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AOL to Shut Down Netscape Support/Development
Kelson writes "After years of trying to figure out what to do with it, AOL is officially discontinuing the Netscape browser. In the four and a half years after they dismantled the development team and spun off the Mozilla Foundation as a lost cause, only to see Firefox take off, AOL has tried twice to reinvent Netscape. There was the chimera-like Netscape 8, which used both Mozilla's and IE's rendering engines, and just months ago they released Netscape 9, trying to ride the social networking wave. AOL will release security fixes through February 1, 2008, after which the browser will officially be dead. For the "nostalgic," they suggest using Firefox and installing a Netscape theme."
Easy, give it to me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I didn't even know Netscape was still around. I think the last time I used it was..2002? It was ages ago. My aunt got her very first internet connection. And she used Netscape. Yeah, it was dial up.
From time to time I drag out NS version 4 for lowest-common-denominator quick-and-dirty compatibility testing or to use websites whose active content mucks up modern web browsers.
Active-content blockers like NoScript have reduced the need for this but I still keep it around.
Disclaimer: For "real" standards-compliance testing you should be testing against standards not a particular implementation.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Seriously, not many nowadays ever used Netscape and those that did probably hated it (or hate it now). This is kinda interesting and all but isn't there more worthy news out there then the soon to be death of an old browser most people thought died years ago?
I'm not sure what AOL as company is really going to do. Most people have figured out that they don't need AOL to get on the internet and have moved on to broadband solutions. My father used Netscape dial up until he got his Mac and switched to a Phone/DSL/Sat. TV bundle last year.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
AOL was shutting down!
Netscape died years ago.
Netscape 4.7x was the last decent version. Netscape 6 was a horrendous piece of crap and every version since then has just been a crappified version of the Mozilla Suite.
.
For my nostalgia we have the old Netscape icon as a slashdot category image. That's more than enough for me.
Developers: We can use your help.
I'd have to say no, and in fact, their attack on Netscape
probably woke up a lot of people, and Microsoft may regret it.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I will always remember sneaking into the "study" super-late at night, dialing up, and going into chat rooms with Netscape Navigator. I will never forget viewing my first porn website (don't know if it's still around, Babylon-X) using Netscape Navigator. I remember receiving my first email using Angelfire and Netscape Navigator. I even remember the very first file I ever downloaded (a printer driver for an old HP) using Netscape Navigator.
Yup, many of my firsts on the internet involved Netscape Navigator...I haven't used it in years, but I am still a little bit sad to see it go. Goodbye, comet-flying-over-a-global-sized-N...you were the gateway to a hell of a lot in my youth.
Living With a Nerd
if AOL had not been pushing MSIE at the same, they might have been able to take it someplace. As it is, they could have expanded into cable or sats when they have money, but are slowly watching themselves die.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Long live Mosaic and the N. That 8bit pron you delivered on my desktop during the mid 90s opened the door for many good times. You shall be missed old friend.
[alk]
Damn! All these bubble products - they live so long! Products with full version number below 10 can not be considered a mature one... I was just ready to try NS 10 ...
I will have to stay with good old Mosaic ...
Out with the old, in with the new. Perhaps that leaves some room for new entries Spicebird and SupraSphere:
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2007/12/spicebird-brings-mozilla-based-collaboration/
http://www.suprasphere.com/
It seems like anything to start earning market share has to do something different than just being a clone. Even though Netscape was the original and cloned into oblivion, it lost the leadership position and wasn't able ever to establish itself as doing anything innovative that others would want to clone.
They had netscape and winamp and they blew it. Props for funding Mozilla but the subsequent success should be sounding the alarm bells with AOL stockholders.
...Spillin' a 40 for my dead homies...
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
I haven't used Netscape in quite a few years, but I hate seeing it die like that. It used to be a proud trademark - it stood for something - and ended up as yet another AOL castoff. I wish they'd transfer the name to the Mozilla Foundation. While I'm sure they wouldn't use it, at least it would be next to its child where it belongs.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
...I'd say they should give it to someone and that might well be you. The code probably has no significant IP value, there may well be code that could be usefully recycled in Firefox or other Open Source browsers, and it might be the perfect project for someone to gnaw on in their spare time. Abandonware is a pollutant in the IT environment - AOL should "go green" and hand the source to someone who is interested.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
That's awfully nice of them. Now if they'll just do the same to their other offerings, the world would be a better place.
Ah well, one thing at a time.
Firefox has taken over for a long time... but Netscape was the stuff back in the day. Sad to see it pass away.
AOL bought Netscape as bargaining power against MS, but then never actually used it that way. Instead, they mistreated what is arguably the most well known brand from the early days of the net in ways that only AOL could. Any other company would have built up Netscape. AOL lets it rot, then bastardizes it with every hare-brained scheme they can think of (dialup ISP, frankenbrowser, lame Digg knockoff), each further damaging the brand. The only smart thing AOL did that had anything to do with Netscape was to create the Mozilla foundation.
Now AOL is just as weak, having abandoned their walled garden, missed broadband altogether, and their only relevant public service is AIM, which has taken off to such a point that they simply aren't capable of killing it, no matter how incompetent they are.
Rest in peace, Netscape. Your long suffering at the hands of your caregiver is at an end.
(Why do I suspect zombie Netscape will rise from the grave in a year or so, when some new executive needs a name for a new pet project? BRAAAAIINNSSS 11.0, now with 250 gazillion free hours of shambling!)
Netcraft confirms it & everything.
But seriously, does AOL have any market relevance left? Besides, who uses Netscape anymore besides nostalgiaphiles and AOLers?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Netscapes downfall was due in no small part to this ridiculous bug in Netscape 7 which made it the laughing stock of many people. worst bug ever[harvard.edu]
The netscape homepage happened to have a pop-up on it and of course, this is the default home page of the browser. When you initially ran netscape, first thing you saw was a pop-up and the page behind it claiming, "New Feature: pop-up blocker".
<blink>:(</blink>
FAQs are evil.
Or they could just blanket the world with more coasters labeled "You've Got Code!"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
That's because the Fetuses were the CEO's, who were responsible for "spend so far into the hole maybe we'll be profitable in China" business plans.
http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6278387-1.html
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It lives on in SeaMonkey. Not only in the concept, but also the default theme, which looks just like Netscape 4.
I distinctly remember buying Netscape Navigator (or was it Communicator) from a local "Stop 'n Save Software" store which later turned into an EB Games. I suppose it was back in 1996 and the price was something like $40-$60. I still have the 5 diskettes it came on stuck in a drawer somewhere. Prior to that I used Mosaic.
When they first acquired Netscape, I thought for sure they were going to release AOL branded PCs running Linux with a Netscape browser. Imagine if they could ssh into your box and fix problems for you (perhaps after you boot off a recovery cd if things were really borked); basically they could have marketed it as a "zero maintenance" pc. They could have bundled the cost of the machine and internet at a reasonable monthly cost (PCs were running about $1000 at the time). It would have been interesting indeed if this had happened.
Q. What's up with that throbbing "N"?
A. We are in the process of having a new logo designed, and the throbbing "N" is a placeholder. It's apparent that it's not going to win any aesthetics awards, although a very vocal 2% minority really likes it a lot.
I used Netscape for a long time, and when I say that, I refer to not just the Netscape browser, but to the Netscape "bundle", if you will. To this day, the Netscape (and later Mozilla) interactive HTML editor is my favorite tool for creating web pages. Granted, I've never tied to create fancy-dancy AJAX pages with it, but it has always served my needs, with simple use where composite previews, GUI-mode editing, and ASCII HTML editing only tabs away, and the modes were fully interchangeable at any time. In fact, just the day before yesterday, I was hunting through my disto's packages for a good HTML editor, and didn't find one that I liked as well.
I also, to a lesser extent, enjoyed using the Netscape email and browser clients for a long number of years, and was satisfied with them. Other people reported horror stories about them, but for some reason, I don't recall ever having an issue with them (maybe it depends on browsing habits), aside visiting occasional Microsoft whoring site where IE is the only browser allowed. But thats a different topic called "How to Design a Web Site Like an Idiot".
The Amazing Netscape Fishcam?
netscape's death will soon be followed by the death of another relic of the early internet
namely, AOL
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The one time they let one of their projects breathe, it turned into Mozilla. Once they realized it wasn't their property that was inherently faulty, they tightened that grip right back up figuring if they just squeezed hard enough maybe they could make another diamond. They're so desperate to turn everything they own into a revenue generator, they'll do it at the expense of the product itself. Yes, every company needs its projects to make money for them, but you can't sacrifice your racing horse for good luck in the race.
They only think of their products in terms of themselves, they don't look at them from a customer viewpoint. I don't think the people in charge at AOL ever stopped to ask "Why would someone want Netscape?" they ask "How can we make Netscape represent us?"
It's like they think of their products as sales reps. Forget that big deal you landed 5 years ago, how are your numbers this week? They want it to make another big score, but without any resources. Coffee is for closers.
Netscape had numerous chances to work its way into people's hearts and minds but they never added a single feature people would actually want. Every feature they added was self serving. The company is just all backwards; they don't want to make great products, they want their products to make them great.
You gotta hand it to the HoldenFohoot this time.
Yahoo: We did not find results for: "worst netscape bug".
Google: Your search - "worst netscape bug" - did not match any documents.
MSN live search: We did not find any results for "worst netscape bug".
Ask: Your search for "worst netscape bug" did not match with any Web results.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Further to other replys, Netscape was my first browser, and with this news post it does bring back a lot of memories. (A fair few of "pron" admitedly, before we had to type typos of words so lycos and altavista wouldn't misreport) It's also very interesting to realise how prevelent Netscape was back in the day, and just how far it's fallen. I'm also still convinced that if you hovered your mouse cursor over the little "key" icon in the bottom right toolbar, somehow magically your nude pictures of ladies will load up faster. All those memories are gone now, like tears in the rain, time for Netscape to die.
Netscrape started the whole free browser thing with free betas and previous versions, the current version was the only one technically that cost money. Then they threw fits when MS released IE for free. Then they got bloated and other free competition outpaced them. So they got trampled by the market they created.
...but the first web browser I used was Lynx.
;)
That might sound like I'm trying to show old school creds, but that was the only browser the desperately old computer that I was using up to 1999 would run
Actually, it sounds like you'd be more interested in SeaMonkey than Firefox+Thunderbird. It's a continuation of the Mozilla suite that was the basis for Netscape 7, and still has the combined browser & email. It's also still being developed as a Mozilla project, so it's current as far as capabilities & security fixes go.
I am sad to see it go too. It doesn't really matter what the 'state' of Netscape is today. It made its mark, in a tremendous way. Mark worked down the hall, in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Sciences, in what we call 'the fishbowl'. Many of us worked in the Viz, REL, and Numerical lab, and CAVE. We were all SGI based, and grew up on Netscape. Back in the day, IE was unheard of.
The accomplishments of Netscape will live on, no matter there present state (anyone remember that silly car called, oh Deloreon). I won't loose sleep over Netscapes fall, it's their time, but give credit where credit is due. They were the true leaders.
Finaly! Thanks God!
And so the Creator looked upon the beast and buried it deep within the earth. Its mourners looked up into the sky and joined their kin under the wings of the great bird, and the people rejoiced.
Can't they just pass the NS brand to the Mozilla Foundation? Let them think of a nice use for it. Maybe rename themselves to Netscape Foundation? It would be fitting.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I retrofitted Seamonkey onto all my users who absolutely would not move from 'Netscape' after NS8 dropped an integrated mail client. I looked with interest in returning to NS9 but still no mail client and there were some notes on Netscape's web page that there was a mail client in beta. But I guess that's dead. In either case, for NS groupies and the untrainable who absolutely CANNOT learn anything new Seamonkey is a good option. It handles multiuser profiles better than FF/T-Bird and it incorporates most of the extensions used in FF as well including IEtab. There's even an NS theme (No throbber though). In fact I have better time with complex webpages that use a lot of Flash using Seamonkey compared to FF even with IE tab.
So long as AOL keeps shoutcast alive I don't really care..
Why UNIX?
I bought Netscape 1 for Windows 3.1 at Comp USA for 35 bucks many years ago. It came on one floppy disk. BOY was it better then Mozilla! Then version 2 came, which they charged you to download (I think it was ten bucks if you were upgrading). Then from Netscape 3 on, it became free. I used Netscape 3 for quite a long time. It was far better then Internet Explorer-until IE 4.something came out that blew it way. I still have that original floppy about somewhere.
That was the last useful version for a quick free html tool. I better back up the installer.
Q: When you're the largest ISP in the nation and you acquire both Netcsape and Winamp and all the developers from Mozilla and Nullsoft, how is it that you manage to monumentally fuck it all up?
A: ?
Pick you favorite version for your favorite OS here:
http://browser.netscape.com/downloads/archive/
Ten years ago, Netscape was the leading browser. Look at this
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-512100.html/
We "the non-Microsoft" camp are still trying to recover from IE. Bundling it with OS and then providing it for free was an effective way of killing any competition. That's way Microsoft hates Linux. They cannot give away their OS for free unless they are fighting for their life. Hence they cannot kill of Linux like they did to Netscape. Netscape might be bloat but reason it was bloat was to give users more choices when IE had the equal footing with Netscape and came for free. Would anyone download a free software if you had a similiar free software installed ?
netscape, icq, winamp ... AOL appears to be a IT company killer
I remember when chat, porn and printer drivers all had different phone numbers.
paintball
Dear AOL, here's a clue for you: Stop trying to pick a freaking browser for your users! It's like a gas station choosing the model of car for its customers.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Does anybody else think that the "browser wars" of the 90s was utterly ridiculous?
Microsoft had no choice but to distribute IE free with Windows. Nothing else would have made any sense.
Users have a basic expectation that an OS will contain viewer programs for all major types of files. You've got Notepad/Wordpad for text files, MediaPlayer for media files, Paint for image files, etc. -- and they all come standard with the OS.
Windows would have been stupidly incomplete if it came, out of the box, with no way to view HTML files.
Netscape had only two choices: Get Microsoft to buy its browser, or else give up any hope of making revenues on its browser. The very day they found out that Microsoft was definitely not going to bundle the Netscape browser, Netscape should have called an emergency board meeting and totally turned the company in a new direction overnight.
But instead, Netscape dicked around for a long, long time before they were finally forced to admit that a browser (like all applications that view or play common files) must inevitably be free. (Even Microsoft understands this -- that's why they give you "Word Viewer", "Excel Viewer", etc. for free.)
It was just astonishing to me to see one of our supposedly best and brightest Silicon Valley companies just turn totally stupid overnight. Even back then, the freeware movement had progressed to the point where we had free viewers for all common file formats. What made Netscape think that the HTML format should be treated differently from all other common file formats? They expected people to pay them for a file-viewer program that can't even edit the damn file? They seriously didn't have a clue about the way software markets work.
Yeah, Microsoft is a vicious monopolist. But the plain fact is that anyone who wanted to could easily install the Netscape browser on Windows. That simple, elegant fact made it impossible to seriously claim that Microsoft was being unfair to Netscape. As a result, Netscape's legal claims sounded whiny and pathetic to my ear -- especially since every version of the Netscape browser sucked about 10 times harder than the previous version.
This should have happened many many years ago. Netscape has never been a browser to be proud of. Every 12-18 months for years, I've downloaded the latest version just to see what they've been up to. The last version I tried still couldn't properly render the simplest pages. Funny enough, enabling the embedded IE rendering was the only thing that made half-decent browsing possible. True, this was after the AOL takeover, but I don't remember much greatness existing prior to that either.
:)
The main thing I remember about the earliest versions of Navigator were those reeeeeaaaaalllly annoying javascript error popups -- you know, the ones where you had to scroll horizontally for 5 minutes to find the "OK" button to dismiss the window? Mostly I just remember switching back and forth between Navigator and freenet.
And that goes for the Pudgy loudmouth Andreeson Netscape also!
I don't know how many times I was told several years ago to stop installing IE5 on users' PCs, and reinstall Netscape by pointy-haired bosses and "consultants", because "Netscape was the standard"
F---ng morons!
.
- aqk
F U
Back in February I was browsing the aisles in Micro Center and found an ancient jewel case of "Netscape Basics" that had been marked down to 42 cents. It contained a copy of Netscape 4.5 and advertised compatibility with Windows 95 and Windows 98.
They also had a somewhat less-ancient version of Opera in a box. Would you believe that 1.5 years after Opera had stopped charging for their browser, this store still wanted $39.99?
I took pictures of both as proof.
I sold Netscape 1.01 for Mac OS many many many years ago :) I still have one set of those floppies.
m10
http://houghi.org/Fun/Netscape.zip That is Netscape 1.0 for you. Sorry, only Windows. The download is 394.1k, which is less then the average webpage nowadays.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
My solution to this was to use Notepad in Windows or gnotepad+ in Linux to write longer texts, then paste them into a textarea and then submit the text.
Those smart enough to specify image dimensions in HTML were able to avoid this issue in part, because tables with inaccessible images (if a server went down or somesuch) wouldn't render until there was a request timeout done for all images.
I wonder what this will mean for S60 based Nokia phones? The inbuilt browser is Netscape based.
- Dan
Anyone remember a few years back when Netscape tried to reinvent themselves as an ISP or some crap like that? So long, Netscape, there was a time when you were our IE alternative.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
In Spanish we say "navegar en internet" (browsing the internet) because of Netscape Navigator! (f*** M$, we don't 'explore' the web, jerks). Yeah, NS had an impact on more than 400 million people!!!
Adiós, Netscape, te extrañaremos...
!seineew era sreenigne epacsteN
AOL seems to be the graveyard for many once-popular Internet programs: * Netscape Navigator * ICQ * Winamp I guess I can download these programs anytime I feel nostalgic for the 1990s. I haven't used these programs in years. And it's funny to see the goodriddance tag applied to this story. Netscape was once the hero of the anti-Microsoft crowd, much like Linux, OpenOffice, and Google are today.
I first surfed the net on a VaxStation VLC http://www.mcmanis.com/chuck/computers/vaxen/vax4000-vlc.html using NCSA Mosaic for VMS http://vaxa.wvnet.edu/vmswww/vms_mosaic.html back I think in 1994.
;)
;)
While it had a 19" Monitor which was cool, it was Monochrome so looking at pictures was a bit disapointing
I think I next used Enhanced Mosaic from Spyglass for VMS which then correct me if I'm wrong turned into IE1.
First Netscape I used was on a DEC Alpha running NT4, I think it was version Netscape 3.01, was a hell of a lot better than the IE bundled with the OS which was IE2 I think.
Now get off my lawn
Jonathan
http://www.irvtheswerve.net/
It was Mosaic, not Mozilla. Mozilla came years later....and then kind if evelved into Firefox (though the Mozilla browser is still being developed as well). Thanks for correcting me :)
When does Mosaic 3 finally leave beta???
hawk
I used lynx fairly late as my primary browser. But somewhere along the way, it developed a bug (about 5 years ago?) that wasn't fixed for a couple of years. It was fairly subtle, but until then, I had . set to open a link withg a command, something to the effect of "xterm -e lynx %", so that I could read newssites in my usual manner (launch a new window for everything interesting, and then close the windows as I read them [yes, this *did* predate the first browsers with tabs]).
Eventually it was fixed; I may have been the only one to support it. I want to say that it actually got fixed after I stumbled across a developer in another context.
hawk