Netscape’s Final Nail

The end of support for the Netscape browser shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise. The software’s user population has dwindled to almost nothing, and the dropping of support was long overdue.

But for me, I have very fond memories of this browser software that is soon to be a footnote in web history. For many of us early web users Netscape was the first quality graphical browser we used — Mosaic was pretty good, but Netscape made our mouths drop.

For myself, the software progression went from gopher browsing, to Lynx, to Mosaic, and then finally to Netscape 1.0 around Christmas of 1994.

The arrival of Netscape’s predecessor Mosaic had probably more impact, technology-wise, than any other career event for me. I remember dialling in via my 2400 baud modem, and waiting minutes for images to come down. And I must tell you, it was awesome! I remember calling my wife over and trying to explain how amazing, how revolutionary, this was! … No dice. :-) … unfortunately her husband was as much a web-geek then as he is now.

So, surprised? no. A little nostalgic? You betcha.

Here’s a screen shot from Netscape 1.0: