Barksdale insisted on the name change because Communicator was a general-purpose client application, which contained the Navigator browser. The aging Netscape Communicator 4. 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. At the time that Communicator 4. 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 Microsoft financial agreement to invest one hundred and fifty million dollars in Apple required that Apple make Internet Explorer the default web browser in new Mac OS distributions. 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 , Netscape released most of the development code base for Netscape Communicator under an open source license.
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. The same code-base, notably the Gecko layout engine, became the basis of independent applications, including Firefox and Thunderbird.
On 28 December , the Netscape developers announced that AOL had canceled development of Netscape Navigator, leaving it unsupported as of 1 March 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. In a PC World column, the original Netscape Navigator was considered the "best tech product of all time" due to its impact on the Internet.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. June Learn how and when to remove this template message. This article is about the original Netscape Navigator product versions 1 to 4.
For the final release, see Netscape Navigator 9. For a full list of Netscape software releases, see Netscape web browser.
This section needs additional citations for verification. December Learn how and when to remove this template message. Archived from the original on 5 July Retrieved 12 June Archived from the original on 6 February Retrieved 8 September Archived from the original on 29 December Retrieved 29 December Archived from the original on 7 December Retrieved 5 September Archived from the original on 26 March Archived from the original on 29 January Retrieved 15 October Netscape always drove lots of traffic from various links included in the browser menus to its web properties.
Some say it was very late to leverage this traffic [71] for what would become the start of the major online portal wars. Two continuations of the original Netscape.
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape . Moreover, Netscape Communicator's browser interface design appeared dated in comparison to Internet Explorer and interface changes in. Netscape is a brand name associated with the development of the Netscape web browser. .. It features facilities such as news, sports, horoscopes, dating, movies , music and more. The change has come to much criticism amongst many site.
Of the two, only the latter explicitly uses the Netscape branding. The social news site moved to the Propeller. It features facilities such as news, sports, horoscopes, dating, movies, music and more. The change has come to much criticism amongst many site users, because the site has effectively become an AOL clone, and simply re-directs to regional AOL portals in some areas across the globe.
DMOZ from d irectory. Netscape also has a wide variety of community-based forums within Netscape Forum Center, including its browser 's community support board. To post on the forums, users must possess an AOL Screenname account in which to sign in, referred to within the site as the Netscape Network. The same service is also available through Compuserve Forum Center. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the web browser produced by this company, see Netscape web browser. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. October Learn how and when to remove this template message. This article's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Retrieved July 1, Thursday October 2, Retrieved on December 29, Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness. Retrieved September 29, Completes Acquisition of Netscape Communications Corp. Archived from the original on June 3, Archived from the original on Archived from the original on January 3, Retrieved September 13, Archived from the original on February 7, Retrieved September 9, Retrieved May 17, Netscape Communications wants you to forget all the highway metaphors you've ever heard about the Internet.
Instead, think about an encyclopedia—one with unlimited, graphically rich pages, connections to E-mail and files, and access to Internet newsgroups and online shopping. Retrieved May 18, The Birth Of The Web".
Archived from the original on April 27, The Geography of the Internet Industry: Retrieved July 24, Chambers" Archived March 28, , at the Wayback Machine.. The San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved July 14, Retrieved February 3, Archived from the original on July 8, Archived from the original on May 17, Retrieved February 23, Saracevic October 23, It's where brains meet bucks". Retrieved July 7, Retrieved November 14, Archived from the original on June 23, Retrieved December 29, Archived from the original on October 20, Archived January 9, , at the Wayback Machine.
Retrieved January 2, Archived from the original on January 1, Retrieved March 20, Timeline of web browsers.
Comparison lightweight History List for Unix Usage share. Line Mode Browser libwww. Netscape Communicator Internet Explorer 4 Opera 2. GreenBrowser Maxthon Opera 7—7. Maxthon 2 Opera 9. Google Chrome 4—8 Firefox 3. Google Chrome 32—39 Firefox 27—34 Lunascape 6.
Unsurprisingly, trying to surf anywhere with it was a mess. The browser pre-dated frames, cookies, HTML tables support came in 1. Interestingly, Navigator was first released as free software, only to walk it back a couple months later. The Wikipedia post spends a couple sentences on this:.
Netscape announced in its first press release 13 October that it would make Navigator available without charge to all non-commercial users, and beta versions of version 1. However, within 2 months of that press release, Netscape apparently reversed its policy on who could freely obtain and use version 1. If the history of browser is something you find interesting, Wikipedia has this handy timeline of web browsers dating back to On the plus side, this is an SVG file, so you can zoom in to read it.