Netscape was my favorite web browser in the v.2 days. I skipped over v.3 for the most part for IE 3 (bad choice) used both IE 4 and NC4 (should of stuck with IE /flamebait), and went on a NC4.5-N6 path (should've used IE5 </moreflamebait>) before awakening to the incredible light that is Mozilla (and then Firefox/bird). I have tested Netscape 8, but as my Mac is my primary computer now, I was dissatisfied. Netscape 9 is just a Firefox with some new trimmings and a bunch of ads (as was Netscape 8, excluding IE compatibility.) I do wish they would open source the Netscape name, logo, and all browser sources (as a Creative Commons license for the Name and logo, and GPL for the sources); for two reasons; in the interest of academic study (look at N4 and 3 and compare, etc.) and because there is currently no good name for open source Firefox versions (the Firefox name is property of Mozilla Corporation); the Netscape name would be a good name for a simple rebranding of Firefox and Thunderbird as truly GPL-d browsers. After all Netscape has some brand recognition, a handsome logo, and an independent identity, unlike IceWeasel and IceScape.
As that will not happen however, Netscape shall die a peaceful death. It combatted Internet explorer - and lost. But not before it gave birth to a new, superior browser and encouraged competition - Firefox and Safari/Konqueror.
and mostly
Here is my summary of Netscape's history:
Netscape 1: Begins browser frenzy. Creates incredible popularity in "The Web." Rating: 9 stars. Includes <EMBED> tag, later used for Flash. Impact rating: 10 stars.
Netscape 2: Introduces JavaScript, later the defining add-on to the web, IMHO. Introduces HTML 3 (portions). Rating: 10. Impact rating: 10 stars.
Netscape 3: Refines JavaScript. Adds Java, later regarded as almost worthless. Competes against IE 3, first major competitor. Smooth, fast, not very buggy, and incredibly well-programmed. Adds many new technologies for multimedia, most later abandoned. Rating: 10. Impact Rating: 8.5 stars.
Netscape 4: Introduces portions of CSS and HTML 4- already outdone by Opera and IE. Introduces many technologies (document.layers, anyone?, and JSS) later abandoned, with good reason. Introduces "Suite" concept, never popular. Buggy. Large. Popular. Rating 7.25 stars. Impact rating: 6 stars. Note: This is the Defining reason, IMHO, Netscape lost popularity. With a good browser, it might have stood a chance. But v. 4 was buggy, large, and lacked support for standards
Netscape 4.5: Compressed Netscape into a more manageable size and eliminated components that were unnecessary -- good move. Eliminated support for Windows 3.1, 68k Macs, and some other platforms, as well as Navigator-only support - bad move. Netscape 4.5 was a mix, but it simply was a loss for someone who only used Navigator. They no longer had as much clutter in the full version, but they were
forced to use the full version, as Navigator stand-alone was no longer available. To add insult to injury, barely 4 year old 68k computers and also barely 4-year old Windows 3.1 computers could no longer run Navigator. However, iCab was still runnable on your old 68k, and IE 5 ran on Win3.1. The result? Defection to IE and iCab in the moment they needed as much support as they could get. Rating: 7.25 stars. Impact Rating: 2 stars.
Netscape 4.8: Actually released after 6 was, Netscape 4.8 was a large improvement from 4.08 and 4.5 in stability. However, that's not saying much. Aside from that, not much to mention; move along. Nothing to see here. Rating 7.5 stars. Impact Rating: 0 stars.
Netscape 6: Another buggy, slow, demanding, limited release from Netscape. What's new? Oh right, the completely different (and still alpha) codebase, which was really much improved but wasn't ready for primetime yet. Not to mention the somewhat ugly interface. Nevertheless, as an inspiration for Mozilla developers, this had a large Impact. It also had a large impact in standards support.
Rating: 6 stars. Impact Rating: 10 stars.
Netscape 6.1/6.2: MUCH better. Not so slow, not any buggier than 4.5, more websites worked with it too. Almost primetime ready, this codebase was awesome. You could finally tell, if you were a web developer.
Rating: 8 stars. Impact rating: 8 stars.
Netscape 7.0x: Tabs. Pop-up Blocking (7.01 and later.) Those two features changed your life; well they changed mine anyway. Plus, 7.01 was fast and stable. But there was a dark side; 7.00 showed Netscape's commercialism by eliminating the pop-up blocker, simply because Netscape.com and AOL.com had pop-ups. Evil! 7.01 fixed that though.
7.00 rating: 7.5 stars. 7.01 rating: 9 stars. Impact rating: 10 stars.
Netscape 7.1/7.2: These minor updates were unimpressive, mostly because Mozilla was delivering minor updates more often; there were two updates in between 7.1 and 7.2 on mozilla, and three between 7.0 and 7.1. This was also when Netscape development was farmed out.
Netscape 8: Evil. IE was in there. And it only worked on windows (WTF?). Bad. Ads galore, and no redeeming features other than a phishing detector. Firefox was so much better.
Rating: 4 stars. Impact Rating: 4 stars (two for the security features, two for the IE option, copied by IETab.)
Netscape 9: Better, this release was available for Linux and Mac again. Thank Gosh. No more IE either. Overall, a solid release; but Firefox was updated more often and had less ads. Rating: 7.5 stars. Impact Rating: What Impact? Impact? We don't got no Impact.
The Impact rating, BTW, determines the browsers long-term impact on the market. This is important in browser history and often very different from the browser rating.
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/523.10.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Safari/523.10
Trainable is to cat as ability to live without food is to human.
