Reminiscing Netscape
Posted By Faye
When I was a freshman in college in 1995, the laboratory in the Institute of Computer Science used the ever popular (in those days) Netscape Navigator. This browser had been a household name amongst all students. It was considered fast, reliable and dependable. It never really occurred in our minds that a few years later it would cease to exist.
Netscape Navigator is a proprietary web browser that became popular in the 1990s. On its first press release, it announced that it would be free for download and use to all non-commercial users. However, they changed their policy within two months. By then, only educational and non-profit institutions could use Netscape without charge. Although this was the case, Netscape Navigator was still in the A-list because it made internet surfing a breeze. Most web browsers that time allowed for the display of the page only after the whole web page has been downloaded. One of the important innovations of Netscape was the real-time display of text and graphics as they are being downloaded. Web pages like the Australia business directory and some graphics heavy websites could have been easily downloaded using this browser.
Netscape reached its all-time high in usage share sometime in 1996. However, a competitor, Microsoft Internet Explorer, emerged. Although the earlier versions of IE was found to be inferior and primitive next to Netscape, they soon overrun Netscape sometime in 1997 as they improved in stability. Netscape tried to enhance itself by attaching email, news reader and other functions to its browser, which slowed it down tremendously. Netscape became prone to crashes, and people started to use IE more and more until Netscape eventually stopped developing in 2007. Now that’s a lesson we can all learn from.