The MMO Notebook

What Shakespeare was to literature, the Netscape browser was to the internet. It was the first real web browser to bring graphical goodness to the internet. When it made its appearance, using things such as “Gopher” and “Archie” were the common way of finding things on the web. The internet was text driven in a crude and basic way. Netscape helped bring about the “web explosion” that brought the internet to the masses. When it came to browsing the web back in those days, Netscape was the only game in town. Now, these many years later, Netscape is going the way of the Dodo bird.

I first used Netscape after purchasing an internet software suite called “Internet In A Box.” It came with a Gopher and Archie client, FTP client, and the Netscape browser. Even with a web browser, the web was still mostly texted based. The fastest internet pipe I could get at that time was a 14.4 dial-up connection. 36.6 dial-up was considered super fast. Either way, Netscape changed the way the web was used. It made it much easier to use.

Internet Explorer and Firefox has obviously taken over as the browsers of choice for most people these days. Netscape failed to innovate fast enough and they payed the price in the end. Where once everyone used it, now I don’t know of a single person who has used it in the past few years. A sad end to a once great product.

–Wolfen