Netscape Navigator

Last updated

Netscape Navigator
Developer(s) Netscape
Initial release15 December 1994;29 years ago (1994-12-15) [1]
Final release 9.0.0.6 (February 20, 2008;16 years ago (2008-02-20)) [±]
Type Web browser

Netscape Navigator is a discontinued proprietary web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in the 1990s, but by around 2003 its user base had all but disappeared. [2] This was partly because the Netscape Corporation (later purchased by AOL) did not sustain Netscape Navigator's technical innovation in the late 1990s. [3]

Contents

The business demise of Netscape was a central premise of Microsoft's antitrust trial, wherein the Court ruled that Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system was a monopolistic and illegal business practice. The decision came too late for Netscape, however, as Internet Explorer had by then become the dominant web browser in Windows.

The Netscape Navigator web browser was succeeded by the Netscape Communicator suite in 1997. Netscape Communicator's 4.x source code was the base for the Netscape-developed Mozilla Application Suite, which was later renamed SeaMonkey. [4] Netscape's Mozilla Suite also served as the base for a browser-only spinoff called Mozilla Firefox.

The Netscape Navigator name returned in 2007 when AOL announced version 9 of the Netscape series of browsers, Netscape Navigator 9. On December 28, 2007, AOL canceled its development but continued supporting the web browser with security updates until March 1, 2008. AOL allows downloading of archived versions of the Netscape Navigator web browser family. [5]

History and development

Origin

Mosaic Netscape 0.9, a preview version, with image of the Mozilla mascot, and the Mosaic logo in the top-right corner Mosaic Netscape 0.9 on Windows XP.png
Mosaic Netscape 0.9, a preview version, with image of the Mozilla mascot, and the Mosaic logo in the top-right corner

Netscape Navigator was inspired by the success of the Mosaic web browser, which was co-written by Marc Andreessen, a part-time employee of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications 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 (suggested by product manager Greg Sands [6] ) 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 freely downloadable in November 1994 and March 1995, with the full version 1.0 available in December 1994. [7] However, two months later, the company announced that only educational and non-profit institutions could use version 1.0 at no charge. [8]

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.

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 identical to the commercial versions; the letter was intended as a reminder to 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. During this era, "Internet Starter Kit" books were popular, and usually included a floppy disk or CD containing internet software, and this was a popular means of obtaining Netscape's and other browsers. [9] 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 and is most identified with the browser Firefox.

Rise of Netscape

When the consumer Internet revolution arrived in the mid-1990s, Netscape was well-positioned to take advantage of it and the influx of new users it brought. 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 innovation that Netscape introduced in 1994 was the on-the-fly display of web pages, 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 meant a user might have only a blank page for several minutes. With Netscape, people using dial-up connections could begin reading the text of a web page 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. New features included cookies, frames, [10] proxy auto-config, [11] 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, [12] and many versions of Unix including OSF/1, Sun Solaris, BSD/OS, 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 users to access and edit their files anywhere across a network no matter what computer or operating system they happened to be using. [13]

Industry observers forecast the dawn of a new era of connected computing. The underlying operating system, it was believed, would not be an important 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 markets.

Decline

Usage share of Netscape Navigator, 1994-2007 Netscape-navigator-usage-data.svg
Usage share of Netscape Navigator, 1994–2007

With the success of Netscape showing the importance of the web (more people were using the Internet due in part to the ease of using Netscape), Internet browsing began to be seen as a potentially profitable market. 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. (which in turn licensed code from University of Illinois). Using this basic code, Microsoft created Internet Explorer (IE).

The competition between Microsoft and Netscape dominated the browser wars. Internet Explorer, Version 1.0 (shipped in the Internet Jumpstart Kit in Microsoft Plus! For Windows 95 [14] ) and IE, Version 2.0 (the first cross-platform version of the web browser, supporting both Windows and Mac OS [15] ) 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, with IE Version 4.0 (1997) further improvement in terms of market share. IE 5.0 (1999) improved stability and took significant market share from Netscape Navigator for the first time.

There were two versions of Netscape Navigator 3.0, the Standard Edition and the Gold Edition. The latter consisted of the Navigator browser with e-mail, news readers, and a WYSIWYG web page compositor; however, these extra functions enlarged and slowed the software, rendering it prone to crashing.

This Gold Edition was renamed Netscape Communicator starting with version 4.0; the name change diluted its name-recognition and confused users. Netscape CEO James L. Barksdale insisted on the name change because Communicator was a general-purpose client application, which contained the Navigator browser.

The aging Netscape Communicator 4.x was slower than Internet Explorer 5.0. Typical web pages had become heavily illustrated, often JavaScript-intensive, and encoded with HTML features designed for specific purposes but now employed as global layout tools (HTML tables, the most obvious example of this, were especially difficult for Communicator to render). The Netscape browser, once a solid product, became crash-prone and buggy; for example, some versions re-downloaded an entire web page to re-render it when the browser window was re-sized (a nuisance to dial-up users), and the browser would usually crash when the page contained simple Cascading Style Sheets, as proper support for CSS never made it into Communicator 4.x. At the time that Communicator 4.0 was being developed, Netscape had a competing technology called JavaScript Style Sheets. Near the end of the development cycle, it became obvious that CSS would prevail, so Netscape quickly implemented a CSS to JSSS converter, which then processed CSS as JSSS (this is why turning JavaScript off also disabled CSS). Moreover, Netscape Communicator's browser interface design appeared dated in comparison to Internet Explorer and interface changes in Microsoft and Apple's operating systems.

By the end of the decade, Netscape's web browser had lost dominance over the Windows platform, and the August 1997 Microsoft financial agreement to invest $150 million in Apple Computer required that Apple make Internet Explorer the default web browser in new Mac OS distributions. The latest IE Mac release at that time was Internet Explorer version 3.0 for Macintosh, but Internet Explorer 4 was released later that year.

Microsoft succeeded in having ISPs and PC vendors distribute Internet Explorer to their customers instead of Netscape Navigator, mostly due to Microsoft using its leverage from Windows OEM licenses, and partly aided by Microsoft's investment in making IE brandable, such that a customized version of IE could be offered. Also, web developers used proprietary, browser-specific extensions in web pages. Both Microsoft and Netscape did this, having added many proprietary HTML tags to their browsers, which forced users to choose between two competing and almost incompatible web browsers.

In March 1998, Netscape released most of the development code base for Netscape Communicator under an open source license. [16] Only pre-alpha versions of Netscape 5 were released before the open source community decided to scrap the Netscape Navigator codebase entirely and build a new web browser around the Gecko layout engine which Netscape had been developing but which had not yet incorporated. The community-developed open source project was named Mozilla , Netscape Navigator's original code name. America Online bought Netscape; Netscape programmers took a pre-beta-quality form of the Mozilla codebase, gave it a new GUI, and released it as Netscape 6. This did nothing to win back users, who continued to migrate to Internet Explorer. After the release of Netscape 7 and a long public beta test, Mozilla 1.0 was released on June 5, 2002. The same code-base, notably the Gecko layout engine, became the basis of independent applications, including Firefox and Thunderbird.

On December 28, 2007, the Netscape developers announced that AOL had canceled development of Netscape Navigator, leaving it unsupported as of March 1, 2008. [17] [18] Archived and unsupported versions of the browser remain available for download.

Legacy

Netscape's contributions to the web include JavaScript, which was submitted as a new standard to Ecma International. The resultant ECMAScript specification allowed JavaScript support by multiple web browsers and its use as a cross-browser scripting language, long after Netscape Navigator itself had dropped in popularity. Another example is the FRAME tag, which is widely supported today, and that has been incorporated into official web standards such as the "HTML 4.01 Frameset" specification.

In a 2007 PC World column, the original Netscape Navigator was considered the "best tech product of all time" due to its impact on the Internet. [19]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet Explorer</span> Web browser series by Microsoft

Internet Explorer is a retired series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were used in the Windows line of operating systems. While IE has been discontinued on most Windows editions, it remains supported on certain editions of Windows, such as Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC. Starting in 1995, it was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year. Later versions were available as free downloads or in-service packs and included in the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows. Microsoft spent over US$100 million per year on Internet Explorer in the late 1990s, with over 1,000 people involved in the project by 1999. New feature development for the browser was discontinued in 2016 and ended support on June 15, 2022 for Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel (SAC), in favor of its successor, Microsoft Edge.

Netscape Communications Corporation was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than one percent in 2006. An early Netscape employee, Brendan Eich, created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. A founding engineer of Netscape, Lou Montulli, created HTTP cookies. The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over.

Gecko is a browser engine developed by Mozilla. It is used in the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird email client, and many other projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ActiveX</span> Software framework by Microsoft introduced in 1996

ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. Microsoft introduced ActiveX in 1996. In principle, ActiveX is not dependent on Microsoft Windows operating systems, but in practice, most ActiveX controls only run on Windows. Most also require the client to be running on an x86-based computer because ActiveX controls contain compiled code.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Browser wars</span> Competition between web browsing applications for share of worldwide usage

A browser war is a competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war" (1995–2001) consisted of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and the "second browser war" (2004-2017) between Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome.

This is a comparison of both historical and current web browsers based on developer, engine, platform(s), releases, license, and cost.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet Explorer for Mac</span> Web browser for Apple computers developed by Microsoft from 1996 to 2003

Internet Explorer for Mac was a proprietary web browser developed by Microsoft for the Macintosh platform to browse web pages. Initial versions were developed from the same code base as Internet Explorer for Windows. Later versions diverged, particularly with the release of version 5, which included the cutting-edge, fault-tolerant and highly standards-compliant Tasman layout engine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Netscape Browser</span> Internet browser

Netscape Browser is the eighth major release of the Netscape series of web browsers, now all discontinued. It was published by AOL, but developed by Mercurial Communications, and originally released for Windows on May 19, 2005.

Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) is a deprecated application programming interface (API) for web browser plugins, initially developed for Netscape Navigator 2.0 in 1995 and subsequently adopted by other browsers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet Explorer 5</span> Web browser for Windows released in 1999

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is the fifth, and by now, discontinued, version of the Internet Explorer graphical web browser, the successor to Internet Explorer 4 and one of the main participants of the first browser war. Its distribution methods and Windows integration were involved in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case. Launched on March 18, 1999. Although Internet Explorer 5 ran only on Windows, its siblings Internet Explorer for Mac 5 and Internet Explorer for UNIX 5 supported Mac OS X, Solaris, and HP-UX.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet Explorer 3</span> Web browser for Windows released in 1996

Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 (IE3) is the third version of the Internet Explorer graphical web browser which was announced in March 1996, and was released on August 13, 1996 by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and on January 8, 1997 for Apple Mac OS. It began serious competition against Netscape Navigator in the first Browser war. It was Microsoft's first browser release with a major internal development component. It was the first more widely used version of Internet Explorer, although it did not surpass Netscape or become the browser with the most market share. During its tenure, IE market share went from roughly 3–9% in early 1996 to 20–30% by the end of 1997. In September 1997 it was superseded by Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet Explorer 2</span> Web browser for Windows released in 1995

Microsoft Internet Explorer 2 (IE2) is the second, and by now discontinued, version of Internet Explorer (IE), a graphical web browser by Microsoft. It was unveiled in October 1995, and was released on November 27, 1995, for Microsoft Windows, and on April 23, 1996, for Apple Macintosh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Application Suite</span> Discontinued Internet suite

The Mozilla Application Suite is a discontinued cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It was based on the source code of Netscape Communicator. The development was spearheaded by the Mozilla Organization from 1998 to 2003, and by the Mozilla Foundation from 2003 to 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the World Wide Web</span> Information system running in the Internet and its history

The World Wide Web is a global information medium that users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and Usenet do. The history of the Internet and the history of hypertext date back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web.

In the context of the World Wide Web, a bookmark is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that is stored for later retrieval in any of various storage formats. All modern web browsers include bookmark features. Bookmarks are called favorites or Internet shortcuts in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge, and by virtue of that browser's large market share, these terms have been synonymous with bookmark since the First Browser War. Bookmarks are normally accessed through a menu in the user's web browser, and folders are commonly used for organization. In addition to bookmarking methods within most browsers, many external applications offer bookmarks management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Netscape (web browser)</span> Family of web browsers

The Netscape web browser is the general name for a series of web browsers formerly produced by Netscape Communications Corporation, which eventually became a subsidiary of AOL. The original browser was once the dominant browser in terms of usage share, but as a result of the first browser war, it lost virtually all of its share to Internet Explorer due to Microsoft's anti-competitive bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It further provides for the capture or input of information which may be returned to the presenting system, then stored or processed as necessary. The method of accessing a particular page or content is achieved by entering its address, known as a Uniform Resource Identifier or URI. This may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web typography</span> Publishing considerations for the Web

Web typography, like typography generally, is the design of pages – their layout and typeface choices. Unlike traditional print-based typography, pages intended for display on the World Wide Web have additional technical challenges and – given its ability to change the presentation dynamically – additional opportunities. Early web page designs were very simple due to technology limitations; modern designs use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript and other techniques to deliver the typographer's and the client's vision.

An Internet Explorer shell is any computer program that uses the Internet Explorer browser engine, known as MSHTML and previously Trident. This engine is closed-source, but Microsoft has exposed an application programming interface (API) that permits the developers to instantiate either MSHTML or a full-fledged chromeless Internet Explorer within the graphical user interface of their software.

References

  1. ↑ "NETSCAPE CEO BARKSDALE'S DEPOSITION IN MICROSOFT SUIT (Text)". Bloomberg.com. October 21, 1998. Retrieved December 12, 2020.
  2. ↑ "Roads and Crossroads of the Internet History". NetValley.com. Archived from the original on February 6, 2015. Retrieved September 8, 2014.
  3. ↑ "Netscape's Brief History". Archived from the original on February 16, 2009. Retrieved February 16, 2009.
  4. ↑ Clark, Jim (1999). Netscape Time . St. Martin's Press. ISBN   9780312199340.
  5. ↑ Tom Drapeau (December 28, 2007). "End of Support for Netscape web browsers". The Netscape Blog. Archived from the original on December 29, 2007. Retrieved December 29, 2007.
  6. ↑ "Greg Sands". Costanoa Ventures. Archived from the original on February 21, 2019. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  7. ↑ "Netscape Communications Offers New Network Navigator Free on the Internet". AOL.com. October 13, 1994. Archived from the original on December 7, 2006. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
  8. ↑ "Netscape Communications Ships Release 1.0 of Netscape Navigator and Netscape Servers" (Press release). AOL.com. September 15, 1994. Archived from the original on March 26, 2005. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
  9. ↑ Mark Robbin Brown; Steven Forrest Burnett; Tim Evans; Heather Fleming; Galen Grimes; David Gunter; Jerry Honeycutt; Peter Kent; Margaret J. Larson; Bill Nadeau; Todd Stauffer; Ian Stokell; John Williams (1996). Netscape Navigator 3 Starter Kit. Que. ISBN   978-0-7897-1181-6.
  10. ↑ Ladd, Eric. "Using HTML 3.2, Java 1.1, and CGI; Ch. 13, Frames". Archived from the original on October 30, 2007.
  11. ↑ "Navigator Proxy Auto-Config File Format". Netscape Navigator Documentation. March 1996. Archived from the original on December 18, 2006. Retrieved January 15, 2011.
  12. ↑ Watson, Dave (July 21, 2001). "A Quick Look at Netscape". The Southern California OS/2 User Group. Archived from the original on July 16, 2011. Retrieved August 16, 2010.
  13. ↑ Gordon, John (December 24, 2008). "Why Google loves Chrome: Netscape Constellation". Gordon's Notes. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
  14. ↑ "Download Web Browser - Internet Explorer". windows.microsoft.com. Microsoft. Archived from the original on October 2, 2003. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
  15. ↑ "Microsoft Internet Explorer Web Browser Available on All Major Platforms, Offers Broadest International Support" (Press release). Microsoft. April 30, 1996. Archived from the original on August 30, 2013. Retrieved September 8, 2014.
  16. ↑ Hamerly, Jim (January 1999). "Freeing the Source: The Story of Mozilla". O'Reilly. Archived from the original on December 2, 2014. Retrieved September 8, 2014.
  17. ↑ BBC NEWS - Technology - Final goodbye for early web icon BBC News Archived 3 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 29 February 2008
  18. ↑ "Curtains for Netscape - Tech Bytes". Canadian Broadcasting Company. Archived from the original on July 5, 2015. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
  19. ↑ "The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time". PCWorld. April 2, 2007. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
Preceded by
first		Netscape Navigator (1-4.08)Succeeded by
Netscape Communicator (4)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.