Seems one of the biggest tech news stories this week is the death of Netscape Navigator. AOL, who’d acquired Netscape at some point, announced it was over, no more updates and no more support.
Of course, this isn’t a huge shock, I stopped using it years ago when I discovered the wonder that is Firefox, but I can’t help but feel slightly sad. I still remember the old days of using Netscape, I think it was version 0.98, not even the full 1.0 release.
And you know what? I used that browser for years, even though it didn’t support fancy things like frames or even background images (every web site was grey in my world!) Why on earth would I do this, you ask? SPEED! It booted up in a matter of seconds, whereas Netscape 3.0 and Microsoft’s foray into the web browser world, Internet Explorer, were painfully slow on my little 486 with four megabytes of RAM. Once new features were introduced into the web, stuff just became more and more bloated, climaxing with Macromedia Flash, that gave us 10 minutes of waiting for a site to load so the logo could spin.
Things changed though…I finally hit my once-per-decade new PC acquisition and broadband Internet becoming both affordable and available in the little rural town I was living in, spinning logos were no longer something to fear (But I still think they’re stupid and a waste of bandwidth.)
So to you Netscape, I raise a beer.
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