Saturday, March 1, 2008

Farewell Netscape

I don't really know about you guys, but during the first Browser Wars, I started out with Netscape Navigator (this was in the mid-ish late-ish 90s) which later became Netscape Communicator. Ultimately I started using IE exclusively after a while because it simply was better than Netscape. So it does have some nostalgic significance to me. As such, it is kinda sad that is going away (though I woefully hate AOL which kinda bought them - those cd-coaster people them!).

Netscape as of today (what's left of it anyways) is now officially gone. In all honesty it's no big deal.

I am a staple user of Mozilla Firefox. The Mozilla foundation is a non-profit organization (which was created as an open source project of Netscape Navigator) and it's browser (Firefox) is based off of Netscape Navigator/communicator (funny how later on Netscape Communicator was based off Firefox).

So in a sense, I still am at my internet browser 'roots'. But what does this mean? Does it really mean anything to most of us users? I don't think so. Now it's either Internet Explorer (though I do like IE7 way better then IE6), or Firefox.

Firefox is my probably most used freeware (along with Foobar2000 - the BEST audioplayer - most customizable for audio settings) that I utilize every day (hey I even have the portable version on my flash drive).

But still, goodbye Netscape. Funny how the first browser wars is finally coming to a close in what is probably the second browser wars (Firefox with ~15% market share vs Internet Explorer - the behemoth).

Firefox 3 (current version is at 2) is just around the corner and I think that the new IE is somewhere on the horizon as well. With two strong camps, I can't wait to see what new stuff gets brought to the table (Firefox and later on IE7 brought us tabbed browsing - which I love!).

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