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.
An important innovation that Netscape introduced in 1994 was the on-the-fly display of webpages, where text and graphics appeared on the screen as the web page downloaded. Earlier web browsers would not display a page until all graphics on it had been loaded over the network connection; this often made a user stare at a blank page for as long as several minutes. With Netscape, people using dial-up connections could begin reading the text of a webpage within seconds of entering a web address, even before the rest of the text and graphics had finished downloading. This made the web much more tolerable to the average user.
Netscape Navigator 2.02
Through the late 1990s, Netscape made sure that Navigator remained the technical leader among web browsers. Important new features included cookies, frames, and JavaScript (in version 2.0). 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" (bypassing standards committees and thus marginalizing the commercial competition) than it was in fixing bugs in its products. Consumer rights advocates were particularly critical of cookies and of commercial web sites using them to invade individual privacy.
In the marketplace, however, these concerns made little difference. Netscape Navigator remained the market leader with more than 50% usage share. The browser software was available for a wide range of operating systems, including Windows (3.1, 95, 98, NT), Macintosh, Linux, OS/2, and many versions of Unix including DEC, Sun Solaris, BSDI, IRIX, AIX, and HP-UX, and looked and worked nearly identically on every one of them. Netscape began to experiment with prototypes of a web-based system, known internally as "Constellation", which would allow a user to access and edit his files anywhere across a network no matter what computer or operating system he happened to be using.
Industry observers confidently forecast the dawn of a new era of connected computing. The underlying operating system, it was believed, would become an unimportant consideration; future applications would run within a web browser. This was seen by Netscape as a clear opportunity to entrench Navigator at the heart of the next generation of computing, and thus gain the opportunity to expand into all manner of other software and service market.
Computer Support and Technical Support will always be provided by Microsoft certified technicians 24x7 ..Live
More on Netscape>>
Netscape Browser – The Creation
Browser war between Netscape and other Web Browsers 2000-2005
Internet Explorer vs Netscape Navigator
The Browser Wars - Netscape Navigator versus Internet Explorer
These years were fairly quiet in the
Netscape was now supported by AOL. A few years prior, just after they had lost the Browser Wars to Microsoft, they had released the coding for Netscape into the public domain. This meant anybody could develop their own browser using the Netscape skeleton. And people did. Epiphany, Galeon and Camino, amongst others, were born out of Netscape’s ashes. However the two most popular newcomers were called Mozilla and Firefox.
Mozilla was originally an open sourced project aimed to improve the Netscape browser. Eventually it was released as Netscape Navigator 7 and then 8. Later it was released as Mozilla 1.0.
Mozilla was almost an early version on another open source browser, Firefox. With it being an open source the public were able to contribute to it - adding in what features it needed, the programming it required and the support it deserved. The problems people saw in Internet Explorer were being fixed by members of the open sourced browser community via Firefox. For instance, the many security issues IE 6 had were almost entirely fixed in the very first release of Firefox. Microsoft had another fight on their hands.
Get Computer Tech Support And Fix Computer Problem Online with Microsoft Certified techs 24x7.
More on Netscape>>
Internet Explorer vs Netscape Navigator
This Video Player is not supported by the following browsers
Differences between Internet Explorer (IE) and Netscape Navigator (NN)
These two major browsers are coming closer to each other regarding the DHTML effects possible towards newer versions. However you will need to remember that IE is more flexible than Netscape and due to small differences something that works really well in IE might not work at all in Netscape. So you need to be really careful and alert when programming for both browsers. One hint you can follow in most cases is that if you get it working in Netscape it should most probably work in IE.
Another major limitation of Netscape as compared to IE is that not all properties of a page can be changed at any time. This is because when the web page is once written to the screen, only position, visibility and clipping can be manipulated dynamically.
The good news is that from the web designing point of view you can now forget completely about debugging all your websites for Netscape 4.x as a very small fraction of the Netscape community still use it. Think of it this way, if you are bent on making the website work perfectly for version 4.x then you cannot use some effects (especially javascript and CSS) that are easily supported by the latest versions of all the major browsers.
For Dreamweaver to not keep throwing up Netscape 4 errors set the browser check settings to show Netscape 6 instead of the default 4.0. To do this click on the Results panel, select the Target Browser Check tab, click on the green arrow to show the list of options - select the Settings option and set Netscape Navigator to version 6.0.
Computer Support and Technical Support will always be provided by Microsoft certified technicians 24x7 ..Live
More on Netscape browser>>
The Browser Wars - Netscape Navigator versus Internet Explorer
Step Five - Scripts and Plugins
End of Support for Netscape web browsers
Mosaic’s decline began almost as soon as Netscape Navigator was released (1994). Netscape Navigator was a browser created by Marc Andreessen, one of the men behind Mosaic and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was unrivalled in terms of features and usability at the time. For example, one major change from previous browsers was that it allowed surfers to see parts of a website before the whole site was downloaded. This meant that people did not have to wait for minutes simply to see if the site they were loading was the actual one the were after, whilst also allowing them to read information on the site as the rest of it downloaded. By 1996 Netscape had almost 90% market dominance, as shown below.
Market Share Comparisons of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer from 1996 to 1998
………………..Netscape…….IE
October 1998……….64%………32.2%
April 1998…………70%………22.7%
October 1997……….59.67%……15.13%
April 1997…………81.13%……12.13%
October 1996……….80.45%……12.18%
April 1996…………89.36%…….3.76%
In these two years Netscape clearly dominated the internet browser market, but a new browser named Internet Explorer was quickly gaining ground on it.
Microsoft released their own browser (ironically based on the earlier Mosaic browser which was created by one of the men now running Netscape), clearly worried about Netscape’s dominance. It was not so much the worry that it would have a 100% market share of internet browsers on their Windows operating system, but more the worry that browsers would soon be capable of running all types programs on them. That would mean foregoing the need for an actual operating system, or at the most only a very basic one would be needed. This in turn would mean Netscape would soon be able to dictate terms to Microsoft, and Microsoft were not going to let that happen easily. Thus in August 1995, Internet Explorer was released.
By 1999 Internet explorer had captured an 89.03% market share, whilst Netscape was down to 10.47%. How could Internet Explorer make this much ground in just two years? Well this was down to two things really. The first, and by far the most important was that Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer in with every new copy of Windows, and as Windows was used by about 90% of the computer using population it clearly gave them a huge advantage. Internet Explorer had one other ace it held over Netscape – it was much better. Netscape Navigator was stagnant and had been for some time. The only new features it ever seemed to introduce were often perceived by the public as beneficial for Netscape’s parent company rather than Netscape’s user base. (i.e., features that would help it monopolise the market). Explorer, on the other hand, was given much attention by Microsoft. Regular updates and excellent usability plus a hundred million dollar investment would prove too much for Netscape Explorer.
Fix Computer Problem as well as get support to Increase your Internet speed online by Microsoft Certified technicians 24x7.
More on Netscape>>
This Video Player is not supported by the following browsers
Computer Repair and Computer Technical Support will always be provided by Microsoft certified techs 24x7.
Netscape's JavaScript and Plugin Preferences
- The recommended "Enable Javascript for" settings are:
Check "Enable Javascript" for Navigator (i.e. the Browser) and uncheck (disable) it for Mail & Newsgroups.
The reason why I recommend this is that I see no reason whatsoever for Javscript in mail and newsgroup messages besides using a script to fetch data from a remote server (verifying that you have read the message) or to do things you neither need nor want them to. - The recommended "Allow scripts to" settings are:
Uncheck (disable) "Move or resize existing windows", "Raise or lower windows", " Change status bar text" (this will help protect you from Spoofing, i.e. sites pretending to be another site) and "Hide the status bar".
Check (enable) "Change Images" (this is e.g. used for mouse over effects), "Create or change cookies" and "Read Cookies". All other features will (in my opinion) neither hurt if selected or deselected. - The recommended "Enable plugins for Mail & Newsgroups" setting is:
Uncheck (disable) "Enable plugins for Mail & Newsgroups", as again, I see no need for plugins in mail and newsgroup messages, but I do see potential for misuse.
With these settings applied, Mozilla should protect your online security and privacy even better. But as I said in the beginning: The safe use of the Internet is always also the individual user's responsibility.
Computer Repair and Computer Technical Support will always be provided by Microsoft certified techs 24x7.
More on Netscape>
configure Netscape 7.1's privacy and security features>
configure Netscape 7.1's privacy and security features Part II
How to configure 7.1's privacy and security features –Part III >
How to configure Netscape 7.1's privacy and security features, Part IV
source-mozilla.gunnars.net
If you check "Use encryption when storing sensitive data" (recommended), you also need to select a master password.
Mozilla's Master Password dialog
Make sure to select a password that is easy to remember but also safe (i.e. not your spouse's or boat's name). As a rule of thumb, using a combination of numbers, letters and symbols (e.g. ~) is safer than just using numbers or letters. The difference regarding the password's ease of being cracked is enormous - it ranges from roughly 1 minute (just letters) to almost a year (letters, numbers and symbols). When you enter your master password, Netscape will show how safe it is. The longer the bar, the safer the password.
Now you may say "But if someone gets a hold of my master password, won't they know all my other passwords, as well?". Theoretically yes, but that person would need to a) know your password and b) have physical access to your PC.
Computer Repair and Computer Technical Support will always be provided by Microsoft certified techs 24x7.
More on Netsacpe>>
configure Netscape 7.1's privacy and security features>
configure Netscape 7.1's privacy and security features Part II
How to configure 7.1's privacy and security features –Part III >
How to configure Netscape 7.1's privacy and security features, Part IV