whether or not a site is trustworthy.

The Netscape 8 beta will also feature RSS feed reading abilities and a simplified method for setting the homepage to a group of tabs. It will be released on Thursday 17th of February, together with a redesigned version of Netscape.com