AOL (News - Alert) will end its support of all versions of Netscape Navigator, the world’s first web browser that launched the world’s love affair with the Internet, as of February 1, 2008. AOL urges that existing Navigator users migrate to the Firefox browser. However, the Netscape Web Portal will continue to operate.

 

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, formulated the modern World Wide Web in 1989. Berners-Lee used a NeXTcube as the world’s first web server and also to write, in 1990, the world’s first primitive web browser, called WorldWideWeb, finished on December 25, 1990 (Later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion.) Indeed, by Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built everything needed for a fully-functioning Web: the first web browser/editor, the first web server, and the first web pages which happen to describe the actual project itself. The web officially became a publicly-available service on August 6, 1991 when Berners-Lee posted description of his project on the alt.hypertext.newsgroup on August 6, 1991.

 

Beginning in December 1992, with funding from Al Gore’s High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina designed and programmed the NCSA Mosaic browser for the Unix X Window System at the University of Illinois’ NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications). Version 1.0 was released on April 22, 1993, followed by two maintenance releases during summer 1993. A port to the Commodore Amiga was available by October 1993. Version 2.0 of NCSA Mosaic was released in December 1993, along with version 1.0 releases for both the Apple (News - Alert) Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. Although it was never released as open source software during its heyday, all versions of NCSA Mosaic for non-commercial use were generally free, with a few limitations.

 

In June 1993, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) brought online the first commercial website.

 

Mosaic was actually the first popular World Wide Web browser and Gopher client, not Netscape Navigator. Mosaic was the first browser to display images embedded in the text, rather than a separate window. Internet/web usage began to skyrocket once the public got its hands on the Mosaic browser, far overshadowing other nascent web browsers of the period, such as Erwise (appeared April 1992, for X Windows), ViolaWWW (appeared in May 1992, the second browser for Unix), Midas (appeared summer 1992; the third browser for Unix), Samba (appeared at the end of 1992; the first web browser for the Macintosh) and Cello (appeared summer of 1993; the first browser for the PC), IBM WebExplorer, SlipKnot (for graphic surfing through a terminal connection) and the text-based Lynx, still used by blind people and those having limited bandwidth connections.

 

Mosaic development team leader Marc Andreessen soon left the NCSA and, with Jim Clark, one of the founders of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), and four other former students and staff of the University of Illinois, started Mosaic Communications Corporation on April 4, 1994. The beta version of Mosaic Corporation’s new browser, known internally as Mozilla 0.96b, appeared on October 13, 1994. “Mozilla” comes from “Mosaic Killer”. The name, coined by Jamie Zawinski, was influenced by ‘Godzilla’ and was meant to proclaim that the new company and its product was a ferocious beast, which would ravage the earth, and would be impossible to defeat, especially by its competition, Mosaic. It also led to a mascot: a cartoonish little dinosaur, more like a lizard, with light green skin, maroon chest scales and blue spikes sprouting from the back of his head and running down its back to the base of his tail. He had a large moose-like snout with large flared nostrils, large and expressive eyes, and was occasionally depicted (by his visual creator, Dave Titus) as breathing fire. Mozilla appeared on the company’s t-shirts, posters and even briefly in the documentation. There was (and still is) a humorous “Book of Mozilla”.

 

The final version, Mozilla 1.0, was released on December 15, 1994 — it was the world’s first commercial browser. The company’s name incorporating the word “Mosaic” spurred a legal challenge from NCSA and led to the company changing its name to Netscape Communications Corporation on November 14, 1994 (it would later change again to Netscape Communications). Similarly, the browser, originally to be called Mosaic Netscape, was soon known as Netscape Navigator, even though lurking within was “Mozilla”. Indeed, Netscape identified itself as “Mozilla” to web servers. When users surf to a website via a user agent such as a web browser, a text string — called the “user agent string” — is typically sent to identify the user agent to the web server. The Netscape web browser identified itself as “Mozilla/<version>“ followed by some data about the operating system on which it was running. Web servers would inspect the user agent string and serve more sophisticated content to Netscape (having an appropriate version of Mozilla in the string) than to other browsers, since Netscape was originally the leader in adding features and functionality such as Javascript and cookies to its browser. (For example, the first version of Netscape had new and improved layout control, such as the CENTER tag, and the ability to open multiple concurrent TCP connections that significantly reduced download time.) Ironically, browsers by competitors emulated or “spoofed” this string so they could also work fully with those websites. Even Microsoft Internet Explorer employed an user agent string beginning “Mozilla/<version> (compatible; MSIE <version>...)”, so it could receive content intended for Netscape. This format persisted long after Windows Internet Explorer ended up ruling the browser world.

 

Netscape’s phenomenal initial public offering of stock in August 1995 opened at $28 per share and shot to $75 a share on opening day to give the company a $2 billion market value. Not bad for a company that had over 80 percent of the Internet browser market but only $20 million in sales. Still, the company’s revenues doubled every quarter during 1995.

 

At the same time, Spyglass, Inc. licensed the Mosaic technology and trademarks from the NCSA to develop its own web browser. Spyglass was an Internet software company founded in 1990 and based in Champaign, Illinois. An offshoot of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, it was created to commercialize and support technologies from the NCSA.

 

Microsoft was obviously aware of these events, and their own browser, Internet Explorer, began as a project in the summer of 1994. Realizing that it couldn’t quickly write its own code from scratch, Microsoft unsuccessfully tried to license the Netscape browser. Microsoft then discovered Spyglass and their version of Mosaic, which actually used little of the NCSA Mosaic code. In late 1994, Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft’s non-Windows revenues for the software. Spyglass Mosaic became the foundation of Internet Explorer 1.0, released on August 23, 1995 as an add-on to Windows 95 in the Microsoft Plus! software package. Later versions became available as free downloads and are also included in the OEM service releases of Windows 95 and in later versions of Windows. Since Microsoft had bundled Internet Explorer with Windows, there were no direct revenues from it and so Microsoft only paid the quarterly fee to Spyglass, much to their consternation. Spyglass in turn threatened Microsoft with a contractual audit and in 1997 Microsoft settled for US$8 million.

 

The most recent release of Internet Explorer is version 7.0, released October 17, 2006 and available as a free update for Windows XP with Service Pack 2, and Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or later, and is included with Windows Vista. All versions released prior to Internet Explorer 7 acknowledge Spyglass as the licensor for the browser code in the “About” window, which reads: “Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc.”

 

By the mid 1990s, NCSA Mosaic had huge competition from Netscape and Microsoft, and the NCSA officially discontinued its development and support on January 7, 1997, though it can still be downloaded from the NCSA.

 

Many industry observers of the mid and late 1990s realized that Netscape was in for “the fight of its life” with Microsoft now on the browser scene. Microsoft attempted to quickly win market share by simply giving away its Internet Explorer browser for free with its flagship Windows operating system.

 

The war went as follows: Netscape Version 1 was the only version that didn’t also incorporate email and news reader. Netscape 2, introduced in 1995, added the mail and news reader and became an Internet suite called Netscape Navigator (technically, the browser was called Navigator and the suite was called Communicator, but people used these terms interchangeably, or else just referred to the whole package as simply “Netscape”). Navigator 2.0 also introduced frames, client-side image maps, Javascript and SSL (for secure transactions). After the release of Netscape Navigator 2.0 Microsoft entered the market with Internet Explorer (IE) 1.0. It had some catching up to do. Netscape Navigator 3.0 was then released and it was the undisputed king of Internet browsing. During Navigator 3’s reign, IE 2.0 was released in November 1995, just three months after IE Version 1.0. It also failed to unseat Navigator as top dog in the browser world. However, during the delay between the release of Navigator 3.0 and 4.0, Microsoft introduced IE 3.0 in 1996. IE 3.0 was now a worthy competitor to Netscape, with its scripting support, the first commercial implementation of Cascading Style Sheets, and its ability to handle the PICS system for content metadata. Still, Version 3.0 of Netscape continued to keep Microsoft at bay in terms of popularity.

 

Navigator 4.0 was released in 1997 and IE 4 shortly afterward, in October 1997. At the time Netscape had 72 percent of the browser market, Microsoft 18 percent. It was soon shockingly apparent that Internet Explorer 4.0 was faster than Navigator 4.0, had adopted the W3C’s (World Wide Web Consortium’s) published specifications more faithfully than Netscape Navigator 4.0. Moreover, unlike Netscape, IE 4.0 allowed for genuine “dynamic” pages in which the flow of the text and images of the page could be altered after the page was loaded. Installing Internet Explorer 4.0 was simply part of a system upgrade that also provided such enticing items as MP3 playback and, optionally, the Windows Desktop Update.

 

IE4 also introduced IEAK (Internet Explorer Administrators Kit) which enabled “Mom and Pop” ISPs — of which there were quite a few in the 1990s — to customize and rebrand the browser and dialup connection.

 

Microsoft then proceeded to unseat Netscape through various actions. Aside from simply giving away the browser, it got AOL to base AOL’s primary interface on IE rather than Netscape. It purchased and released the FrontPage web authoring tool, making it easy for web developers to place proprietary extensions and non-standard HTML code in web pages. IE’s Cascading Style Sheet support was favored by web designers over Netscape’s proprietary LAYER extensions. Microsoft even wrangled an agreement with Apple Computer in 1997, making Internet Explorer the default Mac browser for five years.

 

Microsoft documentation in those days made the Internet sound like an extension of Windows NT. They encouraged this idea among web developers by opening up Windows to Internet Explorer, thus leverage the operating system’s capabilities. By adopting proprietary Microsoft/IE web tools, these web developers instantly had access to a host of capabilities not found in Netscape or other competing browsers. Everybody swallowed the bait and now Internet Explorer, the “winner” of the first browser war, is much more vulnerable to viruses and malware than its competitors, even though all of them are descendants of the same ancient codebase.

 

By the end of 1998, Netscape had lost the war. America Online acquired it for US$4.2 billion. Internet Explorer became the new dominant browser, achieving about 96 percent of the web browser usage share during 2002, more than Netscape had at its peak in popularity.

 

In its defeat, however, Netscape sewed the seeds of both its successor browser and the Second Browser war. Long before its completed acquisition by AOL in 1999, Netscape Communications had begun converting its pride and joy — the Netscape Communicator web suite — into free open source software, under a “new” name: Mozilla, the name of their original dinosaurian mascot. The Mozilla project (and mozilla.org) was officially born on January 22, 1998, with funding and support both from Netscape and its ultimate owner, AOL. On February 23, 1998, Netscape founded the Mozilla Organization in Mountain View, California, to co-ordinate the development of the Mozilla Application Suite. Although made up mostly of Netscape employees and receiving funding from AOL, it theoretically operated independently of Netscape. The Mozilla Organization ostensibly was developing the Mozilla browser for testing purposes only and not for end users directly. Adherence to that statement led to the creation of the Beonex Communicator, which released end-user versions during the period that the Mozilla Organization oversaw the project (although most end-users simply downloaded the “official” Mozilla builds). Beonex was meant to provide the documentation and support necessary for an end-user project. Beonex Communicator is thus called “Mozilla polished for end users”. It takes care of a few Mozilla tweaks and contains Navigator, Mailnews, Composer, and ChatZilla. Navigator has support for key web standards and a friendly interface.

 

Later, on March 2, 2004, Ben Bucksch of Beonex Business Services announced that no new releases were planned until the Mozilla Foundation decided its future policy. In 2005, the Mozilla Foundation officially changed its policies and created the Mozilla Corporation to provide end-user support.

 

Netscape source code was released on March 31, 1998. A Netscape Communicator 5.0 open source development was announced (codenamed “Grommit”) but the ancient code was considered too difficult to upgrade. And the code of the layout engine would require total rewrite. It was felt that a new layout engine (called Gecko) was cleaner code and much easier to learn, thus encouraging contributions by programmers. And so it was that in November 1998 work on Netscape 5.0 was scrapped in favor of developing an entirely new, more standards-compliant program, from the ground up: Netscape 6.0.

 

As the new open source Mozilla code (to be used in the new Communicator 6.0) reached Version 0.6 (still too buggy to be used by the public), Netscape was taken over by AOL. AOL forced the release of Netscape 6.0 too early, in 2000. The suite comprised Netscape Navigator and the other familiar Communicator components, along with the expected AOL Instant Messenger client, Netscape Instant Messenger. Software crashes and slowly rendered web pages were a problem. Netscape is said to have finally gotten its act together with the 6.2.x release, but the suite’s reputation was severely damaged.

 

A pathetic Netscape was good for at least one thing — to enable AOL to sue Microsoft for antitrust violations. In 2003, Microsoft ended up paying AOL Time Warner US$750 million towards settlement of an anti-trust case brought against it for alleged illegal conduct and thwarting of competition in the market for operating systems and web browsers.

 

After four years of development, the new Mozilla Version 1.0 code was finally released on June 5, 2002. Shortly thereafter, Netscape 7.0 (based on Mozilla 1.0.1) was released in August 2002, with components similar to Netscape 6, aside from the popular Radio@Netscape internet radio client “extra” that was included.

 

By this time the needs and structure of Netscape was also influencing the work on Mozilla, since it now mirrored the functionality of Netscape quite closely, though Mozilla did have things that Netscape did not have for most of its existence, such as an IRC client and a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS (News - Alert)) editor.

 

Netscape by that time had shrunk in stature to the point where the only revenue it generated was by driving user traffic to web properties loaded with advertising: netscape.com, Netscape webmail, etc. This is presumably why Netscape 7.0 was released without the pop-up blocking feature that those same Netscape programmers had developed in Mozilla. Pop-up advertising revenue was at the time important to the AOL and Netscape web properties. This resulted in a backlash by users and industry press, which in turn spurred the quick release of Netscape 7.0.1. which reinstated the Mozilla pop-up blocker, with the exception of AOL/TimeWarner/Netscape web sites. Since the default page on first launch of the browser was the netscape.com page (loaded with pop-ups), the public and the press howled again. AOL finally had Netscape make available an “AOL-free” version (no AOL add-ons) of the browser suite. Netscape 7.1 (based on Mozilla 1.4) was released in June 2003.

 

In an effort to generate whatever revenue it could, Netscape began selling off advertising space within the browser itself. Default Bookmarks and Sidebars were sold to various vendors. Users first encountering a default install of Netscape soon discovered that there was practically no space for any “personal” bookmarks, since the “personal toolbar” space had been auctioned off, as was a primary navigation button (“print plus”, a menu hanging off of the Print button) that sent users off in an effort to sell them printer supplies.

 

Of course, Mozilla itself generates some revenue from advertising, driving traffic to Google instead of Netscape’s AOL. The difference is that Mozilla does it in a friendly, low-key, totally non-obnoxious way.

 

On July 15, 2003, AOL closed down its Netscape division and laid-off or re-assigned all of Netscape’s employees. It also dramatically scaled back its financial involvement with the Mozilla Organization. This led to the formation and launch of the successor to the Mozilla.org — the Mozilla Foundation — on July 15, 2003 so that Mozilla development could continue without Netscape. AOL assisted in creating the Mozilla Foundation, transferring hardware and intellectual property to the organization and employing a three-person team for three months to assist in the transition. AOL donated $2 million to the foundation over two years and an additional $300,000 came from Mitch Kapor of Lotus 1-2-3 fame. AOL continued to develop Netscape in-house, but, since it had laid off the staff that had been working on it, changes and/or improvements were practically nonexistent.

 

Many people were using Mozilla code as if it were an end-user product anyway, and now more users were expected to abandon Netscape in favor of Mozilla. This encouraged Mozilla to officially market toward end-users directly (instead of the Beonex intermediary), and to furnish technical support.

 

The AOL team running the Netscape.com portal were of course upset that AOL was shutting down their Netscape division, since much of their traffic derived from click-thrus by users browsing about with Netscape. So, they simply took the situation ‘by the horns’ and directly contracted former Netscape developers to work on a successor to Netscape 7.1, bypassing the AOL product development team by apparently funding it with advertising money from netscape.com.

 

After a year of work, in August 2004, the last version based on Mozilla was released: Netscape 7.2, based on Mozilla 1.7.2.

 

AOL itself was again without “Netscape” until, in the next phase of its history, Netscape development became outsourced to Mercurial Communications, a Canadian company. Netscape was now going to be based on a new project that was yet another re-written version of the Mozilla code produced by the Mozilla Foundation, the browser now known as Mozilla Firefox.

 

Between 2005 and 2007, Netscape’s releases of Netscape Navigator became known as “Netscape Browser”. Netscape Browser’s version numbers start at 8, but it is based on the Mozilla Firefox browser. Netscape 6 and 7 were based on the Mozilla Application Suite, which was itself a complete rewrite of the code written for versions 1 through 4 of Netscape Navigator and Netscape Communicator. Naturally, it supported AOL Instant Messenger and other AOL-related offerings.

 

It was also decided that the “new” Netscape Browser (essentially a re-skinned Firefox) would run only under Microsoft Windows, and would use both the Gecko rendering engine of previous Netscape releases as well as the Trident engine found in Internet Explorer — which is why, interestingly, there was a “Display like Internet Explorer” menu selection. This ability to use either of two layout engines to render websites made up part of the browser’s “Site Controls” system, which allows security settings to be altered on a per-site basis, and is also claimed to be a defense against phishing and similar attacks, with both blacklists and whitelists built in and automatically updated periodically. This system decides whether a site is “trusted” or “suspect”, with whitelisted sites being allowed to use the less secure Trident engine by default. When using the Mozilla-Netscape-Gecko rendering engine and then manually switching to the IE-Trident engine, a security warning pops up: “You have chosen to view this web site using the Internet Explorer display engine. Your setting will be remembered the next time you visit the site. Please be aware that there are known security vulnerabilities with the Internet Explorer display engine.” If you or the embedded whitelist hold that a particular site is safe, however, the browser will automatically default to the IE-Trident rendering engine. For example, if you select “I trust this site”, you’re automatically switched over to the IE rendering engine without anything asking if you want to. This results in the IE rendering engine running on such trusted sites as — netscape.com, strangely enough.

 

It’s as if the robust Gecko-Netscape engine is the ‘point man’, venturing forth into dangerous web territory. If the site turns out to be okay, however, the user suddenly finds himself looking at the page with the IE-Trident engine.

 

All of this was allegedly done in the name of security, yet Netscape Browser was criticized for using both Gecko and Trident rendering engines, since it was subject to all the vulnerabilities of both engines, making it potentially less secure than either Firefox or IE run individually.

 

Netscape Browser was first released on November 30, 2004 as a public “prototype,” and only finally reached its first full release as “version 8.0” on May 19, 2005. A minor update known as version 8.0.1 was released within a few hours incorporating security patches recently added in Firefox 1.0.4.

 

Some loved these dual-personality browsers, while other posted user comments were along the lines of, “Firefox with an ugly theme and a bunch of clutter”.

 

The final version of Netscape Browser was Version 8.1.3, released April 2, 2007 and based on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.8. It included general bug fixes identified in versions 8.0 through 8.1.2.

 

 

On January 23, 2007, Netscape announced that Netscape Browser versions 8.0 through 8.1.2 would be succeeded by a new stand-alone browser release, Netscape Navigator 9. Its features were said to include newsfeed support and become more integrated with the Propeller internet portal, alongside more enhanced methods of discussion, submission and voting on web pages. It also sees the browser return to multi-platform support across Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Like Netscape version 8.x, the new release was be based upon Mozilla Firefox (version 2.0.0.3), and have full support of all Firefox add-ons and plugins, some of which Netscape was already providing. It would also include the IEView and IETab extensions which allow the same function as Netscape Browser 8’s IE Display Mode. Also for the first time since 2004, the browser was produced in-house with its own director and full programming staff. A beta of the program was first released on June 5, 2007. The final version was released on October 15, 2007. Netscape Version 9.0.0.5 is based on Firefox 2.0.0.11.

 

Overall, Yours Truly tended to avoid Netscape if only because it tended to lag on implementing security updates, which were made (sometimes) months after Firefox had received them.

 

 

And so the Netscape Navigator/Communicator/Browser, or whatever you want to call it, will finally expire on February 1, 2008.

 

Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog that, “While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.”

 

That’s something of an understatement. TechCrunch’s recent survey quoted throughout the net reveal that Netscape currently has only 0.6% market share among browsers, compared to IE’s 77.35% and Firefox’s 16.01%.

 

Drapeau says AOL is more focused on a transition into an ad-supported web business, and that leaves little room for efforts at maintaining and evolving the Netscape Browser (especially one that doesn’t drive traffic to AOL sites laden with click-thru advertising).

 

Support and security for existing versions of Netscape Navigator will cease on February 1, 2008. Following that, you can try visiting UFAQ and the Netscape Community Forum for support.

 

AOL is also assembling a Netscape Archive where users will be able to download old versions of Netscape, though without any support.

 

All in all, it was a jolly good 13-year roller coaster ride.

 

 

The last vestiges of Netscape were not really wiped out by Internet Explorer. IE had stopped innovating when Netscape gave up, went the open source route and allowed itself to be purchased by AOL. Until 2006 there was only one new version of Internet Explorer since version 6.0 was released in 2001. Internet Explorer 6.0 Service Pack 1 was developed as part of Windows XP SP2, and was integrated into Windows Server 2003 SP1.

 

In actuality, Netscape sewed the seeds of its own destruction (and those of the second browser war) by setting up the Mozilla open source project, which was initially founded to develop a totally new generation of the Netscape Communicator suite. The Mozilla Application Suite, like Netscape Communicator, is an ‘all-in-one’ application, consisting of a browser, email/newsgroups client, address book, and an HTML editor. Other components added to the suite along the way included an IRC chat client, and web development tools such as a DOM inspector and JavaScript debugger.

 

Dissatisfied with the symbiotic relationship between Netscape and Mozilla and how that was affecting Mozilla’s development, a group of Mozilla programming contributors decided to take Mozilla code and develop more streamlined “leaner and meaner” product. This new product would just be a browser - pure, perfect, unencumbered by API “hooks” and middleware and extraneous code involving additional components. That idea for an ideal product became Mozilla Firefox. The same concept was applied to the email/newsgroups client, and that second product idea became Mozilla Thunderbird. There’s even a less famous HTML editor built along these same lines, called Nvu. And an IRC chat client that rounds out the group, called ChatZilla, is available as an extension.

 

In the Spring of 2003, when AOL wiped out the Netscape division of programmers, and Mozilla became an independent entity, the Mozilla developers began to focus on the stand-alone applications of Firefox and Thunderbird. Firefox appeared in November 2004 and began to give Internet Explorer a run for its money. Indeed, it gave Netscape (the later versions of which were based on its underlying Mozilla code) somewhat less of a run — since Firefox won. Indeed, as Netscape Director Tom Drapeau admitted, the latest release of the Netscape browser is simply “a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions”.

 

Ironically, Firefox is “skinnable” in that you can alter its user interface to make it look like the Netscape Browser. There are, in fact, a number of them, such as Foxscape, which looks like Netscape 4.8; “Modern Aluminum” that looks like Netscape 7.x with its silver buttons; and “Netstripe” which was developed by the programmers behind the final Netscape 9 browser.

 

Netscape’s demise is thus more of a consequence of Firefox’s success. Both Firefox and its Thunderbird emailer companion are now #2 rivals to Internet Explorer and Outlook. (The Opera browser is in third place and, in the tradition of many companies that peep about under the legs of the Microsoft Colossus, it has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Union to force Microsoft to support open web standards in Internet Explorer and to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop.)

 

The Mozilla Foundation eventually curtailed development of the Mozilla Application Suite. Mozilla 1.7 was updated with security updates until April of 2006, with version 1.7.13 being the last.

 

However, a subset of the Mozilla community, admiring the Mozilla Suite’s superb interface, decided to split off and start a project called SeaMonkey, which aims to “deliver production-quality releases of code derived from the application formerly known as ‘Mozilla Application Suite’.” So, what would have been Mozilla 1.8 is SeaMonkey 1.0. It contains an Internet browser, email and newsgroup client, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools. SeaMonkey uses much of the same Mozilla source code which powers its close relatives: Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino (a Mac OS X-native browser built on Mozilla’s Gecko layout rendering engine.), Sunbird (a world-class calendaring program) and Miro (video player and free HD TV content). Legal backing is provided by the Mozilla Foundation.

 

So although Netscape itself may now belong to the ages, its legacy continues in the form of Firefox and SeaMonkey (unless you own a Mac, in which case you’re using Safari ­ athough, come to think of it, a snappy Windows beta version of Safari 3 is now available from Apple).

 

At some point Microsoft will realize that the browser wars are not over by any means. . .