Netscape Navigator is a web browser that once dominated the market but is now hardly more than a niche product.

Netscape 9.0.0.6 The last version of Netscape, based on Firefox code with performance improvements. Toolbar for Internet Explorer 7.0.2 / 6.3.4.0 Useful program that features a popup blocker. 1990 WorldWideWeb (Nexus) 1993 Lynx; 1月 2月 3月 2.0. 4月 5月 6月 7月 2.0.10 8月 2.0.11 9月 10月 11月 2.0.12 12月 2.1 1994 Lynx Mosaic Netscape.

Table of contents

1 Development 2 The Browser Wars 3 The open source revolution 4 Version history 5 References 6 External links

Development

Netscape 7.0 Browser

Netscape began as the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and was loosely based on NCSA's Mosaic In fact, Marc Andreessen, who worked on the development of the Mosaic web browser, left NCSA with Jim Clark to form Mosaic Communications, but due to NCSA threatening legal action for using the Mosaic name, they renamed themselves Netscape. When the consumer Internet revolution arrived in the mid to late 1990s, Netscape was well positioned to take advantage of it. With a good mix of features and an attractive licensing scheme that allowed free use for non-commercial purposes, the Netscape browser soon became the de facto-standard, particularly on the Windows platform. Internet service providers and computer magazine publishers helped make Navigator readily available.

Through the late 1990s, Netscape made sure that Navigator remained the technical leader amongst web browsers. Important new features included frames (version 2.0), cookies, and JavaScript (version 3.0). Although those and other innovations eventually became open standards of the W3C and ECMA and were emulated by other browsers, they were often viewed as controversial. Netscape, according to critics, was more interested in bending the web to its own de facto standards (and thus marginalizing the commercial competition) than it was in improving user experience of the Navigator product. Consumer rights advocates were particularly critical of the ability to invade individual privacy that cookies gave to commercial websites.

During development the Netscape browser was known by the code name Mozilla. This name came about after the company changed its name from Mosaic Communications to Netscape, and was a shortened version of its perceived role as the Mosaic Killer. After release the Mozilla name continued to be used as the User-Agent in the HTTP request, and is still used today by MicrosoftInternet Explorer as well as others to claim compatibility to the supposed 'standards' that Netscape started. Mozilla is now the name of the Open source successor to the browser.

The Browser Wars

In the marketplace, however, these concerns had little effect; Netscape Navigator remained the unchallenged leader with approximately 90% market share. Industry observers confidently forecast the dawn of a new era of connected computing. The underlying operating software, it was believed, would become an unimportant consideration; most applications would simply run on a web browser—which itself, of course, could run on virtually any platform from mainframe to thin client.

This was seen by Netscape as a clear opportunity to entrench Navigator at the heart of the next generation of computing, and thus provide Netscape with the opportunity to expand into all manner of other software and service markets. Conversely, Microsoft saw it as a clear threat to the previously unchallenged near-monopoly status of the Windows operating system. The two companies began concerted campaigns to maintain (or establish, in Microsoft's case) control over the browser market. Browser market share, it was reasoned, leads to control over internet standards, and that in turn would provide the opportunity to sell software and services.

Netscape had the advantage of near-90% market share and a good deal of public goodwill, but as a relatively small company deriving the great bulk of its income from what was essentially a single product (Navigator and various derivitives), was financially vulnerable.

Microsoft, on the other hand, had massive financial resources but tiny market share and a product that was, in the early days, markedly inferior. With the stated intention of 'cutting off Netscape's air supply', Microsoft released their own Internet Explorer, and soon made it a free (and in fact compulsory) part of Windows 95.

The early versions of Internet Explorer (IE) were clearly inferior to Navigator, but a massive development effort led to rapid improvement. IE version 3.0 (1996) was a usable substitute, and IE 5.0 (1998) was very large and bloated by the standards of the day but superior in almost all respects. Neither browser, though, adhered to the W3C's HTML and CSS standards, causing compatability problems which still have an impact today.

Meanwhile, Netscape's own browser development stagnated. Distracted by commercial considerations, Netscape's coders made only minor changes to Navigator, and worked away on the Netscape Communicator project - a major re-write of Navigator that added email and HTML composition modules.

Although it was being starved of revenue, the Netscape company was eventually able to sell itself to giant media conglomerate AOL. The purchase price was AOL stock valued at $4.2 billion at the deal announcement in November 1998.

When Communicator was eventually released, the new features were largely ignored by users, but the size increase and speed reduction were noted. More and more people switched to IE - which was no smaller but was at least more stable in 5.0 form, and faster in two different senses: much of the program load time was disguised by having Windows pre-load Explorer code at system boot time; and IE's page rendering engine was better at drawing complex pages (especially those composed of nested HTML tables).

By the end of the decade, Navigator had unquestionably lost its former dominance on the Windows platform. Even on other platforms it was threatened, both by the gradual rise of open source browsers and by the August 1997 agreement that resulted in an investment of $150,000,000 by Microsoft in Apple, which included a requirement that Apple switch their default browser from Netscape to Explorer. (An earlier, and perhaps more severe blow had been AOL's switch into the Microsoft camp - this was before AOL bought Netscape.) Underlying all of this, though, was the massive and ultimately successful campaign to get ISPs to distribute Explorer instead of Netscape, and web developers to incorporate proprietary, Microsoft-only code in web pages.

The elderly Navigator 4.x code just couldn't keep up. Typical web pages had become graphics-heavy, often Java-intensive, and were constructed with masses of extraordinarily complex HTML code that used constructs designed for specific narrow purposes and redeployed them as global layout tools - in particular this applied to HTML tables, which Navigator struggled to render. Netscape, once regarded as a reasonably solid product, came to be seen as crash-prone and buggy.

The open source revolution

In 1998, Netscape bowed to the inevitable and abandoned the effort to make the browser a paying commercial product. Instead, Netscape split off most of the Navigator code and put it under an open source license as Mozilla. In the short-term, this achieved nothing. After the code was branched, work was started on Netscape 5.0, but it was decided to abandon the attempt to continue to develop the elderly Netscape Communicator code and the Mozilla team took on the massive task of completely rewriting the browser code from scratch, and Netscape 5.0 was never finished or released. The decision was criticized by some observers on the grounds that it allowed Microsoft to win the browser war on the Windows platform. Others believed that the war was already lost in any case, and that it was better to create a new and more capable product before returning to the fray.

With much fanfare, Netscape's new owners AOL released Netscape 6 on November 14, 2000, based on early Mozilla code. The product was a massive disappointment: it was huge, slow, unstable, and (in the eyes of most) visually unappealing. This was not surprising as the Mozilla core itself was nowhere near release-ready and itself unstable.

Netscape 6.1 and Netscape 6.2, released in 2001, addressed the stability problems, but were still large and slow and could not overcome Netscape 6's bad reputation. They were generally ignored by the market.

Netscape 7.0 Free Download

In 2002, AOL released Netscape 7. It was based on a very stable and notably faster Mozilla 1.0 core and bundled with extras like integrated AOL Instant Messenger, integrated ICQ and Radio@Netscape. In the main, the market responded to what was essentially a repackaged version of Mozilla, swollen with integrated tools to access proprietary services owned by AOL, by ignoring it. Competition from the now-mature and competent non-Microsoft alternatives in Opera and the regular Mozilla distribution was presumably a major factor. A further release of Netscape 7.1 (based on Mozilla 1.4) was similarly ignored.

On the Windows platform, Netscape Navigator is a minor player. There is some use of recent versions, but most remaining Netscape use under Windows is by people who steadfastly refuse to switch from the elderly 4.x (the newer browsers generally require more powerful machines for a decent performance). On other platforms, particularly ones like Linux which do not have Internet Explorer bundled, Netscape remained the dominant browser for much longer. Only in the last year or two has the rise of alternatives like Mozilla and Konqueror given it strong competition.

AOL announced on July 15th, 2003 that it had or intended to fire all its remaining paid programmers responsible for the Netscape browser rebranding of Mozilla. Combined with AOL's agreement with Microsoft to use Internet Explorer in future versions of the AOL software, Netscape as a browser will likely become a historical footnote. However, the Netscape brand will live on as the name of AOL's low-cost internet service.

Version history

• Mosaic Netscape 0.9 - October 13, 1994
• Netscape Navigator 1.0 - December 15, 1994
• Netscape Navigator 2.0 - September 18, 1995
• Netscape Navigator 3.0 - August 19, 1996
• Netscape Navigator 3.04 - October 4, 1997
• Netscape Navigator 4.0 - June1997
• Netscape Navigator 4.06 - August 17, 1998
• Netscape Navigator 4.08 - November 9, 1998 (Last stand-alone Navigator; Last Netscape release for 16-bit Windows and 68k Macs)
• Netscape Communicator 4.5 - October 19, 1998
• Netscape Communicator 4.61 - June 14, 1999
• Netscape Communicator 4.7 - September 30, 1999
• Netscape Communicator 4.79 - 2001
• Netscape Communicator 4.8 - August 22, 2002
• Netscape 6.0, 6.01 - November 14, 2000 (Based on Mozilla M18; First to use Mozilla code)
• Netscape 6.1 - August 8, 2001 (Based on Mozilla 0.9.2.1)
• Netscape 6.2, 6.2.1, 6.2.2, 6.2.3 (Based on Mozilla 0.9.4.1)
• Netscape 7.0 - August 29, 2002 (Based on Mozilla 1.0.1)
• Netscape 7.01 - December 10, 2002 (Based on Mozilla 1.0.2)
• Netscape 7.02 - February 18, 2003 (Based on Mozilla 1.0.2)
• Netscape 7.1 - June 30, 2003 (Based on Mozilla 1.4)

References

The development of the Netscape browser and the company was described in the book Netscape Time by Jim Clark and Owen Edwards (Hardcover ISBN 0312199341; Paperback ISBN 0312263619).

External links

• Netscape Archived Browser Products - Versions 2.0x to 7.02
• Users list of Netscape browsers & special distributions - Easier than Netscape.com

Netscape 7.0 Download

Macintosh sites A-E F-NO-ZMac OS X

Download my résumé as a Word compressed zip file and Adobe Acrobat. My freelance availability calendar is also available. Tech support jobs. advanced If you need technical support for issues after reading this FAQ, please visit my Tech Support page, where I offer fee based support. Note: this page was formerly on the Mac OS X speed FAQ This page was started as a one stop resource for many Apple compatible web browsers. In an effort to make it easier to find out why certain websites won't work on your Mac. A user tip on Apple Support Communities was added on 3/26/2021 by me to address current browsers for Macs. It is divided into these sections: References for coding websites Many websites may not be totally compatible with any of those web browsers, but that's because their webmasters (the commonly used term for the programmer of a webpage) neglect to follow WWW Consortium Standards. You should write the webmaster of any website that doesn't follow those standards and let them know that the web is more than just for Windows users, and that following those standards will help their web pages be more accessible. First off, those who can't afford another operating system, can now see their website as viewed from nearly every browser on the planet at Browsershots.org. A great page on helping webmasters become more crossbrowser compatible is Anybrowser.org. Others include Webstandards.org, and Webmonkey. Mac users may be interested in Pure-Mac's Editors - Software for Macintosh for a variety of webpage editors for the Mac Meanwhile if the webmaster doesn't respond, here are links to all the major web browsers for the Mac and tools to make them work more efficiently. In addition to requesting webmasters to make websites more compatible, let the authors of the web browsers know when a website doesn't work. Below the table below are Java updates. The contact link to the various web browser authors is in the table below next to each web browser: Browser name with download link PowerPC and/or Mac OS 9 version Contact/feedback link Older versions included on earlier updates for Mac upgrades may not work as well as current browsers available for them. A history of security updates also covers when Safari was updated. Safari 11.1.2 is available for 10.11.6. Wikipedia lists the latest Safari version, and which operating system can use it Safari 11.1 is in 10.13.4. Safari 9.1.2 is on 10.11.6's last security update that came out simultaneously with 10.13.4. Safari 9.0 ships with Mac OS X 10.11, and version 9.1 is available for 10.9, 10.10, and 10.11 through Software updates for the operating systems combined with the the security update, and the Safari update through the App Store. 10.10.4 for instance can't get Safari 9.1, but Mac OS X 10.9.5 and 10.10.5 can, and it must be installed separately from the security update unless you install all the updates for the operating system together including remote desktop and other updates which may not be needed by you. Other browsers such as Chrome and Firefox are not as sensitive to the operating system. Safari 8.0.8 ships with Mac OS X 10.10.5 Safari 8.0.7 ships with Mac OS X 10.10.4 Safari 7.0.5 ships with Mac OS X 10.9.4. Safari 7 ships with Mac OS X 10.9. Safari 6.0.5 is part of Mac OS X 10.8.5. Safari 6.0 ships with Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Safari Safari 6 for Mac OS X 10.7, and Safari 5 for Mac OS X 10.6 are being kept up to date. Safari 5.1.6 came out with 10.7.4. In 10.7.3 and 10.6.8 it is 5.1.5. Safari 5.1.2 is available in Mac OS X 10.7.2, and 10.6.8 from Apple for 10.6.8 only. Version 5.0.4 is included with 10.6.7. Safari 5.0 is included with 10.6.4, however requires 10.5.8, and 10.6.2 or later on Apple's website. Note, version 5.0.2 has reportedly had issues with some computers slowing downloads of updates. 5.0.3 appears to have fixed the problem for some, as well as issues with the download speed of . Version 4.0.5 could also run on 10.6.2. Version 4.0.4 shipped with Mac OS X 10.6.2. Version 4.0.3 came with 10.6 and 10.6.1. Version 4.0.2 was included with 10.5.8. Safari 3.2.3 is also available for 10.5.7, 10.4.11 (no longer available as English download), Windows XP and Vista (version no longer stored at Apple). Version 3.2.1 was available for 10.5.5. Version 3.0.4 was included with 10.4.11, and 10.5, 10.5.1, and 10.5.2. Version 3.1 and later include a 'Develop menu' in the Safari menu -> Preferences -> Advanced that allows Safari to spoof a website into thinking it is a different web browser. Prior versions (3.0.4 and earlier), read about enabling the Debug menu. If you want to explore the command line via Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal, you can enable the Debug menu that the previously available software Safari Enhancer does offer you a User Agent menuitem to cloak itself as a different web browser (I'm not sure which versions this works on since I haven't tested it on all): defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1 Nagarabrowser (original source no longer exists) gives Safari a kiosk mode. With the 10.3.9 update it has been reported that several third party addons such as Saft and Acid Search will need updates. The March 2005 security update fixes Java issues on Safari, and if you applied the 10.3.9 delta update, applying the 10.3.9 combined update will often fix issues. See my Upgrade FAQ for more on how to apply updates without running into issues such as these. Version 1.1.1 and later are only available as part of Apple's Mac OS X 10.3. Older versions of Safari are only available in non-English varieties from Apple: Version 1.3.2 is available for 10.3.9. Version 2.0 is current as of Mac OS X 10.4, and 2.0.1 is available for 10.4.2)*, and 2.0.4 is available when you upgrade Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.4.7 through 10.4.10. Safari is also available for 10.5.7, 10.4.11, Windows XP and Vista. Version 3.2.1 was available for 10.5.5. Version 3.0.4 was included with 10.4.11, and 10.5, 10.5.1, and 10.5.2. Go to Safari menu and select 'Report Bugs to Apple' Download Netscape 9 for Mac OS X, Netscape 7.0.2 Mac PowerPC and other versions listed as Mac PowerPC are available for Mac OS 9 AOL Developer page Microsoft Internet Explorer is no longer available for download from Microsoft. A WINE version for Intel Macs offers some I.E. 7 compatibility. The Mac OS X version 5.2.3 is available from Majorgeeks. There are several stores which carry old Apple operating system disks which also included Internet Explorer for Mac OS X. If installing older operating system disks, be sure to observe the System Specific installation notes. The Mac OS X version of Internet Explorer was last preloaded on Mac OS X 10.3's Install Disk 2 as version 5.2.3. The included Internet Explorer for Mac OS 9 on restore disks and Mac OS 9 installer disks is version 5.0. Remember if installing Mac OS X, only an Archive and Install and Upgrade and Install will let you preserve applications from previous versions of Mac OS X on the hard disk. Otherwise, you'll need to either use the Install Additional Applications from the restore disks, or Charlessoft's Pacifist to extract the files from the installer packages to reretrieve Internet Explorer (if it wasn't backed up elsewhere). Macintosh Repository has the only known copies of version 5.1.7 for Mac OS 9. Microsoft product feedback page Omnigroup's Omniweb for 10.4.8 to 10.9.5 E-mail Omniweb support Opera Opera for Mac OS 7 through 9 Opera's Contact page iCab - one of the few browsers that still has downloads going back to System 7.5 (you read that right, from 1995) Download page lists both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X versions E-mail iCab support Mozilla can immitate other browsers with User-agent switcher Classila and Wamcom Mozilla for Mac OS 9 Mozilla Bugzilla feedback page Google Chrome Google Chrome Discussions Camino (formerly known as Navigator) Camino Bugzilla feedback page Firefox (formerly known as Firebird) can immitate other browsers with User-agent switcher. Its version 45.9 works well with Yahoo on 10.6.8 PowerPC version Firefox Bugzilla feedback page Waterfox - Mac OS X 10.7.5 compatible Firefox, This tip was written on Apple Support Communities: 'It's October 2017 now, and I run the current version of Waterfox (55.2.2) on OS X 10.7.5. It's derived from Firefox, but is is less tardy than Firefox. I like that the Reader mode has speech output tied to OS X's voices and that it automatically chooses the correct language as well - if only it wouldn't crash sometimes for some reason... Important for Youtube: If Youtube videos don't play in Waterfox (giving you a playback error message) you will have to deactivate the Multiple Process feature in Waterfox's preference settings.' Contact info Bumpercar - kids web browser Bumpercar contact addresses Tenfourfox Support Brave Help Center WannaBe Contact info You can run PC web browsers on the Mac if you use one of these Intel operating systems on the Mac solutions. Note however, any website which requires you use Internet Explorer for Windows is unlikely to be a very secure website, given the number of times such websites have been hacked. Java Updates Note: Java versioning may confuse some people when someone refers to Java 7, they really mean Java 1.7.x. Versions on Apple download site usually refer to the 1.x versioning. Java version 7 has had a security flaw which is documented on my tip user tip on Apple's Support Communities. Apple explains the latest Java available for Mac OS X 10.4, and 10.5, at Article TS3489. The latest Java exists for Mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3 and addresses some of the Flashback trojan issue. For the 10.6.8 download go to DL1516. Java for 10.7.3 and later is supported by http://www.java.com/ The latest Java for 10.5.8 is http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1359 And for 10.7 go to Oracle's Java page. Apple has a guide to the latest Java updates on their Technote Database. Not all Javas are Mac compatible without Emulation or Virtualization as ActiveX was only developed for Windows, and is not a true Java. Any site that uses ActiveX should be criticized for not using an open standard of Java. Java support may be improved 10.2.3 combo or 10.2.4 through 10.2.6 combo updates, Java update for Mac OS X 10.3 to Java 1.4.1, Java update for 10.3.4 to 1.4.2, Java Update for 10.3.9, Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 release 1 for Tiger, Software Update search for latest Java updates The Carbon Java Plugin, and Java Embedding Plugin are both different plugins which can be used to make certain Java sites more accessible in some Mac OS X web browsers. I would be careful not to run both at the same time. Adobe has dropped all Flash support as of December 31, 2020. If you still have Flash on your computer, visit Adobe's website to download the uninstaller. If you find websites that still require it, please remind them that HTML5 has now supplanted Flash. A similar problem to that which exists for web browsers, is that most e-mail programs don't have complete support for web browser standards. As a result, getting HTML e-mail can be problematic at best. There is an excellent site that discusses the issues of HTML e-mail at Birdhouse.org. Among them there are security, accessibility, and design elements which simply don't render the same way on all e-mails. If you receive HTML e-mails and have no option to receive text, I recommend contacting the company that sends such e-mails and ask for a link to the webpage which has those documents. Attachments are also problematic as my Mac OS X page reference discusses. It is better for any document being transmitted via e-mail that can't be represented by ASCII text to be saved to a website and referred to by a link in an e-mail, than attempts to render information in e-mail which can't be universally read.