Netscape Navigator and Netscape are the names for the proprietary web browser popular in the 1990s, the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared. One of the reasons for this was due to the popularity of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser software and other web browsers, and partly because the Netscape Corporation (later purchased by AOL) did not sustain Netscape Navigator's technical innovation after the late 1990s.
The business demise of Netscape was a central premise of Microsoft's antitrust trial, wherein the Court ruled that Microsoft Corporation's bundling of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system was a monopolistic, and illegal business practice.
The Netscape Navigator web browser was succeeded by the Netscape Communicator internet suite, in turn succeeded by Netscape 6, Netscape 7, and Netscape Browser 8. On 1 May 2007, the resurrection of the Netscape Navigator name would be Netscape Navigator 9.
AOL formally stopped development of Netscape Navigator on 28 December 2007, but continued supporting the web browser with security updates until 1 February 2008, then extended until 1 March 2008, when AOL canceled technical support, yet permits user-downloading of archived versions of the Netscape Navigator web browser family. Moreover, AOL maintains the Netscape website as an Internet portal.
Netscape was the base for Mozilla Firefox and parts are used in Google Chrome.
History and development
The creation
Netscape Navigator was based on the Mosaic web browser, which was co-written by Marc Andreessen, a part-time employee of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and a student at the University of Illinois. After Andreessen graduated in 1993, he moved to California and there met Jim Clark, the recently-departed founder of Silicon Graphics. Clark believed that the Mosaic browser had great commercial possibilities and provided the seed money. Soon Mosaic Communications Corporation was in business in Mountain View, California, with Andreessen as a vice-president. Since the University of Illinois was unhappy with the company's use of the Mosaic name, the company changed its name to Netscape Communications (thought up by sales representative Greg Sands) and named its flagship web browser Netscape Navigator.
Netscape announced in its first press release (October 13, 1994) that it would make Navigator available without charge to all non-commercial users, and Beta versions of version 1.0 and 1.1 were indeed freely downloadable in November 1994 and March 1995, with the full version 1.0 available in December 1994. Netscape's initial corporate policy regarding Navigator is interesting, as it claimed that it would make Navigator freely available for non-commercial use in accordance with the notion that Internet software should be distributed for free.
However, within 2 months of that press release, Netscape apparently reversed its policy on who could freely obtain and use version 1.0 by only mentioning that educational and non-profit institutions could use version 1.0 at no charge.
The reversal was complete with the availability of version 1.1 beta on March 6, 1995, in which a press release states that the final 1.1 release would be available at no cost only for academic and non-profit organizational use. Gone was the notion expressed in the first press release that Navigator would be freely available in the spirit of Internet software.
The first few releases of the product were made available in "commercial" and "evaluation" versions; for example, version "1.0" and version "1.0N". The "N" evaluation versions were completely identical to the commercial versions; the letter was there to remind people to pay for the browser once they felt they had tried it long enough and were satisfied with it. This distinction was formally dropped within a year of the initial release, and the full version of the browser continued to be made available for free online, with boxed versions available on floppy disks (and later CDs) in stores along with a period of phone support. Email support was initially free, and remained so for a year or two until the volume of support requests grew too high.
During development, the Netscape browser was known by the code name Mozilla , which became the name of a Godzilla-like cartoon dragon mascot used prominently on the company's web site. The Mozilla name was also used as the User-Agent in HTTP requests by the browser. Other web browsers claimed to be compatible with Netscape's extensions to HTML, and therefore used the same name in their User-Agent identifiers so that web servers would send them the same pages as were sent to Netscape browsers. Mozilla is now a generic name for matters related to the open source successor to Netscape Communicator.
The rise of Netscape
When the consumer Internet revolution arrived in the mid-to-late 1990s, Netscape was well positioned to take advantage of it. With a good mix of features and an attractive licensing scheme that allowed free use for non-commercial purposes, the Netscape browser soon became the de facto standard, particularly on the Windows platform. Internet service providers and computer magazine publishers helped make Navigator readily available.
An important innovation that Netscape introduced in 1994 was the on-the-fly display of webpages, where text and graphics appeared on the screen as the web page downloaded. Earlier web browsers would not display a page until all graphics on it had been loaded over the network connection; this often made a user stare at a blank page for as long as several minutes. With Netscape, people using dial-up connections could begin reading the text of a webpage within seconds of entering a web address, even before the rest of the text and graphics had finished downloading. This made the web much more tolerable to the average user.
Through the late 1990s, Netscape made sure that Navigator remained the technical leader among web browsers. Important new features included cookies, frames, and JavaScript (in version 2.0). Although those and other innovations eventually became open standards of the W3C and ECMA and were emulated by other browsers, they were often viewed as controversial. Netscape, according to critics, was more interested in bending the web to its own de facto "standards" (bypassing standards committees and thus marginalizing the commercial competition) than it was in fixing bugs in its products. Consumer rights advocates were particularly critical of cookies and of commercial web sites using them to invade individual privacy.
In the marketplace, however, these concerns made little difference. Netscape Navigator remained the market leader with more than 50% usage share. The browser software was available for a wide range of operating systems, including Windows (3.1, 95, 98, NT), Macintosh, Linux, OS/2, and many versions of Unix including DEC, Sun Solaris, BSDI, IRIX, AIX, and HP-UX, and looked and worked nearly identically on every one of them. Netscape began to experiment with prototypes of a web-based system, known internally as "Constellation", which would allow a user to access and edit his or her files anywhere across a network no matter what computer or operating system he or she happened to be using.
Industry observers confidently forecast the dawn of a new era of connected computing. The underlying operating system, it was believed, would become an unimportant consideration; future applications would run within a web browser. This was seen by Netscape as a clear opportunity to entrench Navigator at the heart of the next generation of computing, and thus gain the opportunity to expand into all manner of other software and service market.
The fall of Netscape
With the success of Netscape showing the importance of the web (more and more people were using the Internet due in part to the ease of using Netscape) Microsoft saw a new profitable market they too could enter. Following Netscape's lead Microsoft started a campaign to enter the web browser software market. Like Netscape before them, Microsoft licensed the Mosaic source code from Spyglass, Inc. (University of Illinois). Using this basic code, Microsoft created Internet Explorer (IE).
The war between Microsoft and Netscape denominated the Browser Wars; Version 1.0 (shipped in the Internet Jumpstart Kit in Microsoft Plus! For Windows 95) and Version 2.0 (the first cross platform web browser supporting Windows and MacOS ) of Internet Explorer were thought by many to be inferior and primitive when compared to contemporary versions of Netscape Navigator. With the release of IE version 3.0 (1996) Microsoft was able to catch up with Netscape competitively. IE Version 4.0 (1997) fared even better in market share than even version 3.0. IE 5.0 (1999) improved stability and took significant market share from Netscape Navigator for the first time.
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Netscape Upgrade - Another Question
From: "Ken Walker"
To: redhat-list redhat com; Subject: Netscape Upgrade - Another Question; Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 01:43:39 -700 Netscape Upgrade
From: Stu
To: redhat-list redhat com; Subject: Netscape Upgrade; Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 09:21:56 +0100 Netscape upgrade?
I have an Acer Open computer 5.5 years old, 3.2G HD , 64M RAM , Pentium 200 MMX running Win 98se and Netscape 4.79. It seems that Netscape is getting
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From: mwkohout
To: "redhat-list redhat com" Subject: netscape upgrade; Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 07:54:47 -0600