30 years of Netscape, and why there’s a bit of Mozilla in every browser

Debora Pape

4/4/2024

Translation: Julia Graham

The internet gradually became socially acceptable in the 90s. One of the key players was the web browser Netscape, which experienced a steep rise and sharp fall – and still hasn’t logged off the scene.

The world looked different 30 years ago. Apart from a few tech nerds in the science world and at universities, only a few people had heard of «this internet thing». Over the next ten years, that would change completely. On 4 April 1994, a software developer and investor founded the company that was to make internet history with its Netscape Navigator browser.

At the start of the 90s, browsers had just managed to display graphics and colours as well as formatted text. The HTML markup language required for this was developed at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland. The fourth browser that could handle HTML was NCSA Mosaic. One of the developers, Marc Andreessen, left the project in 1994 and founded the new company Mosaic Communications Corporation with the help of entrepreneur James H. Clark.

The aim was to develop a new, better browser that was a «Mosaic killer», codenamed Mozilla. By October of the same year, it was ready to go live. Because the new browser was based on Mosaic code, it was initially called Mosaic Netscape. Its major innovation was the use of HTML frames, which allowed websites to be split up. As a result, you could pin the upper section of the site to the top while you scrolled down the text.

Old hands will get misty-eyed watching this video:

In November, the company changed its name to Netscape Communications, and the reference to its predecessor also disappeared from the browser name when it became known simply as Netscape Navigator.

The new browser spread like wildfire thanks to its popular frames support. In 1996, about 80% of all internet browsers used Netscape. If you were online at the time, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid this browser and its control wheel icon. Of course, the number of households who already had a computer with an internet connection were few and far between. But I remember when the first computer clubs were offered at my school, including internet and Netscape Navigator.

The browser war: fighting the corporation

But a good story rarely comes without drama. Software giant Microsoft had also developed a browser with Internet Explorer and wanted its share of online fame. Microsoft supplied its browser with Windows as standard, allowing it to displace all other browsers by the end of the 90s. Even though the company was later prosecuted for aggressive tactics under antitrust law, the damage to Netscape was enormous.

By 1998, Netscape Communications was taken over by AOL and finally dissolved in 2003.

The final triumph for Netscape fans is that even today, major browsers identify their intrinsic architecture as «a kind of Mozilla». As many web servers in the Netscape era could only communicate with Netscape browsers, Internet Explorer also registered as «Mozilla-like» on the server. This also applies to Opera, Firefox, Safari and Chrome browsers. You can find out exactly how this works here.

Debora Pape

Editor

Debora.Pape@galaxus.de

Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.

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