If you haven’t yet heard about it - yesterday AOL announced that Netscape (an icon of internet, acquired by that company for $4.2 billion almost 10 years ago) will be officially dead on February 1, 2008.
Okay, honesty it’s been many years since Netscape is dead unofficially. But whatever browser you use (current share of Netscape Navigator is around 0,6%) - story of that program should be really important to you. Deplorable ending of that brand is a great example of the way that corporate business affects great things. You see, there was a time when Netscape and ICQ were great programs, in fact. I swear - before mental giants from AOL bought them, they were.
That’s why I’m actually glad to see that Facebook and Digg haven’t been sold. They will keep the good work, I mean.
December 30th, 2007 #
ROFL at the image. Did you make it yourself? Your post title was exactly what came to mind when I read that news!
December 30th, 2007 #
Haha yes I did it myself. But it didn’t take much time (around 10 minutes) - I just vectorized one screenshot and tweaked it with GIMP. Logo of Opera Browser comes from Deviantart
December 30th, 2007 #
Read about this yesterday… I suppose they will keep the “AOL Explorer” version going.
Always thought AOL sucked right back in the early days when they used to infect your PC with crapware… not to mention their stupid “anti spam” policy of blocking all “PHP Mail”…. they are soooo fucking stupid.
December 31st, 2007 #
thats a bad news for me because netscape is the browser that i used first time to reach internet…
January 4th, 2008 #
Yeah, no doubt AOL’s botched rip of IE 6 will still haunt any web developers who have a client keyed up enough to be using AOL.
How can you fix it if you can’t use the browser?
January 7th, 2008 #
Hey man, you wrote that Facebook hasn’t been sold yet… well, Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook not too long ago. I’d say that’s being ’sold’.
On that note, I couldn’t care less if Facebook gets sold or not. They sold out already by including all those ads. I get ads in my inbox, banners, everywhere now. To me it’s lost what it used to have and I use it less and less now.
January 8th, 2008 #
@ Jez: They are going to ship Netscape-skinned version of Firefox with the Netscape look and feel. This isn’t funny, it’s LAMENTABLE.
@ önder: Not that sad, in fact. The spirit of Netscape lives on, and it’s called Firefox nowadays
@ David: http://browser.netscape.com/downloads/archive/
@ Mike: In context used above, “being sold” actually means only being acquired. You know, advertising is an integral part of every business in web, and you cannot avoid unless you’re Wikipedia. Have you tried Adblock+, or something?
January 9th, 2008 #
@Florchakh Good point mate. I’ve got Adblock+ installed so I don’t see many ads nowadays.
Although I agree that it is a business in essence, for some reason I still just dislike it. I hate people sending me shit invitations. I must have declined a Vampire or Zombie invitation about 50 times so far.
January 9th, 2008 #
News relevant image for the win! Nice one.
January 11th, 2008 #
haha nice work with the image.
January 11th, 2008 #
Oh boy. After staying up till 6AM because IE wouldn’t display elements properly, I’m glad that’s one less browser I have to worry about.
I also got a sneak preview of the new theme just for you Florchakh!
January 11th, 2008 #
@Jeffro2pt0 & @Adithya: I love GIMP playings, good to hear you enjoy it too
@Mike: It’s based on Bartelme’s theme isn’t it? Looks pretty clean, stripes are nice. The this post has links part is also nice. Waiting for live preview
January 11th, 2008 #
@Florchakh It sure is. He’s original template is good, but I found it was a bit too dark.
I like your theme. Very nice, clean and easy on the eyes.
January 11th, 2008 #
Thanks buddy.. By luck you haven’t seen how does it look in IE6, I have no idea why I haven’t fixed it yet. But I know it works fine in IE7, I checked that thing!
January 11th, 2008 #
You mean you haven’t tested your theme in IE6? Well I have it at work so I can test it next Monday and get back to you.
January 11th, 2008 #
Dude. I mean I HAVE seen these bugs generated by IE6, header section and footer don’t display properly in that goddamn crapware browsing thing
March 19th, 2008 #
IE7 is a pain also… had compliant site running ok in 6 and FF… borders spilled in 7…
March 29th, 2008 #
So long net escape:(
July 16th, 2008 #
Netscape is gone? To be honest i never really noticed, i am more of a firefox man myself. cool pic btw!