Netscape Is Dead
AOL has now officially announced that they will end the development and support of all Netscape browsers.After February 1 2008, there will be no more development, support, or security patches for Navigator 9, or any previous Netscape Navigator browsers.
Users are advised to stop using the browser.
I remember back in my college days when I saw a computer technician with a shirt whose design was a tombstone with the engraving "C:\" and at least a portion of the shirt reads "DOS is dead". Change can be nostalgic or even painful. Some people might have been very angry with Bill Gates for releasing Windows 95.
Around that same time, a web browser called Netscape Navigator became popular. I remember that it was my favorite web browser when I was just learning to surf the web back in the late 90's. Netscape had a competitor called Microsoft Internet Explorer, and these two were at rivalry with each other. Netscape lost most of its share of usage to Internet Explorer during the first browser war. In 1999, Netscape Communications Corporation (the company) was acquired by AOL. During this time, Netscape started to distribute their product as open-source software under a new name: Mozilla. AOL played a significant role in the launch of the Netscape 6 browser, the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser that was released in 2000 and continued to solely fund the development and marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers.
With the dawn of Mozilla's Firefox browser, Netscape will be fading away to hand over the reins to Firefox. The Netscape Team fully stands behind the fine work being done by the Mozilla Foundation. It was recently announced by Tom Drapeau, director of AOL's Netscape Brand, that the company would stop supporting Netscape software products as of February 1st, 2008. They will continue to release security patches for the current version of the browser, Netscape Navigator until February 1, 2008. After February 1, there will be no more active product support for Navigator 9, or any previous Netscape Navigator browser. This includes Netscape v1-v4.x, Netscape v6, Netscape v7 Suite, Netscape Browser v8, and Netscape Navigator/Messenger 9.
For sentimental 90s geeks, you can make your Firefox look like Netscape by the add-on found in:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/56836
SeaMonkey, a Mozilla-related project, also looks a bit like Netscape.
Netscape has finished well. What a clean exit.
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3 comments:
Actually DOS still lives under Windows.
uu nga may DOS parin eh
i do remember netscape very well yan din gamit namin dati IE and NV wala pang FF tapos after NV ginamit namin un Opera then FF na ^_^
good old days
You're both correct. But since Windows 95 was launched, software developers now create programs that are Windows-dependent -- the cutting edge trends now depend on Windows, not DOS. So DOS is still at a loss since it's no longer in the forefront as a platform for the latest software. In a broad sense, "DOS is dead."
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