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Netscape Turns 10

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the almost-a-teenager dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Today marks ten years since the first public beta of Netscape Navigator was released. Both CNet News.com and MozillaZine have full coverage, with the former revealing that AOL is planning to release a new version Netscape in the New Year (thankfully separate from the IE-based version of AOL's browser). Even the Netscape portal (which never mentions the Netscape browser) is celebrating the anniversary. A lot of water has passed under the bridge in the last decade (especially since AOL bought Netscape) and the baton has now passed onto the Netscape alumni-filled Mozilla Foundation, but it's still worth remembering that Netscape changed the world not once (by making the first really good browser), but twice (by being the first major commercial program to go open source)."

44 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. How can it be 10? by JazzXP · · Score: 5, Funny

    Didn't it die when it was 5?

    1. Re:How can it be 10? by secretsquirel · · Score: 4, Funny

      Couldn't have, it never even was 5. Somehow it went from 4.* to 6. So I guess now its really like 11 or something.

    2. Re:How can it be 10? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Our browser goes to 11.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Cool, cool, cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hard to believe it's been 10 years. Time flies when your having fun! I don't remember which version of Netscape I used first, but I remeber downloading the code when it became available. That was one cool day for me.

    1. Re:Cool, cool, cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I was kind of surprised to see it's been ten years. It seems longer ago than that.

      I guess the IE years haven't been much fun ;)

  3. Netscape portal is like a domain squatters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful


    98% advertising, 2 % content
    why anyone would visit it by choice is a mystery

    1. Re:Netscape portal is like a domain squatters by skitzoid+(moomoo) · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hi! I'm an AOL user Where can I download it from?

  4. The old netscape by thedillybar · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I remember the old Netscape. Really bulky and yet I still ran it over IE. Took what seemed like forever to load with 16(?) MB of RAM.

    Props to how far Mozilla has come. I guess the increased computing power helped them a tad :) Salute to our pioneers as well.

    1. Re:The old netscape by FrankHaynes · · Score: 4, Funny

      BAH!

      When I was your age I had to paint the web page on cardboard with watercolors using my fingers...uphill--BOTH WAYS!!

      Young whippersnappers!

      --
      slashdot: A failed experiment.
    2. Re:The old netscape by singularity · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Ehh, If you are talking the same time as IE, you are not thinking old enough. Once Netscape 3.x came out (which, if I remember correctly, was about the time IE was first released), it was pretty bulky.

      Back when you were able to get just Netscape Navigator (the stand-alone browser without the HTML editor, mail client, and so on), it was pretty smooth. I remember running 2.2N on my Mac for a long time (up until about Netscape 4.1.7 or so)

      Of course, that was some time after Netscape hit the scene. I remember downloading Mosaic for the first time sometime around Christmas break of 1993-1994. Netscape 0.9 was sometime after that.

      I liked to tell my students (when I was working in a high school) that there used to be a page called "What is new on the Internet" that would list all new pages to go up.

      Netscape started out a good browser, but the 3.x bloat really slowed progress down. That was back when Netscape seemed on top of the world, though. Portal, web server, web browser, mail client, news client, you name it. For the briefest amount of time, before Microsoft woke up, they seemed to control the Internet.

      It is interesting to see projects like Firefox finally getting back to the simplicity of the original Netscape browsers.

      --
      - (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
    3. Re:The old netscape by metlin · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dad?

      Is that you?

    4. Re:The old netscape by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Dad?

      Is that you?"

      Asking somebody on Slashdot if they're your father... That raises some interesting questions about your mom.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  6. The First Netscape was revolutionary by dancingmad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While the older versions of Netscape is the butt of many a joke, nothing beats the electricity I felt when I first started browsing the web with Netscape. I mean, back then, browsing with Netscape, I knew that the web was going to be something huge (I remember playing silly games on Nintendo's web site). Netscape had a huge hand in creating that and the web as we know it. There were browsers before (not to mention IRC, Gopher, etc.) but Netscape helped bring the WWW and the Internet to the masses.

    More power to Netscape's heir, Firefox, which is set to take the web crown back and help perfect the web experience Netscape pioneered.

    --
    "There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
    1. Re:The First Netscape was revolutionary by metlin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah, reminds me of the line from JWZ's website -

      When we started this company [Netscape], we were out to change the world. And we did that. Without us, the change probably would have happened anyway, maybe six months or a year later, and who-knows-what would have played out differently. But we were the ones who actually did it. When you see URLs on grocery bags, on billboards, on the sides of trucks, at the end of movie credits just after the studio logos -- that was us, we did that. We put the Internet in the hands of normal people. We kick-started a new communications medium. We changed the world.

      Indeed. They very much were the ones who brought the WWW to the masses.

  7. First?!? by bay43270 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...but it's still worth remembering that Netscape changed the world not once (by making the first really good browser)...

    What was wrong with Mosaic?

    1. Re:First?!? by typhoonius · · Score: 3, Interesting

      NCSA Mosaic was programmed by Marc Andreessen, who, of course, created Netscape Communications, so I guess it's all in the family.

    2. Re:First?!? by Mr.+Hankey · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apparently nothing as far as Microsoft was concerned. IE was originally a customized version of Spry Mosaic, as a part of one of the most monumental fleecings of all time (Altamira notwithstanding.) Microsoft promised to pay a portion of their profits to Spry in return for the browser code, and then gave it (IE) away. Any percent of zero is of course still zero.

      To answer your question though, I do remember Netscape having far more rendering features than Mosaic. I seem to recall that background images especially were more interesting in Netscape. A fair amount of the features were non-standard in the same manner as IE's MSHTML extensions though. Many a webmaster would say that we're still recovering from Netscape-specific tags.

      --
      GPL: Free as in will
    3. Re:First?!? by grotgrot · · Score: 4, Interesting
      What was wrong with Mosaic?

      The single biggest problem with Mosaic was that it wouldn't display any of the page until it had downloaded every single image and worked out what size they were. IIRC it also only used one network connection to do the image downloads. The big thing that made people say "wow" about Netscape was it showing you the page and then filling in the images, reflowing the page as necessary. That resulted in people dropping Mosaic real quick.

      Mosaic was also most at home on Unix. That was all fine for people like me who used Sun Workstations at work, but most didn't have that. The Windows and Mac versions lagged the Unix version, and had to have a lot of different code due to OS differences (those were the days of Win16 for example).

      IIRC Netscape was also the first browser to implement tables and do a decent job of it. Within a month or less of the first release of Netscape, I didn't know anyone who used Mosaic any more. There were some more releases of Mosaic by uiuc, but most of their browser and server people had gone to Netscape.

    4. Re:First?!? by Marlor · · Score: 4, Informative

      Apparently nothing as far as Microsoft was concerned. IE was originally a customized version of Spry Mosaic, as a part of one of the most monumental fleecings of all time (Altamira notwithstanding.) Microsoft promised to pay a portion of their profits to Spry in return for the browser code, and then gave it (IE) away. Any percent of zero is of course still zero.

      It was Spyglass Mosaic, rather than Spry Mosaic that licensed their code to Microsoft.

      It is a shame that they settled with Microsoft (for $8M) in 1997, becuse MS started claiming that IE was an intrinsic part of Windows soon afterwards, so Spyglass would have had a case that they deserved royalties from all copies of Windows sold.

    5. Re:First?!? by Darren+Winsper · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, Netscape didn't reflow the page as needed. Instead, it started simultaneous downloads and would put an appropriate sized box in place once it knew the size of the image.

      Try it for yourself, this behaviour was still present in Netscape 4.

  8. Go Gopher! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Netscape? World Wide Web. Bleah. I remember the good old days when Gopher was king. That was perfect -- none of this graphical mumbo jumbo and "tags". No Septembers that never ended.

  9. To commemorate Netscape's 10 year anniversary by FunkyRat · · Score: 4, Funny

    perhaps we could all encapsulate our websites with the tag?

    1. Re:To commemorate Netscape's 10 year anniversary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually, there is one valid use of the Blink tag..

      Schroedinger's cat is <blink>not</blink> dead.

  10. I forget if we're supposed to hate them by genericacct · · Score: 5, Funny
    Is Netscape evil or saintly? I can't keep it straight. They broke W3C standards and are owned by AOL, but Mozilla doesn't suck anymore.

    If only Slashdot could tell me what to think.

  11. Found the original program by tao_of_biology · · Score: 4, Interesting
    For those who haven't seen it, or those who want to relive it, I found Netscape 0.9 beta (from 10-27-1994) here.

    I haven't actually tried running running it, but the links seems to be working.

    I wonder if slashdot is renderable under Netscape 0.9...

    --

    -- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."

    1. Re:Found the original program by number · · Score: 3, Informative
      Might want to link to a few mirrors.

      --
      - HOORAY!
  12. 10 years, eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps its time I updated.

  13. Re:for nostagic purposes... by aftk2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check it out.

    A lot more than just Netscape in there. Very, very fascinating.

    --
    concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
  14. Feel the Original: Dejavu Emulator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For the youngins, you can use a Netscape emulator (and Mosaic and early IE) to feel what it was like. It's fun to see what sites do and see if they even load.

    I'm probably /.'ing it with this, but it does say "Sorry, due to heavy load on the server, browsing is quite slow. On the positive side, it makes the experience even more authentic.."

    I especially love "You probably forgot the "http://" part. Remember: the old browsers did not provide that service... Give it another try!" when you enter a URL without the http:// component.

  15. Re:for nostagic purposes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    it would be interesting to run the old version for memory sakes...

    I believe you meant memory leaks.

  16. Evil company... by FiReaNGeL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    AOL completely killed any glimpse of hope Netscape had to win the 'browser war'... imagine if Firefox came with AIM, ads that pop up everywhere, installed 2-3 advertising gimmicks, put links everywhere about itself... and didn't have any features over IE. I completely stopped using Netscape, which was by far my favorite browser at the time, when they released the AOL version (6 I think?).

    Netscape is dead, long live Netscape! (in Firefox's form!)

    --
    Eureka Science News - automatically updated
  17. Re:Still why not base AOL on Netscape? by Awptimus+Prime · · Score: 4, Informative

    Because by shipping/using IE, AOL becomes one of their "premier partners" or whatever it is called.

    A company I once worked for reaped the benefits of choosing to distribute IE over Netscape. While the Netscape people wanted $45 a copy from us per customer, Microsoft agreed to give us their browser for free and entered into an advertising partnership which reaped us millions in revenue. I can only imagine how well this works out for a company of AOL's size. Amazingly, our technical support costs went down. The statistics we gathered of our 700,000 customers showed both Mac and PC systems had less trouble with IE than Netscape. Less calls to suppport equates to saving lots of money for the company.

    Then you have to look at what is to gain by an ISP/content provider to spend enormous time and resources developing their own browser in house. It isn't like they would make any money with it. This, I think, has a lot to do with the status of mozilla source. They threw it to the open source community, now it is us to make it better.

  18. Re:Still why not base AOL on Netscape? by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Remember that when AOL and MS made this agreement, Mozilla wasn't very good (Slow, bloated, buggy-- but I still used it).

    Today we have a very different situation. Firefox rocks my world. My 60 year old father switched a few months ago ON HIS OWN ACCORD. He actually said "Hey Son, you should try out Firefox, it's pretty cool".

    The MS/AOL decision might be different if it happened a year from now, when Firefox is even better.

    --
    94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
  19. We need to keep re-inventing the browser by Eloquence · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Firefox is gaining some momentum - maybe enough to make web developers take note. The Mozilla project also has two other great Firefox-like (small single-purpose applications) initiatives, Sunbird and Thunderbird.

    The important thing right now is that we use this momentum, and that we continue to innovate. Here's some issues I believe are important:

    • SVG support. It's incomplete - but I think it is unwise not to have at least some level of SVG support in mainline Firefox 1.0 builds. "Build it, and they will come": both web and Mozilla developers. SVG is really a key technology for next-generation web design based on open standards. As an example, Wikipedia has a nice extension called EasyTimeline for rendering graphical timelines. These are currently ugly, non-zoomable PNGs -- SVG would be perfect here, as it would allow timelines with a changing level of detail as you zoom in. Much of the stuff that is currently being done with Flash can be done with SVG.
    • Leverage XUL. Whenever I show people demos like MAB and Robin, they tend to be impressed: easy, powerful, instantly deployable web applications. In my opinion, XUL should get a lot more exposure within Firefox - both the product and the website. Make a promise to XUL developers: If you use XUL to write open source applications, and it meets our quality standards, we will add it to the default Firefox bookmarks, and promote it on our website.
    • New UIs. Tabs are great, but they're not the Holy Grail of UI design. For example, they don't scale - managing more than 20 or so open documents in one browser is not feasible because you just have lots of "..."s. At this point, I would rather have a vertical, scrollable list of open documents with a nice, dynamic (incremental) title search to instant-switch to a window of your choice, and some other cool navigation tools ("skip to next website from another domain than the current one" etc.). There's no reason why a modern browser shouldn't make it easy to manage 50 or 100 open documents.
    • Better editing controls. Yes, I know what you're thinking: Keep Firefox lean. But having a good integrated text editor for things like wikis or even this form into which I'm typing into right now makes life a lot easier for the average user.

    Now, if you really want a glimpse of the future, imagine, if you will, that a HTML textarea worked like SubEthaEdit and allowed you to invite other users to edit with your collaboratively, in real-time, a wiki page or weblog entry. But even this really just scratches the surface. The point is, the browser is an immensely important platform. With Firefox, we now have the chance to give an incredible amount of real power to end users. It's not "just a browser" - it's one of the key components of future information and collaboration devices.

    Congratulations to the Mozilla project for getting us where we are right now. We still have a long way to go. I hope in 10 years, open source technology will be used by virtually everyone to access the rapidly growing digital commons.

  20. Screenshots and a Mirror by Adam9 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Screenshots: 1 2 3

    Mirror: nscape09.zip

    Ah, the good ol' days..

  21. The funny thing is by BCW2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When I go online in Windows at home (rare) I still use Netscape, even upgraded it to 7.1, because I'm a cantankerous old fart. At work or in Linux I always use Firefox, never liked IE, never thought Gates had the right to tell me what had to be on a box he didn't pay for, running on an electric bill he didn't pay. That feeling hasn't changed. The average user couldn't find a way to start it on my machine (XP). Hell, I used Lotus Smart suite for 8 years, just to avoid office, at less than half the price. Now? OO, no matter which OS is running, WinXP/RH9/Suse 9.1.

    --
    Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
  22. netscape page doesn't render in firefox? by Mustang+Matt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is it bad that the netscape page:
    http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/storymain.jsp?num ber=1 doesn't render correctly in the latest firefox?

    --
    The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
  23. Let us not forget CERN and NCSA Mosaic by davidwr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Let us not forget CERN's early work with the www client and wwwd server. In particular, the work of Tim Berners-Lee. That link includes some web history.

    Let us not also forget NCSA Mosaic, which became a "killer app" in the early/mid 1990s, before being spun off as SpyGlass.

    My memory is faulty, but I believe more than half of the NCSA team left the project and formed NetScape. Can anyone correct this?

    The web as we know it also owes a debt to previous research in hypertext systems dating back decades, as well as existing document-markup systems.

    To those who keep Mozilla alive today:
    I salute you, but do take too much pride in yourselves:
    Never forget that you stand on the shoulders of giants.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  24. Netscape Dorm by Mr+Fodder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Don't forget this little jem: NSCP Dorm (Netscape Dorm). Jamie Zawinski kept a diary of sorts about Netscape starting up. Some off-topic but almost always interesting nonetheless.

  25. Safari startpage URL for non Safari users by Sophrosyne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://apple.netscape.com/apple.adp
    Apparently Apple will be switching to this page:
    http://www.apple.com/startpage/

  26. Re:Mozilla was not the first. by SvendTofte · · Score: 3, Insightful

    GCC is not commercial. Netscape was owned by a commercial entity, which released the source. That was, AFAIK the first time that ever happened with a big profile product.

    GCC may have provided other people with a living, but that doesn't make it "commercial", in the same sense Netscape was commercially owned.

  27. SSL and JavaScript by upside · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...two things introduced by Nutscrape. These were a huge boost for the Web, particularly commercial applications like online shopping.

    --
    I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
  28. Best Netscape innovation by lothar97 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I remember beta testing Netscape 0.9. At the time, my college only had Mosaic, easiest to use on Unix terminals. Netscape brought better browsers to the Mac and PC, and also had a really novel innovation: the stop button. I remember how much it used to suck going to a website (using Mosaic), and having to wait for a massive page to load. With Netscape, I could click the stop button, and move about my business. That's what changed the web...!

    --