Netscape, the browser I grew up with… is gone. Sad, but way past its time. I had hoped Firefox would have changed its name to Netscape (instead of, well, Firefox… the product has gone through three names anyways).
AOL pretty much put the last nails in Netscape long ago, but it did show some promise as being able to tap both Internet Explorer and Firefox APIs in the same application (you could toggle between the two seamlessly to render a site). Unfortunately, over time, AOL cut back on the project more and more… almost equal to its rate of decay in the browser world.
Netscape will now live on in a set of a Netscape theme and a few social networking extensions for Firefox (oh, and in a web portal… yeah, I didn’t mention it at first either). You have until February to cleanse Netscape from your system before it loses all security guarantees.
I was a Navigator user from pre-1.0 through 4.79 – I still have my install floppies for 1.22 Gold. Which I purchased – remember when browsers weren’t free? I switched to Navigator from NCSA Mosaic. I switched to Mozilla Suite full time around the point it hit 1.0, and then to Firefox a bit after it hit 1.0.
At this point I’m happy to see the Netscape name retired, since AOL has abused it. It is a sad relic of what it once was, and today’s users just don’t think ‘Netscape’ when they think of the web. It is a historic name – but not something most of today’s users think of with respect.
BTW, if you like the in-browser IE rendering (that’s one of the things I loathed about what AOL did), the ‘IE Tab’ extension for Firefox will give you the same ability.