Netscape Navigator, the browser that dictated internet, the browser that contributed towards the growth of web is out of game now. Even though it’s not there, its domination as a web browser can be seen even today. All modern browsers including its archrival Internet Explorer use ‘Mozilla’ in user agent string. I wonder any one of today’s developers ever wondered why Internet Explorer uses ‘Mozilla’ in user agent string. (Please understand that ‘Mozilla’ is neither an invention nor a trademark of Firefox. It existed even before Firefox took birth.) In olden days, Netscape was an advanced browser that supports many advanced features of HTML, JavaScript etc. None of the other browsers supported these features. As always, cross browser compatibility was an issue. So developers used render page based on the user agent. For Netscape they used to render page with advanced features and for others they used to render page with basic features. (By the time I started developing it was more common to use ‘document.layers’ & ‘document.all’ in JavaScript to differentiate browsers.) Programmers rendering page based on user agent really became challenge for other browsers. Even though other browsers (like IE) started supporting advanced features, it was of no use as HTML code was rendered with basic features only. To get advanced HTML rendered from the code, only option left for the browsers was to use ‘Mozilla’ in user agent. From then all browsers started using ‘Mozilla’ in user agent. Concept of DHTML was originally from Netscape where dynamism was created using layers. Such was the domination of Netscape on web.
I started using internet from 1999, however it was that I never had any special interest or disinterest for Netscape at that time. It was in 2001, when I started working as a web developer, my love for Netscape started. We were developing a web application that needs to be supported by Netscape 4.7 & Internet Explorer 4.0, 4.5. I started liking Netscape when we started addressing issues of cross browser compatibility. If you go by the first impression then you will obviously like IE. IE displays the content on your page irrespective how bad you write your HTML code. On the other hand Netscape won’t display the content if your HTML code is not properly nested. So naturally, a developer will like IE. But it is when you face issues on your page, (Eg: content is getting displayed on the left side of browser instead of right side) you understand the value of Netscape. To debug these issues with IE, you need to go through entire HTML code to find missing tags. However Netscape directly shows which section of your code is failing. We used to fix these type of issues with the help of Netscape. I used to call Netscape a disciplined browser; it displays only well-structured HTML code and suppresses content when there is issue with nesting. If your HTML works in Netscape you are almost sure that it will work in all browsers that were available then like IE, Opera etc. However if your HTML works in IE, you never know how it will behave in other browsers. Netscape was very much useful to solve issues with HTML. Few problems that we faced (space between <TABLE>, space on the top of the page, irregular behavior of <td> etc) were easily resolved with the help of Netscape and I am sure we would have spent 100 times of effort to solve them with help of IE. This increased my value for Netscape and I had almost stopped using IE.
Another place where Netscape was extremely useful was in debugging JavaScript. JavaScript can’t be compiled and it will throw compilation errors during runtime when it is interpreted. For these errors, IE shows stupid error message which can’t be understood at all. Netscape has JavaScript console that shows exact location of error in your code. That makes life of a developer very easy. So I always used Netscape while working with JavaScript. It made my life easy and I could write very complicated JavaScript code easily.
My love for Netscape further increased when I came to know that JavaScript was developed by Netscape. (JavaScript is a highly secured client side programming language when compared to its counterpart VBScript). Knowing this information, my love for JavaScript and Netscape increased again. I did some research on JavaScript and Netscape to find more details. This research helped me understand how secure Netscape was when compared to IE. From that point onwards, I started opening my yahoo mail in Netscape only (No IE plz). Also I came to know that there is a something known as Server Side JavaScript. I learnt server side java script out of my interest; it was really interesting to work with it. I never got a chance to use server side JavaScript in a live project. (I am not sure how many people know that there used to be a language known as server side JavaScript. It used to work on Netscape Enterprise Server and iPlanet.)
As a developer I could appreciate security features, compliance to standards, and support to advanced HTML & JavaScript in Netscape 4.7 when compared to IE 4.5. However release of IE 5.0 was a big challenge/blow to Netscape. As a developer and being lover of Netscape, I noticed several shortcomings of Netscape when compared to IE5.0 and was eagerly waiting for the new release of Netscape i.e. Netscape 5.0. But to my disappointment it was announced that Netscape 5.0 release was cancelled. When IE 5.5 got released, even I stopped using Netscape, but I was seriously waiting for the release of next version Netscape.
By the January 2002, I moved to Oracle eBusiness Suite from web development. As a result, I lost the track of changes that are happening in web world. A new banded Netscape, whose run time engine is completely rewritten from scratch, got released as Netscape 6.0. But I was terribly disappointed with it. It was in no way comparable with then dominating browser I.E 6.0. None of latter releases of Netscape 7.0, 8.0 & 9.0 were impressive. Announcement from AOL that it will stop Netscape from 2008 was really disappointing news for me. I was waiting for a version that can compete with IE. This announcement made it clear to me that this dream of mine will never be fulfilled.
Why once dominating browser came to an end? What made a once a ruler to lose the game completely and move out of the game? I personally feel, it is AOL. AOL took over Netscape Communications Corporation and didn’t pay much interest in developing Netscape Navigator. It even laid-off complete staff of original Netscape Navigator. Also rapid growth of IE became a threat to existence of Netscape. As there was no support from AOL & huge competition from IE, Netscape was left with no option than to die. Even though Netscape ended its life in 9.x version, I personally consider 4.x as its end.
Despite of it losing the game, it won the heart of many developers like me. I still have it installed on my desktop. (Can you imagine Netscape 4.7 running on Windows 7?)
