The Legacy of the Netscape Browser

Web cookies have often been derided as invaders of Web surfers’ privacy, but this Netscape technology made it possible for sites to track visitor movements and helped enable key e-commerce capabilities such as shopping carts.

For many early Web users, the Composer piece of the Netscape Navigator suite was the first and easiest-to-use HTML editing tool. Much of the ease of use introduced in Composer can be traced to todays blogging systems.

Firefox would not exist today if Netscape hadnt made the move to the open-source Mozilla browser.

Frames in Web pages had their heyday in the late 1990s; since then, their use has dropped dramatically (which is mainly a good thing). Still, this Netscape technology lives on in many forms and is popular in portals and other business-oriented Web applica

One can make the argument that JavaScript, which started out as Mocha and then as LiveScript, is one of the most influential technologies to come out of Netscape. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and many other key Web 2.0 technologies wouldnt exis

Much of what made the early Netscape browser stand out from its rivals was its ability to manage and display images within Web pages.

Developed as a way to describe Web site content to a browser, Netscapes RSS technology was adapted by others to become the key format for syndicating content on the Web-and in many ways was the driving force behind the growth of blogs.

Built on top of earlier work to create secure Internet connections, Netscapes SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) made it possible for sites and visitors to communicate securely, making safe e-commerce a reality.

While most early adopters of the Netscape suite chose it because of the browser, the Mail component quickly became one of the most popular free e-mail clients. E-mail may be moving to a Web-based platform, but many users still appreciate the free Thunderb

Though ambitious ideas about the browser as operating system never became a reality (outside of the disappointing WebTop), they were scary enough to cause Microsoft to make Netscape (the company) enemy No. 1. Now, with the growth of next-generation Web ap

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