The Downwash Blog » R.I.P. Netscape

4 January 2008

R.I.P. Netscape

Posted by Rotorboy under: Geekfactor 9 .

Netscape

AOL, the company that bought Netscape back in 1999 for a ridiculous amount of cash (reports range from $4 billion to $10 billion) has announced that the once mighty browser will not be supported after February 1, 2008.

The remaining 4 users of Netscape will be devastated.

Netscape was the first commercially available browser back in its glory day and it took off like a rocket. Of course once Microsoft realized the importance of a web browser, they fast-tracked development and incorporated IE in their operating systems. The move proved pivotal in the browser wars and signaled the downturn in popularity for Netscape (I mean, who would pay for a browser when IE came free?) Only the die-hard technogeeks continued to shell out for Netscape (and only as a feeble act of defiance against Microsoft). Eventually Netscape realized they could not continue to ask people to pay for a web browser and started offering it for free.

The biggest issue I remember, being in the software testing field back then, was ensuring our products were ‘browser compliant’… meaning nothing broke when you used IE or Netscape and the web pages looked and functioned properly. Unfortunately, Netscape broke web pages alot back then. That created alot of headaches for the developers, who grudgingly re-wrote code and developed ‘hacks’ to deal with incompatibility issues with Netscape. It wasn’t until v4.0 came out that issues started to be resolved… and even then many incompatibilities still existed when viewing the same web page between IE and Netscape.

That’s not to say IE was golden. IE tended to ignore improperly written code (and likely still does) and didn’t follow W3C standards for HTML and web coding for many years (I haven’t tested software for more than a few years so I’m not up to speed on whether or not recent IE versions have improved or not).

Fast forward to 2003, when the Mozilla foundation was established to, essentially, make the internet experience less ‘techie’ and more friendly for the average joe.

Soon, a new browser, Firefox, based on the core code of Netscape, was born. But this was like no other browser to-date. This browser was ‘open source’, meaning essentially any developer who wanted to enhance future versions of Firefox were welcome to volunteer their skills and time to do so.

Essentially what started out as a small band of ‘anti Microsoft’ developers with a browser took root and spawned several open source projects, including Mozilla Thunderbird (an email client) and a very popular bug-tracking tool I’ve used in the past, Bugzilla.

So I guess in reality Microsoft didn’t snuff the life out of Netscape as it had hoped to do. Instead, they made a martyr out of Netscape, and Firefox lives on as a free alternative to the money-grabbing, evil monolith of Microsoft.

I’ve used Firefox for a couple of years as my primary browser and love it.

Incidentally, which browser do you use?

9 Comments so far...

JeanMac

Posted on January 5th, 2008 at 13:38

Firefox now although started out with Netscape in the 90’s

midbach

Posted on January 5th, 2008 at 18:32

I never liked Netscape, likely due to being the Netscape and Mac tester at Stockhouse back in the day. I recall that v4 was good but v6 was a real stinker. I was a happy IE user until I got off the pipe around 2002 and discovered Firefox. Back then it was called Phoenix I believe.

born2fly

Posted on January 6th, 2008 at 9:36

I was a big fan of Netscape Communicator which was a web browser and mail client all in one. It mean’t i only had to have one application open. I was sorry to see it discontinued.

Rotorboy

Posted on January 6th, 2008 at 12:36

I too am happy with Firefox. It’s interesting that IE even stole some features from Firefox, liked tabbed browsing.

born2fly, you didn’t indicate which browser you’re currently using.

dan

Posted on January 7th, 2008 at 9:27

Opera, through and through. Unless I need sharepoint, in which case I use IE7.

Yes yes, Firefox does everything that Opera does and is more compliant with those 5 websites that Opera renders poorly. But I also didn’t have to install 12 plugins to get the functionality from Opera and I STILL surf faster than all the other browsers out there.

I have Firefox installed but I just can’t deal with the speed of rendering.

Tracey

Posted on January 7th, 2008 at 20:56

I use whatever it is you put on my computer for me…. (fuzzy kittens)

Rotorboy

Posted on January 7th, 2008 at 22:24

Atta girl.

isabella mori

Posted on January 9th, 2008 at 13:49

hello, first time here - came over here from netchick’s socializing game.

it’s kinda sad that netscape is dead. or let’s say unsupported - who know what’ll happen with it. in the early days, i was an avid netscape user and even when it started to get wonky i always tried to use it whenever possible and as soon as firefox came along, i started using it.

trying to remember what was before netscape, i think there was mosaic, and wasn’t there something called copernicus?

isabella mori’s last blog post..we