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I still use suite version, SeaMonkey (used to be called Mozilla). It was designed since Netscape days, especially its Communicator.

http://isp.netscape.com/pf/new...

Well, you can still download it and find out!

(yeah, I was kind of amazed too).

AOL's not dead.

I still use their Netscape-branded dialup for $6 a month - http://isp.netscape.com/

It's used on most of the sites I visit. Like the homepage I've used for 5+ years and is almost nothing but GIFs - http://isp.netscape.com./ There are a lot of GIFs in other locations as well, all free of patent restrictions and just as open as PNG codec.

At the time of GIF the whole thing with patents was a fairly new problem, which appeared quite late. And most Linux distros worked around by simply making uncompressed GIFs. It's not exactly comparable to video.

Also I guess the stats vary, but for me it's PNG everywhere.

That's true, but listener tests show people can't hear the difference between 48k AACplus and ~1400k lossless CD. Hence the term "CD quality". Perhaps I should have added the word 'perceived' to clarify? In any case, neither MP3 or Theora can match it. They sound like ___ compared to a 48k AACplus stream.

Got some test results? I found an AAC+ stream at 48k and wasn't that impressed. Sure it sounds decent, but there still seems to be something missing.

Also, of course Theora can't match it. Theora is a video codec, audio is encoded in Vorbis.

That's true but it looks almost as crappy as MPEG2.

I've seen it on youtube for instance, and I can't really tell the difference. If you know of a good comparison site, do tell. I linked to one, and it seems to win in some cases and lose in others. Overall to me it averages to about the same.

I simply don't want to use an inferior codec, okay? Am I allowed to make my OWN fucking choice??? (Apparently not, and thus I got modded "idiiot".)

I don't see how your "OWN fucking choice" involves telling other people what they ought to use. Nobody is saying it should be illegal for you to download an H.264 player or anything like that.

The web should standarize on WebM so that absolutely everybody who wants to can implement it without dealing with royalty payments, and if somebody especially likes paying licensing fees, they can go download a player/encoder for that. There's your choice.

>>>GIF isn't used all that much.

It's used on most of the sites I visit. Like the homepage I've used for 5+ years and is almost nothing but GIFs - http://isp.netscape.com./ There are a lot of GIFs in other locations as well, all free of patent restrictions and just as open as PNG codec.
.

>>>48k is not CD quality in any case because it's lossy

That's true, but listener tests show people can't hear the difference between 48k AACplus and ~1400k lossless CD. Hence the term "CD quality". Perhaps I should have added the word 'perceived' to clarify? In any case, neither MP3 or Theora can match it. They sound like ___ compared to a 48k AACplus stream.
.

>>>VP8 is as "pro" as any other codec

That's true but it looks almost as crappy as MPEG2. I simply don't want to use an inferior codec, okay? Am I allowed to make my OWN fucking choice??? (Apparently not, and thus I got modded "idiiot".)

>>>are they charging an arm and a leg? I mean, I know they're Not for Profit, but that doesn't always meant they offer all services free. If they ARE offering it for free... I can't help but wonder what their angle is.
>>>

I don't know why you're surprised. DIALUP internet only costs me $7/month. Netzero and Juno offer it for free (see links below). It's not that much of a burden for the Non-profit ISP to offer free access to egyptians.

And the datarate is only ~30 kbit/s via analog lines, so you could carry over 300 users in the space of one DSL or cable customer.

http://www.juno.com/start/landing.do?page=www/free/index
http://isp.netscape.com/

P.S.

Correction - Dialup is FREE from Netzero or Juno. It's so old and slow that it's virtually no burden at all for an ISP to offer free service:
http://www.juno.com/start/landing.do?page=www/free/index
http://isp.netscape.com/

Now that would be ironic -- a revolution that takes place at 56Kbps. Holy AOL, Batman.

Doesn't surprise me. Dialup is a poor choice for watching youtube, but perfectly fine for accessing the internet if you're only interested in sharing text and images with the outside world.

>>>Netscape? They pretty well killed that brand off years ago.

Nope. Netscape's portal page still exists (see below). It costs me $7 a month for accelerated dialup access. The actual browser was only discontinued two years ago (March 2008).

http://isp.netscape.com/
http://www.getnetscape.com/ (for new customers)

Microsoft has both of them beat with IE 6.

That's nothing - Netscape was already at 9.x in 2007!

Harder than using XUL (which has Javascript in it) with XULConnect and XPCOM.

In other words, using Javascript is harder than... using Javascript? WTF?

I don't see what XULConnect or XPCOM add, API-wise, to make sensing mouse movements any easier or more accurate than DOM events. I don't see what XUL XML adds to the situation at all.

Not all Javascript functions can be bound the Chrome API.

I'll try to put this as gently as possible...

Use complete sentences, please. I have no clue what you meant just then.

And, if you're saying what I think you're saying, please provide an example of a Javascript feature which is not available in Chrome extensions, and where it is available. If you use the words XUL or XPCOM in your answer, remember that we were talking about Javascript features here, not Firefox-specific features.

I'm pretty sure Chrome extensions have access to the same valid EcmaScript engine that webpages do, when viewed in Chrome.

And why is then Chrome did not use HTML to render its UI?

Actually, I don't know, but I am seriously considering writing a browser that does just that.

But again, it does use HTML to render pieces of its UI. What isn't done by HTML isn't much -- just the tab bar and the config pages, really. Even the download manager is HTML.

Chromium != Google Chrome. It is like saying Google Chrome == Safari just because they use WebKit.

*facepalm*

Actually, Chromium is Google Chrome. It lacks exactly two things found in Google Chrome:

• Branding
• Codecs

And you can still use ffmpeg codecs, it's just not legal -- whereas Google actually does have licenses to things like h.264, etc.

Chromium is more Google Chrome than Mozilla was Netscape, because Netscape really did add a ton of proprietary features on top of Mozilla -- things like spellcheck, which Mozilla had to write their own version of.

Then please explain why after 1 year and three major version in Windows, why Google Chrome (not derivatives like Chromium)

Chromium is exactly as much a derivative of Chrome as Mozilla is a "derivative" of Firefox. (Hint: It's the other way around.)

But please explain why it matters whether it's Chrome or Chromium. If the supposed issue is using C++ and Google's portable graphics API, shouldn't this affect Chromium as much as it affects Chrome?

Is it really that hard to make a port?

It is when you ignore facts, and continue to make statements like this:

When Firefox 1 was released, it is already available for Linux and OS X.

I don't believe there was an OS X port of the original Phoenix browser when its developer previews were released. And remember, this was a fork of Mozilla, which was already cross-platform. And it was a fork which removed things, so it should've been easier to port, if anything.

Netscape is not written by Mozilla, Netscape is written by Netscape Communication.

However, the original Mozilla was open source code that came from Netscape. I'm talking about Mozilla the browser, not the Mozilla Foundation.

Netscape doesn't even use XUL until version 6 (prior to that Netscape is completely C++)

Indeed, because XUL was one of the first innovations of Mozilla, which Netscape 6 was built on.

XUL was chosen because using it will simplify Mozilla's heavy burden of making Firefox/Seamonkey cross-platform friendly.

Yet Netscape (and Mozilla) were already massively portable before XUL. Maybe XUL made it easier going forward, but it certainly wasn't needed.

I do have to admit that I was wrong about XUL being required for that portability -- meaning it was

The OP is a spy intended to make a Jew-controlled New World Order.

http://search.netscape.com/search/redir?src=websearch&requestId=d09f39c07a0896e&clickedItemRank=3&userQuery=Israel+9%2F11&clickedItemURN=http%3A%2F%2Fwhatreallyhappened.com%2FWRHARTICLES%2Ffiveisraelis.html&title=%3Cb%3E9-11%3C%2Fb%3E+Attacks%3A+The+Five+Dancing+Israelis+Arrested+on+%3Cb%3E9-11%3C%2Fb%3E&moduleId=matchingsites.jsp.M&clickedItemPageRanking=3&clickedItemPage=1&clickedItemDescription=WebResults

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WErZ2R4a5I

Time to resist! SAY NO TO JEW WORLD ORDER!

• ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape9/en-US/9.0/unix/linux/netscape-navigator-9.0.0.6.tar.gz
  
• ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/desktop/2.20/2.20.3/
  
• ftp://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/
  

Except that WMP was included in windows many years before Real was ever founded.

Netscape was the first to give away their browser.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (January 22, 1998) -- In addition, the company is making its currently available Netscape Navigator and Communicator Standard Edition 4.0 software products immediately free for all users. With this action, Netscape makes it easier than ever for individuals at home, at school or at work to choose the world's most popular Internet client software as their preferred interface to the Internet.

Real's offerings just SUCKED

THERE! fixed it for you:

http://archive.netscape.com/history

AOL has a long checkered history on the internet, of being the home of clueless users, being one of the first companies to really get people online and then cutting their connection every 10 minutes. Throughout AOL's lifetime, it has been involved with a number of high profile scandals, perhaps the largest of which was the 1999 hostile takeover of the Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was known to many as the leader in web browsing at the time, and had developed a number of complementary pieces of software that allowed for a rich suite of internet tools. That had to be stopped. So, as we continued to use an IE back end for our AOL branded browser, we were then allowed to, at our leisure, slowly and quietly strangle the Netscape suite in to irrelevance.

At the time of the acquisition, the newly demoralized Netscape team had been working on converting their flagship product - the Netscape Communicator web suite - into open source software, under a new name: Mozilla in a foolish bid to attempt to minimize what they (correctly) perceived as a move to kill the legendary browser. AOL played a significant role in the launch of the NEW IMPROVED(TM) Netscape 6 browser, the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser that was released in 2000 and continued to solely fund the development and marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers. In 2003, an "independent foundation" was created to support the continued development of the open source web suite. AOL was a major source of interference for the Mozilla Foundation and the company continued to develop versions of the Netscape browser based on the work of the "foundation".

While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to sabotage the now, beleaguered Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been totally successful. Gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer had to be ultimately crushed (mainly because the Netscape developers were, as we perceived, "weenies"). Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of former Microsoft "engineers" tasked with stuffing the browser with obsfucated bloat and then creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.

AOL's focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL's current business focus of providing ad riddled social site rip offs and, with the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it's the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers forever, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox. Because, mainly, we've been unsuccessful at infiltrating that organization at this time.

To our shareholders: This day has been long in arriving, and looking back (mission accomplished) - it was WORTH IT!
The King is dead - long live the King.

Windows Internet Explorer:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9ae91ebe-3385-447c-8a30-081805b2f90b&DisplayLang=en

Back when I first started browsing with Netscape 1.0, it really appealed to me because of the obvious fun the developers were having.
Take for example the Amazing Netscape Fish Cam
http://wp.netscape.com/fishcam/
You used to be able to hit ctrl-alt-f and it would load up a webcam with their office aquarium.

Does anybody find it odd that the FCC website recomends Netscape as their browser of choice and then sends you to a link which forwards to http://netscape.aol.com/ that has no means of downloading Netscape? Then when you dig further you find this article recomending migrating to Mozilla Firefox.

Really can we trust the FCC to get anything right? Also am I the only one who was confused by that page that is supposed to describe how to comment?

Pick you favorite version for your favorite OS here:

http://browser.netscape.com/downloads/archive/

Please check thy facts, kind sir. Javascript was conceived of as a Java-like script language. A poor man's Java for those that found object oriented concepts a little too brain intensive. Thrown in the first netscape browser to allow a little customisation of the DOM on the fly, for things that then then HTML 3 couldn't do properly.

You may be surprised to know that I am well in possession of the facts. I used to believe that Javascript (formerly Livescript, formerly Mocha) got its name in simply a cross-branding deal. In fact, it was far more complex than that. Javascript was created to script Java as well as the DOM. The original concept would have blown today's AJAX out of the water in usability. Alas, it was not to be.

Here's more history for you: http://safari.oreilly.com/0768666775/ch01lev1sec1

Also, here's a bit of Javascript for you, demonstrating how powerful it was intended to be:

<script>
var myobj = Packages.javax.swing.JOptionPane;
var Frame = java.awt.Frame;

var frame = new Frame();

frame.show();

myobj.showConfirmDialog(frame, "Hello from Java! See Ma? No applet!");

frame.hide();
</script>

(That will work in FireFox with a recent Java plugin. I guarantee that it will not work on Internet Explorer.)

You have to remember, Java already existed in the browser when Javascript was created. Netscape internally discussed just using Java itself for scripting, but decided that a new, more dynamic scripting language would be more useful. (Source) Thus the birth of Javascript. Eich described the first revision as "having gotten out of the lab a bit earlier than intended". Javascript 1.1 was much closer to his vision, and what we think of today when we talk about Javascript.

You also need to understand that the Javascript language went beyond just the browser. Much of its development was driven by its use as a server-side CGI language. So it became a "real" language very quickly, despite its slow start.

And if you think that's cool, remind me sometime to tell you about how multipart/x-mixed-replace could have been server-side push long before AJAX, Comet, or <event-source> ever existed. ;)

Javascript is not an object oriented language.

Incorrect. Prototype-based languages are very much OO languages. They're different from class-based, languages, but that doesn't make them any less powerful.

There is no polymorphesm

I think you misunderstand the very meaning of polymorphism if you believe that.

Here's the "Runnable" interface implemented in Javascript:

var MyObject1() {}
MyObject1.prototype.run = function() { alert("Running 1!"); }

var MyObject2() {}
MyObject2.prototype.run = function() { alert("Running 2!"); }

var objarray = [new MyObject1(), new MyObject2()];

for(var i=0; i<objarray.length; i++) objarray.run();

The polymorphism appears to work fine?

or inheritance

Funny, Netscape's Client Guide has an entire chapter on that.

strong type checking

Strong typing is not a OOP requirement. It is a feature of some languages. Nothing more, nothing less. In any case, Javascript actually has quite a few typing fe

Actually, Bush has plenty of time to listen to all the slashdot crowd complain. He spent so far 418 days of his 6.5+ years of presidency in vacation. See : http://politics.netscape.com/story/2007/08/10/bush -creeping-up-on-reagan-as-the-vacation-president
Now I don't think Vista is slowing down network traffic while listening to music to send hash-info about what you are listening to the RIAA, because : I don't think the RIAA would be smart enough to think of that or know what to do with hash-info, let alone info. But it's just my opinion, while we may not have the source code of Vista to know what it is doing, I'm pretty sure it's either somewhere in the EULA :P, or VISTA is just defective by desing.

"Which, assuming you want to support IE users, means no."

You can support IE users ... just inlcude links to the download pages for Opera, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, etc.

Better yet, give them full support - have them download a bootable linux distro to replace Vista Millennium.

I had thought they found them - the dude who produced Dark Side of the Moon had them in his vault.

The NCSA What's New index does not seem to be archived any longer at UIUC, but rather at Netscape. That's puzzling to me, since I think it's an absolutely essential part of the history of the growth of the web.

A quick google search will help you there. http://www.google.com/search?q=john+stewart+questi on+mark+news&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf- 8

Here's the first link : http://videos.netscape.com/story/2006/09/14/jon-st ewart-analyzes-how-major-news-networks-use-the-que stion-mark/

Actually I've been playing with this "new" Netscape Navigator for a few hours now. I really like it; I think the theme is pleasant, and some of the features are "why didn't I think of that" type stuff I actually find myself using instead of disabling. I'm sure most if what it offers could be replicated via FF+extensions, but it is also nice to have it all in one package.

I'm going to give this browser an honest run. For me, like many people (from what I hear), FF 2.0 wasn't a big step in the right direction from FF 1.5. Navigator 9.0b really offers some neat functionality and I have yet to find any big showstoppers or extra cruft. In my mind, what FF 2.0 should have been if they were going to add features to FF 1.5.

Release Notes are here: http://browser.netscape.com/releasenotes/

http://isp.netscape.com/

Yes, this is basically just a slightly modded version of Firefox. They have a link from http://browser.netscape.com/ to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/5683 6 if you want to add their stuff to your Firefox. I'm not sure on the details, but this should give you at least some of the benefits of Netscape without having to use their full product.

This release will no longer ship with mail or composer but does have...

Didn't Netscape drop mail and composer a while back? Let's see...

From Netscape's Browser FAQ (emphasize is mine):

Does Netscape Navigator 9 include a mail client/HTML composer/newsreader/...?
No. Navigator 9 is a standalone browser; Netscape 7 is the most recent browser suite produced by Netscape.

If I recall correctly, Netscape 7 was based on the Mozilla suite (now known as SeaMonkey) and included those components, and with version 8, they based it on Firefox (which never included mail and composer) and went back to calling it "Navigator".

You'd think that "journalists" might research their stories a little bit.

Every story I can find about DRM-free content from Amazon has come after Apple's DRM-free deal with EMI.

Well, you're not not searching very hard, are you? Amazon has been talking about it for 6 months.

What about the tunnel they keep proposing between Morocco and Spain .. err. I mean "Occupied al-Andalus"?

http://news.netscape.com/story/2007/03/07/spain-an d-morrroco-agree-to-buid-underwater-train-tunnel/

Netscape tried something like this ten years ago. I think it was called Aurora and was to be a desktop environment - I saw some screenshots in Byte magazine of the time. Eventually it shrivelled down to some browser extensions and was included in the original Mozilla Navigator source release in early 1998. You can still see the Aurora Overview on Netscape's 'future products' page - though the screenshots don't have much relevance.

The Byte article also mentioned that one of the head guys at Netscape had instituted a one dollar fine every time an employee called Netscape a web browser. 'It's not a web browser, it's an operating system!'. This was very soon before Netscape's downfall at the hands of Microsoft.

Mozilla doesn't just make "some money", it makes $50 million a year from firefox.

http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2007/01/03/firef ox-a-50-million-dollar-cash-cow

Glad to hear that the current 2.x stuff is not affected. I'm using FF 2.0.0.1 now, in my knoppix remaster (see screenshots below), and have other things I need to be doing with the remaster than upgrading FF. I do, however, jump on it and upgrade the browsers whenever they have new versions out. With Firefox, I put 9 RSS feeds on the toolbar by default, and for it's home page, I use a local version of this one, but with a slide-out ~/ menu setup, for browsing the /ramdisk.
I notice that Netscape 9 for linux may be released in a couple of months. I'll try it out. Since I usually run my knoppix remaster with a 1 or 2 GB "persistent home" partition, I can easily download it and have it up and running in a few minutes, and can keep it around for a while to see how it does compared to Flock, Firefox and Opera. If it has anything to offer, and is not loaded up with AOL stuff, I might put it in the CD. I still use Netscape 4 on a Macintosh Quadra 660AV, and it seems to do a better job with the web pages than icab 2.99.
That version is free, with no time limit, since it is for older Mac systems. Downloads quickly and installs automatically, however. Just a little disappointed in how many of the web pages look, so I tend to stick with Netscape.

Rapidweather

And even more bad that the two poor schmucks working for the ad agency are still charged with crimes. They should be set free, and whatever moron phoned in a litebrite as a "bomb" (and the corresponding police moron who agreed with him) should be looking at potential liability.

What will NS9 that Firefox, maybe with one or two extensions installed, cannot do?

I'm not sure why the cryptic title was chosen, of course Netscape 9 will be better than Netscape 8. *smile* The new browser will be integrated with our social news system that has been live on Netscape.com since July 2006, and yes, the browser will run on Linux (as well as Windows and Mac).

I am one of the Anchors on Netscape http://www.netscape.com/about, and not directly part of the dev team, but I am sure members of our dev team will have plenty to comment on this thread once they are awake.

Fabienne Serriere
Netscape Anchor

To me it seems Netscape has lost his reputation as best browser. Mozilla Firefox is the more used browser these days. For Netscape it is very hard to gain market share with a suit. Still brave of Netscape though.

Is it taken seriously?

V8.12 comes with "WeatherBug" among other things. I don't know if it's a full version of Weatherbug or the spyware infected version, but i'm willing to guess it's the spyware infected version.

How seriously would you take software bundled with "WeatherBug".

The last version I ran was probally V6.xx, which was AIM infected.

At some point Brian Valentine (who was still the GM of Exchange at the time) asked us to figure out what to do with OWA for Exchange 2000. There were two implementations that got started, one based on serving up straight web pages as efficiently as possible with straight HTML, and another one that started playing with the cool user interface you could build with DHTML. When I first got a demo of the DHTML work that Jim Van Eaton and Bob Gering were doing I was just blown away. However they were basically doing hacky form-posts back to the server and had some of the same scalability and dynamic data problems of the old version.

Meanwhile the IE project was just weeks away from beta 2 which was their last beta before the release. This was the good-old-days when critical features were crammed in just days before a release, but this was still cutting it close. I realized that the MSXML library shipped with IE and I had some good contacts over in the XML team who would probably help out- I got in touch with Jean Paoli who was running that team at the time and we pretty quickly struck a deal to ship the thing as part of the MSXML library. Which is the real explanation of where the name XMLHTTP comes from- the thing is mostly about HTTP and doesn't have any specific tie to XML other than that was the easiest excuse for shipping it so I needed to cram XML into the name (plus- XML was the hot technology at the time and it seemed like some good marketing for the component).

Forté and Netscape have already begun work on this seamless access. Forté has exposed its services to IIOP and is working with Netscape to allow Visual JavaScript to call these and other IIOP-components. Using Netscape Visual JavaScript, enterprise developers can rapidly build Crossware, a new category of on-demand applications that run across networks, operating systems and platforms and are based on open standards. Crossware is an ideal mechanism for customers to take advantage of the distributed functionality of Forté applications within an Intranet or Extranet environment.

Chavez not renewing license of station critical of him
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6215815.stm

Chavez rule by decree
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070119/ap_on_re_la_am _ca/venezuela_chavez

Chavez changing constitution to remove presidential term limit
http://news.netscape.com/story/2007/01/11/chavez-w ould-abolish-presidential-term-limit

Chavez' laughable claim of US Invasion plans. Like no one else would notice some aircraft carriers floating off Venezuela.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4359386.stm

Ironic because Netscape is guilty of this poor practive themselves. I have an old sun u2 box that I recently revived. I had a copy of netscape messaging server/netscape enterprise server on it (used by the isp where I worked at the time). I wanted to archive some old mail off of it before I wiped the drive. I couldn't start it up because there were so many files containing references to http://developer.netscape.com/products/servers/ent erprise/dtds/nes-webapps_6_1.dtd which of course doesn't even exist. Couldn't even start up until I replaced all references to that file with local file uri links.

The file is now restored, but it will not be available forever. See this post at the Netscape blog for the full details.

I can't speak for the pre-2006 Netscape, but as far as the current Netscape organization is concerned, I have to disagree with you regarding transparency.

* The former GM, Jason Calacanis, blogged extensively about Netscape and encouraged other employees to do the same. He also called out other industry big-wigs for "not having time" to blog about their product.
* Many Netscape Anchors, Navigators, and developers have an active blog where they write about Netscape and/or are available to discuss it.
* There is the official Netscape blog where we detail new and/or upcoming features and ask for discussion and feedback.
* Netscape.com holds a weekly chat when there is guaranteed to be an Anchor in attendance.
* As developers, we are encouraged to be active in the community; we haven't been given any explicit "gag orders," so we're free to speak for Netscape (as I'm doing now) if the need arises.

Can the above be said to be true for Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, etc.? I'd have to say that of all the current players in the social news space, Netscape is one of the most (if not the most) forthcoming and transparent about their operations.

I can't speak for the pre-2006 Netscape, but as far as the current Netscape organization is concerned, I have to disagree with you regarding transparency.

* The former GM, Jason Calacanis, blogged extensively about Netscape and encouraged other employees to do the same. He also called out other industry big-wigs for "not having time" to blog about their product.
* Many Netscape Anchors, Navigators, and developers have an active blog where they write about Netscape and/or are available to discuss it.
* There is the official Netscape blog where we detail new and/or upcoming features and ask for discussion and feedback.
* Netscape.com holds a weekly chat when there is guaranteed to be an Anchor in attendance.
* As developers, we are encouraged to be active in the community; we haven't been given any explicit "gag orders," so we're free to speak for Netscape (as I'm doing now) if the need arises.

Can the above be said to be true for Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, etc.? I'd have to say that of all the current players in the social news space, Netscape is one of the most (if not the most) forthcoming and transparent about their operations.

It is not the first time that Netscape dropped important files and Netscape didn't care in the past. E.g. the RDF schemata http://home.netscape.com/WEB-rdf and http://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf bite the dust some time ago and Netscape gave a fucking fart. Other format specs are also gone for years, but I am to lazy to look up what whent missing years ago.

But hey, from where I sit Netscape is anyhow run by a bunch of liberal arts graduates and doesn't have any technical competence left.

It is not the first time that Netscape dropped important files and Netscape didn't care in the past. E.g. the RDF schemata http://home.netscape.com/WEB-rdf and http://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf bite the dust some time ago and Netscape gave a fucking fart. Other format specs are also gone for years, but I am to lazy to look up what whent missing years ago.

But hey, from where I sit Netscape is anyhow run by a bunch of liberal arts graduates and doesn't have any technical competence left.

What's the official way to let you know about this sort of thing?

my.netscape.com is undergoing a redesign, and when we announced the redesign about 10 days ago, the DNS entry for my.netscape.com was changed to point to the new server where My Netscape will be living. This had the effect of making anything under the old my.netscape.com unavailable, since the only thing public on the new server is a splash page. (Nobody on the team was especially aware of this DTD file since all of the old Netscape employees were let go last year around the time Netscape.com was redeveloped; anybody working at Netscape now was hired since then.)

Now, why this file was living under my.netscape.com is anybody's guess, but we'll have it restored ASAP. I only wish that someone had brought it to our attention so that I didn't have to find out about it from Slashdot.

Christopher Finke
Netscape Developer

Javascript is nothing related to Java

It didn't use to be (apart from both of them having C-related syntax and Interweb-related hype), but it is now if you're using Firefox. For example, the following works:

<script> document.write(new java.lang.String("I'm here")); </script>

Don't forget Netscape LiveConnect which allowed Javascript to invoke Java code way back in the 90s.