As of February 2008, the Netscape Navigator browser will no longer be maintained by AOL (its current owner). Netscape had recently released the last (and now final) version (version 9) within the past month or so, and while it does present a very sleek appearance, it's basically just a fancy skin of Firefox 2.0 (the Netscape release notes for Navigator 9 even say this).I downloaded and ran it, just for the look, and it's made me awful nostalgic. Netscape was the first browser that many cut their internet "teeth" on, and the sad story of its fall still haunts many tech-aficionados minds. (Side note: Netscape actually won the Netscape v. IE war, back in the day -- Microsoft paid Netscape somewhere close to 750 million dollars back in the day to settle the lawsuits. This was probably AOL's goal in buying Netscape anyway, however the billions AOL spent purchasing Netscape made this settlement less than profitable.)
Netscape 9's Default LookUsing it made me curious, though -- what were the previous versions of Netscape like? (6, 7, 8, etc.) So, on a whim, I downloaded them all and installed them.
Netscape 4
Ah, the granddaddy of them all, Netscape Communicator 4.7. This is what we old folks used back in the Web 1.0 days.It's real hard to get this thing to correctly render anything you find on the net these days -- up until a few months ago, it still rendered Google.com fine, but that all changed recently (I guess Google modernized their HTML or something).
Oddly enough, when I installed this on my work computer, Domino Designer picked it up and added it to my list of "preview modes" that I can preview my web applications in, for all the good that does (for what it's worth, it's never picked up any other browser).
Netscape 5
Netscape 5 was never really released -- Netscape open-sourced the code (it later became the Mozilla project) when the company decided to switch to the Gecko rendering engine. Some people say, on quiet nights, when you're browsing through Wikipedia for hours because you've got nothing to do, that you can hear the aborted ghost of Netscape 5 whispering through the lines of XHTML...
Netscape 6
To be honest, I couldn't even get Netscape 6 to install. It kept giving me an error message about a "Another version of Netscape 6 is already running" right after it unpacked itself. The only other Mozilla browser I was running at the time was Firefox, and if Netscape 6 was going to conflict with it, then forget about it -- we'll leave Netscape 6 to the annals of history.
Netscape 7
Netscape 7 was pretty much just a skin of the old Mozilla suite (which I absolutely loved back in the day around 2002 or so -- it's built-in popup stopping was what first got me away from IE).Other than that, there's nothing really remarkable about it. It can't auto-update, there's not much to do in the way of customization (in my opinion), though it is notable because of the built-in search box (I guess). Basically, if you were familiar with the old Mozilla suite, Netscape 7 should seem familiar.
Netscape 8
Netscape 8 is more polished looking and well-made than I would have ever guessed. Featuring a completely custom skin (as well as custom button functions), it seems to be loosely based on Firefox, but it's got quite a few things that are unique to it, like the built-in "Security Center."
It may seem kinda silly to we experts, but as a user interface designer, I can see where this kinda thing could come in handy to the novice internet user. Collecting these functions into a handy little bar at the bottom that pops up when you click on it is an easy way to get the average user aware of things like site security and keeping their browser up to date (something that even Firefox makes it too easy to ignore).The Spyware Protection caught my eye in particular -- apparently, Netscape 8 had a full, built-in spyware scanner. I don't know what engine it's running, and I'm kinda wary about running it to see -- knowing AOL's record on consumer information control, I can't help but worry about what kind of information this thing'll send back to AOL after it gets done scanning my entire hard drive.
One other thing I liked about Netscape 8 were the built-in specific-site controls found within the preferences box -- once again, it may seem kinda silly to an expert user, but to a novice, this thing is brilliant. A user can see at a glance all the specific security settings for the sites they visit, and can even choose a rendering engine to use to display individual sites.There's even a "master" setting that the user can click on in the upper-left hand side of the box, in case the specific options (VBScript running, ActiveX, etc.) are too confusing -- a user can just click "I trust this site" or "I'm not sure" to get a pre-selected security level.
Additionally, I was quite suprised to find that Netscape 8 already had a link to the "XRay" page examiner that I've used sometimes on IE to observe how things are being rendered. Weird, but neat. Kinda goes against the entire "extremely novice user friendly" thing Netscape 8 had going, but I guess a novice user wouldn't really ever notice it, anyway.
Final Thoughts
Upon loading up all the old versions of Netscape, I can see that it was never really all that bad. Misunderstood, yes, but it was never a bad product -- just unnecessary. It's not like AOL spent a huge amount of money advertising it after it was bought, but, as we've seen from the success of Firefox, sometimes that isn't even necessary.
I'm still surprised that Netscape never really found a niche in these later years, especially since it still had the power of its name (almost everyone's familiar with it) -- especially Netscape 8, which was actually quite a well-made product. I can definitely see a niche for it -- the extremely novice user (think your parents, grandparents, upper management, etc.) who's found quite a few things to hate about IE but that's still fearful of all the "hype" surrounding Firefox (and that's one thing we OSS zealots need to understand one day -- sometimes hype, especially overzealous hype, can be a bad thing and actually turn people away from a great idea).
Yeah, I can definitely see a niche for that kinda user. I think I'll pass along a few copies of Netscape 8 and 9 to some people I know, just for the hell of it. ;)
