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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Netscape No More

Netscape No More

by Michael D.|  January 1, 20087:22 pm| 73 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology

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It’s an amazing story, the downfall of Netscape.

An historic name in software will effectively pass into history in February as AOL discontinues development and active support for the Netscape browser, according to an official blog.

AOL will keep delivering security patches for the current version of Netscape until Feb. 1, 2008, after which it will no longer provide active support for any version of the software, according to a Friday entry on The Netscape Blog by Tom Drapeau, lead developer for Netscape.com. The Netscape.com Web site will remain as a general-purpose portal.

Remember when it was your only real choice?

Update: Infoworld has more on this. (Ok, Bubblegum Tate?! :-) )

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Reader Interactions

73Comments

  1. 1.

    Randy Paul

    January 1, 2008 at 7:25 pm

    Thank God for Firefox.

  2. 2.

    myiq2xu

    January 1, 2008 at 7:29 pm

    I’m so old, I recall having to learn Unix commands.

    Oh, wait! Dumb J said I’m only 13.

    Nevermind.

    s/ The Notorious myiq2xu

  3. 3.

    Jake

    January 1, 2008 at 7:37 pm

    If only they’d would stick a fork in AOhell.

    Or at least force the execs to go through the nation’s dumps and dig out all of those fucking discs.

    Me, I look forward to the day when there’s away to scrape IE off my computer. Do. Not. Want.

  4. 4.

    LiberalTarian

    January 1, 2008 at 7:55 pm

    Sigh. Change is good, haven’t Netscaped for SO long, but I recall 1991, the year I started surfing. Man, there was so much good stuff on the web then. It has changed tremendously, not all for the worse, but it was just pure fun in ’91.

  5. 5.

    Shalimar

    January 1, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    I didn’t know Netscape was still being developed and supported until I read this. I despise IE and loved Netscape in it’s time, but I moved on to Firefox and then Opera years ago.

  6. 6.

    Davis X. Machina

    January 1, 2008 at 8:11 pm

    myiq2xu is right….If you don’t remember Cello, and Viola, and later on, NCSA Mosaic, then you’re not old enough to ride this ride.

  7. 7.

    Bobzim

    January 1, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    Seems like if you want something to die, give it to AOL. HMMMM.

  8. 8.

    Zifnab

    January 1, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    Netscape is redundant. Why would they keep making a browser that has been more or less duplicated in Firefox/Safari/Opera/3rd-party-take-your-pick?

    I don’t consider this a downfall at all. This is just one more step down the road of internet power-to-the-people revolution. We don’t have to wait for some super conglomerate to get around to making a decent browser for us. A bit of friendly advice and a google search is all you need to get your hands on the best.

  9. 9.

    crayz

    January 1, 2008 at 8:24 pm

    Firefox should have kept it’s original name, Phoenix. Netscape Navigator reborn from the ashes

  10. 10.

    DrDave

    January 1, 2008 at 8:42 pm

    Me, I look forward to the day when there’s away to scrape IE off my computer. Do. Not. Want.

    Get. A. Mac.

  11. 11.

    Bubblegum Tate

    January 1, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    Man, we we ran the same story on InfoWorld. Why couldn’t you have given us the clicks instead of our sister pub? I bet this is the flat tax’s fault.

  12. 12.

    Michael D.

    January 1, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    I know I will get flamed for this, but I love Internet Explorer.

  13. 13.

    4tehlulz

    January 1, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    .If you don’t remember Cello, and Viola, and later on, NCSA Mosaic, then you’re not old enough to ride this ride.

    Lynx > *

  14. 14.

    Pb

    January 1, 2008 at 8:56 pm

    Netscape has been supplanted by its original codename, Mozilla — which, indeed, was the Mosaic killer (and, yeah, Firefox too, spawn of Mozilla). Oh, and to quote JWZ from 1999:

    I must say, though, that it feels good to be resigning from AOL instead of resigning from Netscape. It doesn’t really feel like quitting at all. I was the 20th person hired at Mosaic Communications Corporation (All Praise the Company), and of those twenty, only five remain. The company I helped build has been gone for quite some time. We, Netscape, did some extraordinary things. But we could have done so much more. I feel like we had a shot at greatness, and missed.

  15. 15.

    The Other Steve

    January 1, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    Sigh. Change is good, haven’t Netscaped for SO long, but I recall 1991, the year I started surfing. Man, there was so much good stuff on the web then. It has changed tremendously, not all for the worse, but it was just pure fun in ‘91.

    Oh christ, about the only thing there was in 1991 was ftp and usenet. I used to spend a lot of wasted hours on comp.sys.amiga.advocacy back in those days, and downloading Fred Fish disks on the PC’s in the comp center to 720k floppies I could use on my Amiga.

  16. 16.

    The Other Steve

    January 1, 2008 at 9:11 pm

    Man, we we ran the same story on InfoWorld. Why couldn’t you have given us the clicks instead of our sister pub? I bet this is the flat tax’s fault.

    Infoworld hasn’t been worth reading since like 1999 when they dropped Robert Metcalfe’s column. Well, ok, maybe that was a symptom, but when the bubble bust, Infoworld lost revenue and really went downhill.

    Don’t feel bad. PCWorld also sucks. ;-)

    God, I feel so fucking old. I remember reading Byte in the 1980s cover to cover.

  17. 17.

    Mike

    January 1, 2008 at 9:11 pm

    Netscape produced exactly one useful product (the browser) in their history, and that was one they gave away for free. They’re one of the best examples of a company that was 100% hype.

  18. 18.

    TrishB

    January 1, 2008 at 9:14 pm

    Damn, I remember working with Netscape beta and then 1.0. And we also had Lynx, Opera, Gopher, Archie, etc., etc. Okay, I’m now officially old.

  19. 19.

    LiberalTarian

    January 1, 2008 at 9:15 pm

    I might be a year off or so, but not by much. 1993? No, I think it was late 1991, and it was at our lawfirm (put in with a direct connection by the super cute recent UCD grad who took over IT). I surfed at work (night time word processor then). We had dial up at home, but in those days it was horribly slow and expensive.

  20. 20.

    LiberalTarian

    January 1, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    I stand corrected. Netscape didn’t exist before 1994, so it couldn’t have been 1991. My bad.

  21. 21.

    The Other Steve

    January 1, 2008 at 9:17 pm

    I know I will get flamed for this, but I love Internet Explorer.

    I use IE. I don’t know if I love it. I also use Firefox, but only for validating CSS. I find nothing appealing about it to force me to switch.

  22. 22.

    Jake

    January 1, 2008 at 9:18 pm

    More internon history. Click on the logo.

  23. 23.

    The Other Steve

    January 1, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    I stand corrected. Netscape didn’t exist before 1994, so it couldn’t have been 1991. My bad.

    I was wondering. I don’t even recall dial-up being available until around 1994 timeframe. You needed a minimum of a 9600 bps modem, and the whole combination was rare. By 1996 this was all pretty common place.

    It was amazing how fast things moved in those days.

  24. 24.

    Jake

    January 1, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    I know I will get flamed for this, but I love Internet Explorer.

    Not from me. It seems Pandora runs better on FFx but it could be one of those yellow pencil/green pencil things.

  25. 25.

    rachel

    January 1, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    Michael D. Says:

    I know I will get flamed for this, but I love Internet Explorer.

    Why? IMO, there’s nothing special it can do (except for viewing webpages that need Active X, And Active X is a huge security hole).

  26. 26.

    cleek

    January 1, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    IE’s fine, and i find it’s a lot more stable than current FF versions. but, what keeps me on FF is GreaseMonkey – it’s what powers my disemvowellers. being able to turn Al, Charlie/Fred, Dug Jay, American Hawk, Chris Ford, etc. into harmless pie advocates is worth a crash or two now and then (plus crashes aren’t so bad since FF can recover nicely).

  27. 27.

    LiberalTarian

    January 1, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    We had a 56 K USRobotics modem. Seems like for a long time everything was limited to 28K transmission. Painful. Of course, we didn’t have blogs then. Heh. BB. Before Blogs.

  28. 28.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    January 1, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    Remember when it was your only real choice?

    For PC user.

    Get. A. Mac.

    I’m with Dr Dave. Go Mac and you’ll never go back.

  29. 29.

    LiberalTarian

    January 1, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    Oh, Pandora. How I love that site. It’s pretty limited on the classical music though (at least I haven’t done well getting Vivaldi). Yet, it does great with tango and Latin music generally. But, here’s raising a glass to Pandora and the protection of Internet Radio!!

  30. 30.

    RSA

    January 1, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    Back when I was in school, I was able to borrow a portable terminal and a 1200 baud modem from my boss, who worked for the computer science department. It was fast enough to for me to run vi, rn, and rogue. What more could a geeky undergrad CS major ask for in the way of entertainment back in the day?

  31. 31.

    John Cole

    January 1, 2008 at 10:19 pm

    I remember Gopher.

  32. 32.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    January 1, 2008 at 10:24 pm

    Punch cards. Algol. UNIVAC.

  33. 33.

    demimondian

    January 1, 2008 at 10:24 pm

    Ah, BT, the reason is simple. Infoworld has always been too busy fellating Scott, then Eric, then Linus for anyone to take its commentary seriously.

    [Who? Me? Bitter about your editorial stance on Windows? Why would you *ever* think that?]

    demi “and don’t get me started on your Exchange coverage” mondian

  34. 34.

    demimondian

    January 1, 2008 at 10:32 pm

    What more could a geeky undergrad CS major ask for in the way of entertainment back in the day?

    I’d heard that there was pretty good ASCII porn back then, Grandpa. Was that fast enough to use the internet for its true purpose?

  35. 35.

    RSA

    January 1, 2008 at 10:59 pm

    Oh yeah, that. We were pretty non-virtual back in the early ’80s.

  36. 36.

    demimondian

    January 1, 2008 at 11:11 pm

    Wait. You’re saying you were a CS undergrad in the early eighties with non-virtual interaction with females?

    You’re making all this up, right?

  37. 37.

    myiq2xu

    January 1, 2008 at 11:21 pm

    Damn, I remember working with Netscape beta and then 1.0. And we also had Lynx, Opera, Gopher, Archie, etc., etc. Okay, I’m now officially old.

    I liked Veronica myself, cuz she was better than Gopher or Archie, but our relationship had barely started when Netscape turned my head.

    We had a 56 K USRobotics modem. Seems like for a long time everything was limited to 28K transmission. Painful. Of course, we didn’t have blogs then. Heh. BB. Before Blogs.

    You kids with yer fancy toys. My second modem doubled my baud rate to a smoking 2400!

  38. 38.

    demimondian

    January 1, 2008 at 11:33 pm

    Active X is a huge security hole

    Unlike the Firefox plugin model, which permits of no verification whatsoever?

  39. 39.

    Surabaya Stew

    January 2, 2008 at 12:13 am

    I still feel nostalgia for Netscape 1.1 and the animated logo with the big N and the revolving globe. This was in 1995, and the Internet was like a secret world that was being brought to life by the world’s first stable browser. Gosh, I remember those days so well, and now I now feel older then I have ever felt before…

  40. 40.

    ThymeZone

    January 2, 2008 at 12:17 am

    Unlike the Firefox plugin model, which permits of no verification whatsoever?

    Why people waste their time with FF and Opera, I have no idea. I use IE 6 and 7 on a dozen different machines running around 5-6 different Windows versions from one day to the next, and all in all, it’s the easiest to use with the fewest hassles.

    But it’s all a matter of taste, style, and groupiness.

    Whatever floats the boat.

  41. 41.

    rachel

    January 2, 2008 at 12:57 am

    demimondian Says:

    Active X is a huge security hole

    Unlike the Firefox plugin model, which permits of no verification whatsoever?

    Which is why I don’t use it.

  42. 42.

    myiq2xu

    January 2, 2008 at 1:16 am

    But it’s all a matter of taste, style, and groupinessgeekiness.

    Fixt

  43. 43.

    rachel

    January 2, 2008 at 1:35 am

    OT: A lawyer supposedly keys a marine’s car. This blogger who I’ve never heard of before is calling for his readers to help the marine resolve this issue against his lawyer opponent.

    Does anybody know any more about this? It just seems weird to me.

  44. 44.

    pseudonymous in nc

    January 2, 2008 at 2:05 am

    I use IE 6 and 7 on a dozen different machines running around 5-6 different Windows versions from one day to the next, and all in all, it’s the easiest to use with the fewest hassles.

    The people who jump through hoops and dig through shit every day to create sites that cope with IE6 and IE7… thank you. Though switching away would give their lives fewer hassles.

    As for Netscape, I remember getting a sysadmin to install the 0.9b on a SunOS server. It was nice: battleship grey, but it made Mosaic look old from the start. And really, it’s no downfall: the people (like jwz) who did the early work got their millions, and the spirit of innovation lives on in Firefox.

  45. 45.

    Bubblegum Tate

    January 2, 2008 at 2:47 am

    Infoworld hasn’t been worth reading since like 1999 when they dropped Robert Metcalfe’s column. Well, ok, maybe that was a symptom, but when the bubble bust, Infoworld lost revenue and really went downhill.

    Don’t feel bad. PCWorld also sucks.

    Hey, I’m just a carbon blob in Sector 7G at IW. As long as the paychecks don’t bounce and the health coverage stays in place, I’m content. But thanks to this exchange and Michael’s update, I now have an official-sounding rationale for checking this site while at work. “Just communicating with our readership, don’t mind me!”

  46. 46.

    Plato

    January 2, 2008 at 4:11 am

    I don’t think I’ve used a version of Netscape since they were bought by AOL. Firefox is what I use, but I am writing this in my newly installed Safari on Windows XP. Interesting. It looks really different, but nice. Very readable. We’ll see how it works long term.

  47. 47.

    dlw32

    January 2, 2008 at 7:29 am

    I’ll miss Netscape only for nostalgia reasons. It was the browser that first made the Web feel like something. I had used Mosaic way back when and thought “How is this better than just using ftp, usenet, and email?” Then I got a copy of Netscape and said “Oh!”

    But Netscape was doomed even before AOL bought them. All hail Firefox!

  48. 48.

    TheFountainHead

    January 2, 2008 at 8:49 am

    I know I will get flamed for this, but I love pounding my face into my keyboard until I bleed profusely Internet Explorer.

    Fixed. Oh, and Get a Mac, Man!

  49. 49.

    Conservatively Liberal

    January 2, 2008 at 8:53 am

    My first modem was a 300 baud Commodore unit for my hot rod C-64 in 1984. CompuServe and PlayNet (if I remember it right) were my hangouts. I upgraded to a C-128 but then skipped right to a 086 PCjr with MSDOS v1.1 instead of going on to Amiga. Found I liked DOS, so I got a 286 right away. Ever since, I have upgraded whenever there was a major processor change. I actually bought my first copy of Netscape in 1994 (from a local Fred meyer store, and I still have the floppies!) to run on WFWG v3.11, and my modem was a 14.4kbps.

    Internet Exploder/OutLookHouse are suck ass apps that people who don’t know better stick themselves with. When AOHell bought Netscape, I moved on to Mozilla (now SeaMonkey) and have not looked back. With built in image blocking and the FlashBlock plug-in, I get almost completely advertising free surfing,cookie dumping when the browser closes and image/popup blocking. Plus a mail client that is simple to use. Works for me!

    IE/OutHouse is a welcome mat for trojans, worms and viruses. Hackers are constantly working to screw it up as it is so popular with people who don’t know any better.

  50. 50.

    Jen

    January 2, 2008 at 9:22 am

    I don’t even understand most of the words on this page. New thread, pretty please…?

  51. 51.

    p.lukasiak

    January 2, 2008 at 9:23 am

    myiq2xu is right….If you don’t remember Cello, and Viola, and later on, NCSA Mosaic, then you’re not old enough to ride this ride.

    cello and viola are unknown to me, but I loved the old “world wide web” when everything was text based, and it was all about information — and news and political discussion was distributed through “newsgroups”… and you did your searches using “webcrawler”…

  52. 52.

    Punchy

    January 2, 2008 at 9:35 am

    For all the Apple Apologists…

    Best shirt evah ….

  53. 53.

    Punchy

    January 2, 2008 at 9:43 am

    Oh christ, about the only thing there was in 1991 was ftp and usenet. I used to spend a lot of wasted hours on comp.sys.amiga.advocacy back in those days, and downloading Fred Fish disks on the PC’s in the comp center to 720k floppies I could use on my Amiga.

    Is this even in English? Since when is speaking Geek a prereq to spoofing a C-list blog?

  54. 54.

    demimondian

    January 2, 2008 at 9:44 am

    I use FF on all my machines, Macs, Linux boxes, and Windows boxes. I have no preference for FF over IE, but I hate Safari, and have no alternative on Linux. So, for consistency’s sake, I use FF on Windows, too.

    And that, TZ, is why people who could use IE with no pain use Firefox — cross platform support.

    If IE became dramatically better than FF on Windows, I might shift back, but all the improvements in IE that came with 7 were duplicated in FF 2.0, so that motivation went away, too.

  55. 55.

    demimondian

    January 2, 2008 at 9:46 am

    And don’t get me started on people who don’t know the difference between Outlook and Outlook Express. I know that a lot of people, particularly ill-informed Mac and Linux types, confuse them…but they’re quite different applications, with quite different target audiences.

  56. 56.

    4tehlulz

    January 2, 2008 at 9:47 am

    Oh christ, about the only thing there was in 1991 was ftp and usenet. I used to spend a lot of wasted hours on comp.sys.amiga.advocacy alt.sex back in those days, and downloading Fred Fish disks pr0n on the PC’s in the comp center to 720k floppies I could use on my Amiga.

    Fix’d

  57. 57.

    The Other Steve

    January 2, 2008 at 9:53 am

    Fix’d

    I wish! But back in those days we got out pr0n the old-fashioned way.

    With a subscription to Penthouse.

  58. 58.

    The Other Steve

    January 2, 2008 at 9:56 am

    Ah, BT, the reason is simple. Infoworld has always been too busy fellating Scott, then Eric, then Linus for anyone to take its commentary seriously.

    [Who? Me? Bitter about your editorial stance on Windows? Why would you ever think that?]

    I had a letter published in Infoworld once. It was back in like 1999 or so, just before they went to shit.

    Nicholas Petreley had written an article talking about the excitement he had setting up a printer under Linux. He talked about how he had to setup the individual pieces of software to tell it which printer, and which escape codes to use to get certain print features and what not.

    My letter was something like “I want to thank Nicholas for his article. It really brought back memories to how we used to setup printers back in the early 1980s under CP/M.”

  59. 59.

    Conservatively Liberal

    January 2, 2008 at 10:14 am

    Yeah, Outlook and Outlook Express are two different critters all right. Like piss and crap, and they both stink. I charge extra to service systems that use either (for problems related to them specifically). I have never had to repair any system running Mozilla mail, never. Outlook? Can you say ‘Cha-ching!’?

    But you can connect a vacuum hose to either and suck up an overflowing toilet. They are effective at that, I will give them that much. ;)

  60. 60.

    Sensitive Pony Tailed Girly Man

    January 2, 2008 at 10:17 am

    2400 baud modems indeed. Bunch of johnny-come-latelies. In my day we used smoke signals. I believe the baud rate was something like .00008 .

  61. 61.

    demimondian

    January 2, 2008 at 10:36 am

    I have never had to repair any system running Mozilla mail, never. Outlook? Can you say ‘Cha-ching!’?

    Seeing as how your comment shows that you’re not qualified, I think that maybe I’d like to know that you don’t do work up here, so I can be sure to avoid you.

  62. 62.

    Gus

    January 2, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Netscapes IPO was the first whiff I got that the tech stock bubble was based on bullshit. Here’s a company who is giving away its product with no real source of revenue that I could see, but suddenly their market cap is $2 billion. That set those alarm bells off, and I know nothing about the stock market.

  63. 63.

    The Other Steve

    January 2, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Yeah, Outlook and Outlook Express are two different critters all right. Like piss and crap, and they both stink. I charge extra to service systems that use either (for problems related to them specifically). I have never had to repair any system running Mozilla mail, never. Outlook? Can you say ‘Cha-ching!’?

    Mozilla mail is hardly a replacement for Outlook.

  64. 64.

    The Other Steve

    January 2, 2008 at 11:30 am

    Netscapes IPO was the first whiff I got that the tech stock bubble was based on bullshit. Here’s a company who is giving away its product with no real source of revenue that I could see, but suddenly their market cap is $2 billion. That set those alarm bells off, and I know nothing about the stock market.

    Well Netscape’s business plan was initially different.

    They gave away Navigator for free, but corporate users had to pay like $20/seat. This was one of the complaints made by Netscape in the anti-trust trial, that Microsoft was giving IE away for free, bundled as part of the OS.

    Their other secret was to start adding extensions to HTML and the http spec, such that you had to have a Netscape server combined with your Netscape browser. Netscape was trying to implement their own crap in direct conflict with the W3C. <layer> anyone?

    Thank God Netscape died, or the internet would never have evolved to what it is today.

  65. 65.

    Dreggas

    January 2, 2008 at 11:50 am

    DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD!

    Speaking purely as a web developer I could not be happier to see Netscape dead and buried, now if only they’d do the same for the AOL browser.

    I use FF for some web sites and to validate javascript but otherwise I like IE.

    Oh and one word TELNET bitches!

    Nothin’ like a good MUD.

  66. 66.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    January 2, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    Heh. One of my friends at work was a Gopher/Archie-using machine back in the early ’90s; he could find the most obscure shit out there. The first time I saw Mosaic in action I didn’t understand the significance it. It was cool, but I missed the bigger picture.

    Then again, I was raised on minis like VAX/VMS, and this whole Internet thingy was a pretty abstract concept to me at the time.

  67. 67.

    Breschau

    January 2, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    One of my first jobs was doing part-time data entry for a bank while I was in high school. The machine I worked on stored everything on floppy drives.

    8 inch floppy drives.

    Beat that, bitches.

  68. 68.

    HyperIon

    January 2, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    Beat that, bitches.

    paper tape and punch cards.
    TTYs.

  69. 69.

    demimondian

    January 2, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Beat that, bitches.

    paper tape and punch cards.
    TTYs.

    Patch boards.

  70. 70.

    demimondian

    January 2, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    You may now mention diddly-shit demi-ideas, O feckless youth.

  71. 71.

    Dreggas

    January 2, 2008 at 5:05 pm

    I remember the System 80 punch card machine I had in kindergarten, I liked it so much my folks bought me a Tandy 1000 ex, it was a state of the art computer for that time. Used to sit there and write those little games I saw in PC Magazine and elsewhere that were old DOS game.

    RUN 10: begin
    RUN 20: etc.

  72. 72.

    Badtux

    January 2, 2008 at 11:52 pm

    The World Wide Web was just “gopher” with graphics. Don’t remember “gopher”? Sheesh. gopherspace in its days was what the “web” *wanted* to be.

    As for Netscape, the disaster that was Netscape 4.0 pretty much killed the company. They took a great little browser (Netscape 3) and made it unstable, unreliable, unworkable. I once worked under the manager who managed that disaster. Believe it or not, he got put in place as VP of Engineering of our company (and was a disaster at that too) because he had the right “connections” in the VC industry. That’s what got him his job at Netscape too. The VC’s killed Netscape the same way they’ve killed many other promising companies — by putting preferred cronies into positions of authority within those companies, rather than people who know what the fuck they’re doing. They’d rather have their familiar cronies in place than someone they don’t know, who might do something that they don’t like.

    – Badtux the Hi-tech Penguin

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