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[Browser Kit] [Browsers]

Netscape Navigator
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Widely regarded as reigning champ in the browser wars, Netscape Communications has lorded it over the Internet competition since October 1994, when beta releases of Netscape Navigator first hit the shelves, er, FTP servers. Of course, it hasn't hurt th at the company was the first commercial venture dedicated to producing Web browsers. And it definitely didn't hurt that it had its pick of the team who engineered NCSA Mosaic (the former leading browser, dethroned by Netscape).

Straight out of the gate, Navigator was faster and cleaner than its predecessors, and it quickly took a comfortable lead over the competition. But the innovations in subsequent releases have widened the margin. While the World Wide Web (W3) Consortium was busy debating universal standards, Netscape was creating its own HTML extensions (some were truly innovative, like frames; some marginally useful, like the font tags; and others downright hideous, li ke the blink tag).

If Netscape didn't create a new feature, it was usually the first to adopt it. Navigator 1.1, which many consider the catalyst of "legitimate" Web publishing, was the first browser to support the W3-endorsed tables.

Although it's still by far the most popular browser around, Navigator lost a fraction of its thunder to Microsoft's release of Internet Explorer 2.0 and 3.0. The software giant has adopted Netscape's habit of creating and/or supporting proprietary HTML tags, and now accommodates just about all existing tags and extensions.

The pressure of competition is starting to show. Netscape is rushing to market with Navigator 3.0, and for the first time, took second place to Microsoft in adopting a W3-supported tag (color backgrounds in table cells). And Microsoft is keeping the he at on. The latest release of Internet Explorer supports borderless frames and cascading style sheets, a W3 feature that won't appear on Navigator's spec sheets until the release of version 4.0 in fall '96.




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