Defunct as of 2008-02-01. Netscape was one of the original web browsers. You can
download it free. Click the icon to download. Netscape is a family of similar browsers: Netscape begat Mozilla
which begat Firefox which begat Flock. Firefox oddly begat Netscape circularly.
Older Versions
People with older equipment often stay with the older version 4.79 which has only
Java 1.1.5. It supports the Java Plug-in, but only as Plug-in, not as its native Java. You need special
<OBJECT tags instead of <APPLET tags to invoke applets. You need the HTML
Converter to create them because they are so complicated.
Recent Versions
Netscape supports Java Plug-in both qua plug-in and as its native Java. If you install the
JDK after Netscape it will be installed automatically. If not, copy NPOJI600.DLL from
J:\Program Files\java\jdk1.6.0_18\jre\bin to \Program Files\Netscape\Netscape
6\Plugins.
I use the fusion theme. I like each of my browsers to look distinctly different so
I can easily tell which one I am using.
The Netscape/Mozilla Clan
It can be hard to sort out the members of the Netscape/Mozilla clan without a program.
- It started with Netscape one of the original web browsers born not long after the
original Mosaic.
- Mozilla sprang from Netscrape’s brow. Mozilla handles
browsing+email+newsgroups.
- Firefox is a streamlined browser-only begat by Mozilla.
- Thunderbird does email only, and was also sired by Mozilla to streamline email
and make it more robust.
- Mozilla is currently frozen, but is being reborn as Sea Monkey, a suite
continuing to handle browsing+email+newsgroups.
- Even though Netscape is the grand patriarch of this clan, it now is ironically
based on the Firefox code base, as in the song, I’m my own grandpa.
Click any ball to view the corresponding colour palette.
The above colour chart shows Netscape’s 133 standard colours, and HTML
3.2’s 16 standard colours. It shows the colours displayed eight ways, (colour on white, colour on black,
black on colour, white on colour) both using alpha names and hex names. You can check out your browser for
Netscape colour compatibility. It shows the Standard Netscape 8.0 alpha names such as "aliceblue" and
also the hex, RGB an HSB values both as HTML and raw ASCII text.
For a discussion of browser-safe colours see Lynda
Weinman’s essay.
Netscape used to have an Applet security system known as capabilities and a digital signing tool called
signtool, but these are no longer supported. Netscape uses standard Java Applet signing.