Netscape

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Netscape

Netscape, formerly Netscape Communications Corporation, was an American computer services company, best known for their web browser. The browser was once dominant in terms of usage share, but as a result of the browser wars, they lost much of their userbase in that area. As of July 2006, the usage share of Netscape browsers is under 1% and falling.

The company existed only from 1994 to 2003, latterly as a subsidiary of AOL, but the Netscape brand is still in use.

History

Early years

The company was founded as Mosaic Communications Corporation on April 4, 1994 by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark, and was the first company to attempt to capitalize on the nascent World Wide Web. It released a web browser called Mosaic Netscape 0.9 on October 13, 1994. This browser was subsequently renamed Netscape Navigator, and the company took on the 'Netscape' name on November 14, 1994 to avoid trademark ownership problems with NCSA, where the initial Netscape employees had previously created the NCSA Mosaic web browser. (The Mosaic Netscape web browser shared no code with NCSA Mosaic.)

Netscape had a successful IPO on August 9, 1995. The stock was to be offered at $14 per share; a last-minute decision doubled the initial offering to $28 per share; the stock's value reached $75 on the first day of trading, which was nearly a record for a stock's first-day gain. The company's revenues doubled every quarter in 1995 .

One of Netscape's stated goals was to "level the playing field" among operating systems by providing a consistent web browsing experience across them. The Netscape web browser interface was identical on any computer. Netscape later experimented with prototypes of a web-based system which would allow a user to access and edit his files anywhere across a network, no matter what computer or operating system he happened to be using.

This did not escape the attention of Microsoft, which viewed the commoditization of operating systems as a direct threat to its bottom line. Several Microsoft executives are reported to have visited the Netscape campus in June 1995 to propose dividing the market, which would have allowed Microsoft to produce web browser software on Windows while leaving other operating systems to Netscape. Netscape refused.

Microsoft released version 1.0 of Internet Explorer as a part of the Windows 95 Plus Pack add-on. According to former Spyglass developer Eric Sink, Internet Explorer was based not on NCSA Mosaic as commonly believed, but on a version of Mosaic developed at Spyglass. Microsoft quickly released several successive versions of Internet Explorer, bundling them with Windows, never charging for them, financing their development and marketing with revenues from other areas of the company. This period of time became known as the browser wars, in which Netscape Communicator and Internet Explorer added many new features (not always working correctly) and went through many version numbers (not always in a logical fashion) in attempts to outdo each other. But Internet Explorer had the upper hand, as the amount of manpower and capital dedicated to it eventually surpassed the resources available in Netscape's entire business. By version 3.0, IE was roughly a feature-for-feature equivalent of Netscape Communicator, and by version 4.0, it was generally considered to be more stable. Microsoft also targeted other Netscape products with free workalikes, such as the Internet Information Server (IIS), a web server which was bundled with Windows NT.

Netscape could not compete with this strategy. Meanwhile, it faced increasing criticism for the bugs in its products; critics claimed that the company suffered from 'featuritis' – putting a higher priority on adding new features than on making them work properly. The tide of public opinion, having once lauded Netscape as the David to Microsoft's Goliath, steadily turned negative, especially when Netscape experienced its first bad quarter at the end of 1997 and underwent a large round of layoffs in January 1998.

Open sourcing

January 1998 was also the month that Netscape started the open source Mozilla project. Knowing that Internet Explorer had become by far the dominant web browser in the marketplace, Netscape publicly released the source code of Netscape Communicator 4.0 in the hopes that it would become a popular open source project. It placed this code under the Netscape Public License, which was similar to the GNU General Public License but allowed Netscape to continue to publish proprietary work containing the publicly-released code. However, after having released the Communicator 4.0 code this way, Netscape proceeded to work on Communicator 4.5 which was focused on improving email and enterprise functionality.

It eventually became clear that the Communicator 4.0 browser was too difficult to develop on and open source development was halted on this codebase. Instead, the open source development shifted to a next generation browser built from scratch. Utilising the newly-built Gecko layout engine, this browser had a much more modular architecture than Communicator 4.0 and was therefore easier to develop with a large number of programmers. It also included an XML user interface language named XUL that allowed single development of a user interface that ran on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

The United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust case against Microsoft in May 1998. Netscape was not a plaintiff in the case, though its executives were subpoenaed and it contributed much material to the case, including the entire contents of the 'Bad Attitude' internal discussion forum.

In October 1998, Netscape acquired web directory site NewHoo for the sum of $1 million, renamed it the Open Directory Project, and released its database under an open content license.

Acquisition by America Online

America Online (AOL) on November 24, 1998 announced it would acquire Netscape Communications in a tax-free stock-swap valued at US$4.2 billion at the time of the announcement. This merger was ridiculed by many who believed that the two corporate cultures could not possibly mesh; one of its most prominent critics was longtime Netscape developer Jamie Zawinski. The acquisition was seen as a way for AOL to gain a bargaining chip against Microsoft, to let it become less dependent on the Internet Explorer web browser. Others believed that AOL was interested in Netcenter, or Netscape's web properties, which drew some of the highest traffic worldwide. Eventually, the majority of Netscape's server products were spun off to form iPlanet Inc., a joint venture between AOL and Sun Microsystems.

On November 14 2000, AOL released Netscape 6, based on the Mozilla 0.6 source code. (Version number 5 was skipped.) Unfortunately, Mozilla 0.6 was far from being stable yet, and so the effect of Netscape 6 was to further drive people away from the Netscape brand. It was not until August 2001 that Netscape 6.1 appeared, based on Mozilla 0.9.2 which was significantly more robust. A year later came Netscape 7.0, based on the Mozilla 1.0 core.

Disbanding of Netscape

After the Microsoft antitrust case found that Microsoft held and had abused monopoly power, AOL filed suit against it for damages. This suit was settled in May 2001 when Microsoft paid US $750 million to AOL and agreed to share some technologies, including granting AOL a license to use and distribute Internet Explorer royalty-free for seven years. . This was considered to be the "death knell for Netscape."

On July 15, 2003, Time Warner (formerly AOL Time Warner) disbanded Netscape. Most of the programmers were laid-off, and the Netscape logo was removed from the building. However, the Netscape 7.2 web browser (developed in-house rather than with Netscape staff) was released by AOL on August 18, 2004.

Red Hat announced on September 30, 2004 that it had acquired large portions of the Netscape Enterprise Suite and is planning to convert them into an open source product to be bundled with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. ^*. On June 1, 2005, Red Hat released Fedora Directory Server.

On October 12, 2004, the popular developer website Netscape DevEdge was shut down by AOL. DevEdge was an important resource for Internet-related technologies, maintaining definitive documentation on the Netscape browser, documentation on associated technologies like HTML and JavaScript, and popular articles written by industry and technology leaders such as Danny Goodman. Some content from DevEdge has been republished at the Mozilla website.

Netscape today

Today, the Netscape brand name continues to be used extensively by AOL. The Netscape Browser continues to be released under the Netscape brand name, though development of the browser has been outsourced to the Canadian company Mercurial Communications. The Netscape.com portal is also still active; in fact, it was given a brand new design on February 17, 2005 to match the look and feel of the Netscape 8 browser, and in June 2006, the portal was redesigned yet again as a blogging site similar to Digg. Most notably, AOL now markets a discount ISP service under the Netscape brand name.

Browser

Netscape Classic releases

Netscape Navigator (versions 1.0–4.08)

Netscape Navigator was the name of Netscape's web browser from versions 1.0–4.8. The first beta release versions of the browser were released in 1994 and known as Mosaic and then Mosaic Netscape until a legal challenge from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (makers of NCSA Mosaic), which many of Netscape's founders used to develop, led to the name change to Netscape Navigator. The company's name also changed from Mosaic Communications Corporation to Netscape Communications Company.

The browser was easily the most advanced available and was therefore an instant success, becoming market leader while still in beta. Netscape's feature-count and market share continued to grow rapidly after version 1.0 was released. Version 2.0 added a full mail reader called Netscape Mail, thus transforming Netscape from a mere web browser to an Internet suite. During this period, both the browser and the suite were known as Netscape Navigator. Around the same time, AOL started bundling their software with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Version 3.0 of Netscape (the first beta was codenamed "Atlas") was the first to face any serious competition in the form of Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. Netscape, however, easily held off Microsoft's challenge and remained the number one browser for the time being. Version 3.0 was also available in a "Gold" version which featured a WYSIWYG HTML editor (later added to Netscape Communicator as a standard feature). Netscape 3.0 introduced many new features such as new plugins, background colors for tables, the archive attribute and the applet element. Netscape Navigator 3 was a huge success, and the undisputed Web Browser giant in its time. The latest version is 3.04.

Netscape Communicator (versions 4.0–4.8)

Netscape 4 addressed the problem of Netscape Navigator being used as both the name of the suite and the browser contained within it by renaming the suite to Netscape Communicator.

After releasing 5 preview releases from 1996 - 1997, Netscape Corp. released the final version of Netscape Communicator in June 1997. This new version, more or less based on Netscape Navigator 3 Code, updated and added new features (such as support of certain CSS1 elements, minimal dynamic font support and the proprietary object element). The new suite was successful, despite increasing competition from Internet Explorer 4.0 (which had, at that time, a far better HTML engine) and problems with the outdated browser core. The Communicator suite was made up of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail and Newsgroups, Netscape Address Book and Netscape Composer (an HTML editor). In October 1998 version 4.5 of Netscape Communicator was released. This new version featured various functionality improvements, especially in the Mail/News component, but did not update the browser core (which, in its functionality, was basically identical with version 4.08). Only one month later, Netscape Communications Corporation was bought by AOL. A standalone version of Netscape Navigator was still available, but this was discontinued after version 4.08 for Windows. However, standalone versions for other operating systems such as Unix/Linux were maintained up to version 4.8.

In January 1998 Netscape Communications Corporation announced that all future versions of their software would be free of charge and developed by an Open Source Community (Mozilla). Netscape Communicator 5.0 was announced (codenamed "Grommit"). But there were significant delays to the release of Netscape's next major version and Communicator therefore aged badly over the many years it was still used. As a result of this, and a more advanced support of HTML 4, CSS, DOM, and ECMAScript by Internet Explorer starting with version 4, the more up-to-date Internet Explorer 5.0 became the market leader. In November 1998 work on Netscape 5.0 was cancelled in favor of developing a completely new program from scratch.

Mozilla-based releases

Netscape 6 (versions 6.0–6.2.3)

In 1998, Netscape made the decision to make the Netscape browser an open-source project. A basic version of the source code was duly released. An informal group called the Mozilla Organization was formed and largely funded by Netscape (the vast majority of programmers working on the code were paid by Netscape) to co-ordinate the development of Netscape 5 (codenamed "Grommit"), which would be based on the Communicator source code. However, the aging Communicator code proved difficult to work with and the decision was taken to scrap Netscape 5 and re-write the source code. The re-written source code was in the form of the Mozilla web browser, which, with a few additions, Netscape 6 was based on.

This decision meant that Netscape's next major version was severely delayed. In the meantime, Netscape was taken over by AOL who, acting under pressure from the Web Standards Project, forced its new division to release Netscape 6.0 in 2000. The suite again consisted of Netscape Navigator and the other Communicator components, with the addition of a built-in AOL Instant Messenger client, Netscape Instant Messenger. However, it was clear that Netscape 6 was not yet ready for release and it flopped badly. It was based on Mozilla 0.6, which was not ready to be used by the general public yet due to many serious bugs that would cause it to crash often or render web pages slowly.

Later versions of Netscape 6 were much improved (especially 6.2.x was regarded as a good release), but the browser still struggled to make an impact on a disappointed community.

Netscape (versions 7.0–7.2)

For the version 7 series (codenamed "Mach V"), the suite became simply known as Netscape, the name everyone else had been calling it for years. The browser inside continued to be known as Netscape Navigator.

Netscape 7.0 (based on Mozilla 1.0.1) was released in August 2002 was a direct continuation of Netscape 6 with very similar components. It picked up a few users, but was still very much a minority browser, one of the problems being that Mozilla itself was a worthy adversary. In addition, AOL had decided to deactivate Mozilla's popup-blocker functionality in Netscape 7.0, which created an outrage in the community. AOL learned the lesson for Netscape 7.01 and allowed Netscape to reinstate the popup-blocker. Netscape also introduced a new AOL-free-version (without the usual AOL addons) of the browser suite. Netscape 7.1 (codenamed "Buffy" and based on Mozilla 1.4) was released in June 2003.

In 2003, AOL closed down its Netscape division and laid-off or re-assigned all of Netscape's employees. Mozilla.org continued, however, as the independent Mozilla Foundation, taking on many of Netscape's ex-employees. AOL continued to develop Netscape in-house, but, due to there being no staff committed to it, improvements were minimal.

One year later, in August 2004, the last version based on Mozilla was released: Netscape 7.2, based on Mozilla 1.7.2.

Mozilla Firefox-based releases

Netscape Browser (version 8.0+)

AOL's latest Netscape releases, starting in 2005, are known as Netscape Browser. AOL chose to base Netscape Browser on the relatively successful Mozilla Firefox, a re-written version of Mozilla produced by the Mozilla Foundation. This release is not a full Internet suite as before, but is solely a web browser. Other controversial decisions include the browser's being made only for Microsoft Windows (as of now) and its featuring both the Gecko rendering engine of previous releases and the Trident engine used in Internet Explorer.

AOL's acquisition of Netscape years ago made it less of a surprise when the company laid off the Netscape team and outsourced development to Mercurial Communications.

Release history

Netscape Navigator 1.0 – December 15, 1994
Netscape Navigator 1.1
Netscape Navigator 1.22
Netscape Navigator 2.0 – September 18, 1995
Netscape Navigator 2.01
Netscape Navigator 2.02
Netscape Navigator 3.0 – August 19, 1996
Netscape Navigator 3.01
Netscape Navigator 3.02
Netscape Navigator 3.03
Netscape Navigator 3.04 – October 4, 1997
Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.0 – June 1997
Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.01
Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.02
Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.03
Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.04
Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.05
Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.06 – August 17, 1998
Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.07
Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.08 – November 9, 1998 (last release for 16-bit Windows and 68k Macs)
Netscape Communicator 4.5 – October 19, 1998
Netscape Communicator 4.61 – June 14, 1999
Netscape Communicator 4.7 – September 30, 1999
Netscape Communicator 4.71
Netscape Communicator 4.72
Netscape Communicator 4.73
Netscape Communicator 4.74
Netscape Communicator 4.75
Netscape Communicator 4.76
Netscape Communicator 4.77
Netscape Communicator 4.78
Netscape Communicator 4.79 – 2001
Netscape Communicator 4.8 – August 22, 2002
Netscape 6.0 – November 14, 2000 (based on Mozilla 0.7)
Netscape 6.01 – February 9 2001(based on Mozilla 0.7)
Netscape 6.1 – August 8, 2001 (based on Mozilla 0.9.2.1)
Netscape 6.2 – October 30 2001 (based on Mozilla 0.9.4.1)
Netscape 6.2.1 (based on Mozilla 0.9.4.1)
Netscape 6.2.2 (based on Mozilla 0.9.4.1)
Netscape 6.2.3 – May 15 2002 (based on Mozilla 0.9.4.1)
Netscape 7.0 – August 29, 2002 (based on Mozilla 1.0.1)
Netscape 7.01 – December 10, 2002 (based on Mozilla 1.0.2)
Netscape 7.02 – February 18, 2003 (based on Mozilla 1.0.2)
Netscape 7.1 – June 30, 2003 (based on Mozilla 1.4)
Netscape 7.2 – August 17, 2004 (based on Mozilla 1.7)
Netscape Browser 8.0 – May 19, 2005 (based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3)
Netscape Browser 8.0.1 – May 19, 2005 (based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4)
Netscape Browser 8.0.2 – June 17, 2005 (based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4)
Netscape Browser 8.0.3.1 – July 25, 2005 (based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6)
Netscape Browser 8.0.3.3 – August 8, 2005 (based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6)
Netscape Browser 8.0.3.4 – August 17, 2005 (based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6)
Netscape Browser 8.0.4 – October 19, 2005 (based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7)
Netscape Browser 8.1 – January 25, 2006 (based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7)

Netscape.com

Netscape.com was formerly a classic web portal that included a search engine and member features such as webmail, and My Netscape that were run using AOL's screen name service. Despite Netscape's demise in the browser market, Netscape.com still attracted billions of visitors per day.

In June 2006, Netscape redesigned their website to a totally different format; a user-submitted news and blogging site, similar to Digg. Users can vote for which stories are to be included on the front page, and may comment on them as well. Netscape's traffic has been steadily declining since the change.

Criticisms

The current version of Netscape.com was released to mixed reactions. Some users really like that users had more participation ability, while others found the pages to be harder to navigate and not as structured. In fact, soon after the release of the new site, a story entitled "Netscape's Blunder" was the top rated story .

Some other criticisms include:

Many users complained that Netscape's audience is very different from Digg's, and that Netscape had not taken this into consideration.
Besides Netscape Mail and My Netscape, the site no longer uses AOL's screen name service, and requires users to register another account with Netscape to have access to their member services. This means that members have to sign in twice; once to access the regular site features, and again to access their mail and My Netscape.
Since users can vote on news, many users have complained of politically biased stories appearing on the front page.

Netscape Internet Service

AOL runs a discount dial-up Internet service provider under the Netscape brand. Its main competitor is NetZero.

Netscape ISP's advertising is generally aimed at a younger demographic, e.g., college students, and people just out of school, as an affordable way to gain access to the internet. Netscape ISP is a very basic Internet service; a simple dail-up connection with very few extra features.

Product list

Netscape's initial product line consisted of:

Netscape Navigator web browser for Windows, Macintosh, Unix, and Linux
Netsite Communications web server, with a web-based configuration interface
Netsite Commerce web server, simply the Communications server with SSL (https) added
Netscape Proxy Server

Later Netscape products included:

Netscape Personal Edition (the browser along with PPP software and an account creation wizard to sign up with an ISP)
Netscape Communicator (a suite which included Navigator along with tools for mail, news, calendar, and composing web pages, and was bundled with AOL Instant Messenger and RealAudio)
Netscape FastTrack and Enterprise web servers
Netscape Collabra Server, a NNTP news server acquired in a purchase of Collabra Software, Inc.
Netscape Directory Server, an LDAP server
Netscape Messaging Server, an IMAP and POP mail server
Netscape Certificate Server, for issuing SSL certificates
Netscape Calendar Server, for group scheduling
Netscape Compass Server, a search engine and spider
Netscape Application Server, for designing web applications
Netscape Publishing System, for running a commercial site with news articles and charging users per access
Netscape Xpert Servers
- ECxpert - a server for EDI message exchange
- SellerXpert - B to B Commerce Engine
- BuyerXpert - eProcurement Engine
- BillerXpert - Online Bill Paying Engine
- TradingXpert - HTML EDI transaction frontend
- CommerceXpert - Online Retail Store engine

Netscape created the JavaScript web page scripting language. It also pioneered the development of "push technology," which effectively allowed web sites to send regular updates of information (weather, stock updates, package tracking, etc.) directly to a user's desktop (aka "webtop"); Netscape's implementation of this was named Netcaster. ^* Unfortunately, businesses quickly recognized the use of push technology to deliver ads to users, and annoyed users turned off the feature, so Netcaster was short-lived.

Netscape was notable for its cross-platform efforts. Its client software continued to be made available for Windows (3.1, 95, 98, NT), Macintosh, Linux, OS/2, BeOS, and many versions of Unix including DEC, Sun Solaris, BSDI, IRIX, AIX, and HP-UX. Its server software generally was only available for Unix and Windows NT, though some of its servers were made available on Linux, and a version of Netscape FastTrack Server was made available for Windows 95/98. Today, most of Netscape's server offerings live on as the Sun Java Enterprise System.

References

External links