Netscape Navigator

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Netscape Navigator is a popular web browser. The current version (September 2002) is 7 which is based on the Mozilla code. Although the newer versions of Netscape Navigator are used far less often on the Microsoft Windows platform than Internet Explorer, Netscape is still important on platforms such as Linux which do not have versions of Internet Explorer available.

The development of the browser and the company was described in the book Netscape time by Jim Clark and Owen Edwards.

Netscape browser versions up to 4.8 were based on the Mosaic web browser (functionality-wise, no code was shared), and were created by the company Netscape Communications Corporation, which is now a part of AOL.

Netscape was the innovate master of the web browsers (90% popularity), creating such new elements as frames (version 2.0) or JavaScript (version 3.0). Those and other innovations have been recorded to the W3C standards and copied to other browsers. However, Netscape Navigator eventually lost market share to Internet_Explorer, when it started to appear bundled with Windows.

The Mozilla browser was branched from the Netscape code in 1998 and put under an open source license. After the code was branched, a decision was made to competely rewrite the browser code. This decision has been criticized by some as allowing Microsoft Internet Explorer to win the browser war on the Windows platform.

The AOL owned, Mozilla based Netscape 6 was released in 2000. The product was a big disappointment as it was very unstable. This was not surprising as the Mozilla core itself was still unstable. 6.1, released in 2001, was already stable enough, but could not improve Netscape 6's bad reputation.

Netscape 7 was released in 2002. It is based on a very stable Mozilla core and is bundled with extras like integrated AOL Instant Messenger, integrated ICQ and Radio@Netscape.

Version history

Based on Mozilla code:

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