AOL to Shut Down Netscape Support/Development

Kelson writes "After years of trying to figure out what to do with it, AOL is officially discontinuing the Netscape browser. In the four and a half years after they dismantled the development team and spun off the Mozilla Foundation as a lost cause, only to see Firefox take off, AOL has tried twice to reinvent Netscape. There was the chimera-like Netscape 8, which used both Mozilla's and IE's rendering engines, and just months ago they released Netscape 9, trying to ride the social networking wave. AOL will release security fixes through February 1, 2008, after which the browser will officially be dead. For the "nostalgic," they suggest using Firefox and installing a Netscape theme."

Nostalgia

[truthsearch]

For my nostalgia we have the old Netscape icon as a slashdot category image. That's more than enough for me.

So, did Microsoft really win?

[SpaceLifeForm]

I'd have to say no, and in fact, their attack on Netscape
probably woke up a lot of people, and Microsoft may regret it.

Days gone by

[Pojut]

I will always remember sneaking into the "study" super-late at night, dialing up, and going into chat rooms with Netscape Navigator. I will never forget viewing my first porn website (don't know if it's still around, Babylon-X) using Netscape Navigator. I remember receiving my first email using Angelfire and Netscape Navigator. I even remember the very first file I ever downloaded (a printer driver for an old HP) using Netscape Navigator.

Yup, many of my firsts on the internet involved Netscape Navigator...I haven't used it in years, but I am still a little bit sad to see it go. Goodbye, comet-flying-over-a-global-sized-N...you were the gateway to a hell of a lot in my youth.

Re:I think I'm too young to care.

[Morky]

Maybe that's true if you only associate with 10-year-olds. But as recently as 1996, it was the only browser worth using, created by one of the most innovative tech companies around.

Re:Version 4 is still useful

[eln]

Netscape 3.0 was the pinnacle of the Netscape browser. The standard edition (not necessarily the Gold edition) was light weight, fast, and standards compliant. Of course, it also marked the point at which IE really started to catch up with Netscape in terms of stability and performance. Netscape 4 was big, bloated, and marked the peak of Netscape's attempts to "embrace and extend" the standards. It also helped accelerate Netscape's decline.

Of course, I still think the best browser "busy" logo was the multiple animated panes behind the M in Mosaic Netscape 0.9 (before they were forced to change the name by the University of Illinois). Those were of course replaced by one of the worst, the giant pulsating N of Netscape 1.0.

Re:To be honest...

[cp.tar]

What did Netscape do that Mozilla/Firefox did not?

Have collapsible toolbars.

Really, the only thing I miss in Firefox that was in Netscape since 4.something.
Seamonkey has it, though.

Re:Days gone by

[mnmn]

It's not necessarily gone.

Someone could buy the Netscape brand name and donate it to the Mozilla foundation.

We'll all get a kick out of Netscape (previously known as firefox) kicking the ass of IE.

Heck if someone setup an organization to buy that brand name to give it to firefox, I'm paying big $$$

Re:Already Dead

[wattrlz]

I believe most people started using IE because it was an integral part of the operating system. At least I know that's why I did. Why wait all those precious seconds openning up another browser when you have one already running in the background?

AOL blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

When they first acquired Netscape, I thought for sure they were going to release AOL branded PCs running Linux with a Netscape browser. Imagine if they could ssh into your box and fix problems for you (perhaps after you boot off a recovery cd if things were really borked); basically they could have marketed it as a "zero maintenance" pc. They could have bundled the cost of the machine and internet at a reasonable monthly cost (PCs were running about $1000 at the time). It would have been interesting indeed if this had happened.

Re:Already Dead

[BlueStraggler]

Netscape 4.x was the last version that was widely released for the Unix crowd. I think it was more "native" on Unix workstations (coming from the NCSA after all) and I never had any problems with stability - despite being forced to use it up to v4.8 because there was no alternative until Mozilla started to become available. Considering the number of platforms they were supporting, I'm not surprised that some were not particularly stable, but fortunately for me, SGI was not one of them, and it's was pretty easy to dismiss Windows 95 and Mac OS users complaints about stability as clearly being related to their choice of OS.

I perused the Xdefaults file for Netscape 4 one day, and it was full of fascinating comments from the developers. A lot of them were expressing bitterness about arbitrary, non-standard, and downright buggy differences between various platforms that they were supporting, which evidently led to a lot of pain and suffering. No surprise that after Netscape 4, the Unix crowd was left in the dustbin - it was the easiest way to cut the number of supported platforms by 80% and focus their development on the PC market.

Re:To be honest...

[geekoid]

Meh, I just want to tell my geek friends I own Netscape.

I might take the trademark and put it on Seamonkey.
Try to brand to a wider audience.

Maybe keep it bloated and get an underhanded deal with MS so they can included it as an "alternative", but always make it a little worse then IE. Then when I am rich, totally release a better browser.

Now that I think about it, I would use it as an opener to some VCs for another project I am trying to get going.

Re:To be honest...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I'd say they should give it to someone and that might well be you.

They should give the trademark to the Mozilla Foundation and let them rebrand Seamonkey (with the new Firefox 3 code base) as Netscape Communicator 10. Since Mozilla essentially is Netscape, this returns the trademark to the right place. They can sell it for a dollar and write off the difference between that and what they paid for it as a loss on their taxes.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:To be honest...

[Oktober Sunset]

I remember there used to be an extension that added grippies to collapse the toolbars, that was a long time ago tho, back when it was called firebird and came in a zip file with no icons. I have no clue if there is anything like that still about.

Re:I remember NS8

[RobertM1968]

I'm not sure how many of those people actually worked (or work) for AOL. The DialUp team did NOT. We worked for UUNet, then MCI/Worldcom. Who AOL used after that I dont know... but I doubt they installed the tons of access numbers needed when MCI/WC went under. AlterDial (and UUDial) was owned and operated by UUNet, and used mostly for AOL and MSN. Authentication and such were done by us too. Support was handled by a different group.

Re:I think I'm too young to care.

[Penguinisto]

god i remember that - and sitting on a 2400 baud modem.. what a wonder the web was at that time..

Heh - I recall being stuck with a 2.4k modem once (my 'fast' 14.4 had busted for some odd reason and I was waiting for its replacement to ship to the local geek shack I'd bought it from).

I clocked this version [archive.org] of www.discovery.com loading in just under 42 minutes.

...and to think of all the FPS gamers today whining to the Heavens about, oh, ~40ms of lag... Heh.

/P