Looks harmless enough, but...

A Microsoft manager's blog posting has apparently led to the news that users installing Netscape 8 can mess up IE. Although Microsoft has not reported which versions of IE are affected, the market-leading browser apparently renders XML files as blank pages--not good--on certain systems when Netscape 8 is installed.

Microsoft has said it will work with Netscape to address this problem. Microsoft's suggested temporary workaround is simply to uninstall Netscape 8.

Netscape 8 has had a troubled release, introduced only two weeks ago but already riven with several serious problems that required an update from the company. One poster to the Microsoft blog said that this latest problem may, in fact, be related to some undiscovered weakness in IE, although that theory was not substantiated with any facts or data.

There is mention of this problem currently on either the Microsoft, Internet Explorer, or Netscape home pages.