End of the line for Netscape
Netscape was an early alternative to Microsoft‘s IE and appeared in 1994.
In 1999, Netscape was acquired by AOL. Around about that time, the core of the Netscape Communicator was being transformed into an open source initiative under the Mozilla banner. The result of that is the Firefox browser. Due to issues with the code, the original Netscape code was completely re-written for Firefox.
With little additional development having taken place, it is only natural that Netscape is no longer featured in the browser world. For that reason, AOL has indicated that support for Netscape will cease on 1 February 2008. Their advice: download Firefox and apply a suitable theme to make the browser look like Netscape Communicator. Amazing that a browser that at one point in time held a share of almost 80% of the browser market is dead.
That brings back memories! I remember how superior it was to IE at the time, but the relentless Microsoft machine ground down its advantages and then overwhelmed it through leveraging off being inbuilt into Windows (there were a few court cases around that, weren’t there?). Now it’s IE’s turn to be slow and bloated with rapidly evolving competitors available. Will be interesting to see how they try to gain advantage again…
Much what Firefox is today, though there seems to be a lot of unhappiness in the community regarding the direction it has taken and the outcry at feature-bloat. I like Firefox a lot and didn’t mind Netscape, especially since it ran nicely on Linux.