Netscape Navigator

See also: Web Browsers | Netscape | Mozilla

A cross-platform Web Browser from Netscape Communications, Inc., now owned by AOL/Time Warner.

In its latest version, Netscape Navigator 7 can be downloaded for free from Netscape (http://www.netscape.com)’s Web site, also an Internet portal service. It includes most features found in an open-source Gecko-based browser Mozilla version 1.1, (1.3 is the current, latest edition) but also includes:

Instant messaging: both AOL‘s Instant Messaging client and ICQ are integrated into the browser but do not connect to both networks at the same time.
E-mail: check both your Netscape.com email and AOL e-mail from the Netscape Mail client.
RealNetworks media player, AOL Radio@Netscape tool
Net2Phone commercial Internet telephony

Netscape 6 and 7 and above are based on Mozilla, an open-source Web Browser project. However, Mozilla is not owned by anyone including Netscape or AOL. Netscape’s product is intended to be smoother and more user-friendly than the developer-centered Mozilla project.

Compared to Mozilla:

Netscape 6 and 7 are slower than Mozilla because of extra programs and tools.
Netscape adds a variety of useless AOL icons and RealNetworks garbage to your system.
Navigator has ceased development of version 7 and instead decided to donate money and server power to the Mozilla Foundation.

Previous versions

The early versions of Navigator introduced a number of important additions to what we now know on the Internet.

Netscape 3 – in many ways the foundation of what we know as a Web browser after the orignal Mosaic, Netscape 3 captured the browser market during Netscape’s hey-day.

Netscape 4 (Netscape Communicator), also a browser suite, includes a useful e-mail/news client, WYSIWYG HTML editor, and address book. A very cross-platform browser, other Operating Systems and languages can be found on the Netscape FTP (ftp://ftp4.netscape.com/pub/communicator). A standalone version is also available but not as maintained as Communicator. For users who

Although Netscape 4 series is generally faster startup on older systems (Pentium 200 or slower) it has very poor standards-compliance and renders pages slower than most other browsers. Opera is advised for these systems.

Netscape 5, largely skipped, some development was completed but otherwise, it was ignored and the code dumped in favor of a fresh rewrite (Mozilla).

Previous versions

Links