This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

It has been established that Netscape 9 will be based on Firefox 2.0. One of the greatest things about Firefox is its community of extension developers – if you want a feature that is not built into the browser, chances are that someone has written an extension to add it. We’ve even released several extensions of our own for people who use Firefox with Netscape.com.

However, chances are that you’ve run into an extension you’d like to install, only to find that it’s not compatible with your browser version. This is because extension authors must test and update their extension every time a new browser version comes out to ensure that it works properly with that version of the browser.

Since Netscape 9 will share an architecture with Firefox 2, it is very likely that most Firefox 2 extensions will work in Netscape 9 without modification. This is why Netscape 9 will allow you to install extensions that list Firefox 2 as a compatible version but do not explicitly list Netscape as well. This feature will give all users of Netscape 9 immediate access to Firefox’s wealth of custom extensions without having to wait for each author to update the extension’s compatibility file.