It seems that Netscape is going the way of the Alpine White Bar. Official support for all Netscape client products will end on March 1st, 2008. This deadline was recently extended from February 1 in order to complete work on the tools that will migrate current users to new browsers, according to Netscape AOL Director, Tom Drapeau.

Netscape was once thought to be the leader in web browsing, launching the commercial Internet in 1994. The launch made it possible to view and interact with websites via one platform. Netscape popularized the World Wide Web, AJAX, JavaScript, plug-ins and RSS. It was the star of the dot-com era becoming the most successful public stock offering of its time. And you can thank Netscape for forcing Microsoft to restructure its entire product line to become Internet compliant. Microsoft launched Internet Explorer and began shipping it with its major operating system, taking one of Netscape’s nine lives. Selling out to AOL took another.

AOL aquired Netscape Communications Corporation in 1999. At this time, the Netscape team had begun work on converting the Netscape Communicator web suite into open source software under a new name, Mozilla. Soon came the launch of the Netscape 6 browser. This was the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser. Released in 2000, it solely funded the development and marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers. In 2003, the independent Mozilla Foundation was created to continue developing the open source web suite and new versions of the Netscape browser.

Drapeau’s reasons behind ending support are AOL’s current business focus and the inability to revive Netscape’s dying market share. The Netscape Browser held over 80 percent of the Internet browser market from the mid 1990s until recent times when it reduced drastically to less than 1 percent. According to Internet metrics firm NetApplications, Internet Explorer accounted for 77.4 percent of the market, Firefox 16 percent and Netscape 0.6 percent as of November 2007. Apparently AOL’s focus on ad-supported Web business does not leave enough cash for getting Netscape to the point it needs to be at in order to compete with other browsers.

¡Viva Netscape¡
Netscape fans may continue using Netscape after March 1 and download archived versions of the browser, they just won’t receive security patches or support. And www.netscape.com will still be available as a general use internet portal. Also staying alive: UFAQ, the Netscape Archive and the Netscape Community Forum.

Want support but don’t want to give up Netscape? Download Netscape skins or themes for your Firefox browser.

What now?
Obviously the powers that be at AOL will advise you to switch to Firefox. Firefox is the open source browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and is said to be more secure than other browsers and fully customizable.

AOL also suggests Flock, the “social web browser”. Flock is a free browser built on Firefox code base. Its focus is primarily on evolving the browser and the way people use the web. It has the ability to interact with popular social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.

And we are all familiar with Internet Explorer. IE is currently and will likely for a long time remain the browser giant. Other up and coming browsers you may want to keep an eye on are Opera and Safari. Of course if you want to be respected by computer geeks you’ll need to run all of the named browsers and then some.

Migration
Recently support for Netscape has been limited to a few engineers creating a skinned version of Firefox. "Given the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically acclaimed products, we feel it's the right time to end development of Netscape-branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla, and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox," Drapeau said.

Though specific details about the migration tools under development have yet to be released, it is known that an upgrade will be issued through Netscape 9’s integrated update feature to streamline the process of choosing between Firefox and Flock. As of right now, users need to manually copy the Netscape “profiles.ini” file and its folder to Firefox’s directory in order to migrate while Flock’s latest version includes migration features.

A Fond Farewell
As we said growing up on the farm, or at least we might would have had we grown up on a farm, its time to put her out to pasture. Netscape had a good run and now its time to let her go.

AOL's focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL's current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it's the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox. -Tom Drapeau