Friday 29 February 2008

Fond Farewell

AOL, part of Time Warner, has announced that support for the Netscape browser is finally being withdrawn tomorrow, 1 March 2008.

Like with many this marks the end of an era for me. Back in the 1990's more than 90% of people used Netscape apparently. My first introduction to the internet was via Netscape Navigator and I've remained faithfull ever since. I never dreamt the internet could offer so much! How I marvelled when Netscape Communicator appeared with it's browser, mail and newsgroups client.

Since those early heady days other browsers have launched, some more successfully than others and have erroded the Netscape monopoly to the point where only an estimated 1% use it. But I stuck with it: We went through several upgrades together and I now love Netscape 9, having moved to web-based mail; I guess I will continue to do, until such time that applications will not run correctly on it.

Oh I know there are prenty of alternatives out there and they've all done their best to win me over but I guess they're just not the same and never will be.

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