[HN Gopher] Netscape 1.x
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Netscape 1.x
Author : neverrroot
Score : 49 points
Date : 2024-01-01 17:36 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (winworldpc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (winworldpc.com)
| buro9 wrote:
| I tried running Netscape 4 recently.
|
| It worked!
|
| Until it didn't.
|
| Where it failed was protocols, the old binaries know nothing of
| modern TLS, and the vast majority of the web is now using that
| even when there's just no need to, so the browser works, most
| things could still render, but very little works.
| blackhaz wrote:
| There is a solution! https://github.com/atauenis/webone
| jeffbee wrote:
| You can still run old Netscape binaries on Linux/X11, if you
| gather the ancient libstdc++ against which it was dynamically
| linked.
| news_to_me wrote:
| I got Netscape 1.12 working on an old Macintosh, and while it
| can't browse much by default, this[0] HTTP proxy makes the 'net
| much more accessible. I'm kind of surprised that proxies were
| supported so early in browsers, does anyone know why?
|
| Also, if you happen to design a website with Netscape 1
| compatibility, and you want to replace SVG images with GIFs only
| for Netscape, you can use the <object> tag like this:
| <object class="banner" type="image/svg+xml"
| data="assets/banner.svg" role="img" width="487" height="180"
| style="pointer-events:none"> <center> <img
| src="assets/banner.gif" width="244" height="90" />
| </center> </object>
|
| [0]: https://github.com/rdmark/macproxy
| marban wrote:
| Proxies -- For Performance, I.e. local mirrors, security,
| private IP range in a corporate network, etc.
| electroly wrote:
| Network Address Translation was invented the same year that
| Netscape Navigator was originally released, and it took years
| for it to become the de facto way to get a private local
| network onto the Internet. In the 90s I installed proxy servers
| at several small businesses in order to share a dialup
| connection to other PCs in the network.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| > In the 90s I installed proxy servers at several small
| businesses in order to share a dialup connection to other PCs
| in the network.
|
| If your customer was cheap and needed more bandwidth you
| could use EQL[0] to load-balance a PPP connection over
| multiple POTS/ISDN lines if your ISP supported multiple
| connections. I set this up for a number of businesses back
| then when office staff started arguing with each over who was
| using all the bandwidth from a single 28K modem.
|
| [0]https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/eql.tx
| t
| mmaunder wrote:
| I wrote my first web app on netscapes commerce server in C around
| 1994. It was an online aptitude test for a distance learning
| college. I still remember banging my head against the desk trying
| to figure out why it was producing a 500. Until I realized that
| Content-type: text/html needed two \n's after it, not just one.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| > "distance learning college"
|
| Nice one. Haven't heard this phrase for quite some time now,
| but essentially, this is what remote/virtual/e-learning is all
| about today.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| 39 years ago I went online. NNTP and FTP were the tools that I
| loved.
| gamache wrote:
| > At release Netscape Navigator 1.0 competed against NCSA Mosaic.
| Over Mosaic, Netscape offered the ability to see documents and
| images as they load, loading both images and text at the same
| time, support for JPEG graphics, document caching, a friendlier
| GUI with more configuration options, and hierarchical bookmarks.
|
| This leaves out a huge differentiator -- Netscape supported
| background images. Every site looked blander in Mosaic (even if
| it were a lot easier to read). The other features TFA mentions
| are great but background images were the origin of "This site is
| best viewed using XXXX".
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I was an early employee at Netscape, and worked on the browser,
| server, and the services platforms. It was a hell of a ride - you
| felt the world changing under your keyboard. I am glad to see it
| still brings joy to people to use the product of our work in its
| original form. I often wonder how technology would look today if
| Netscape hadn't been crushed for threatening Microsoft's os
| dominance. After Netscape internet technologies went through a
| dark age without innovation until Chrome and related
| technologies, which were sadly in service of another monopolist -
| but this one protecting its dominance in pervasive surveillance.
| neverrroot wrote:
| Thank you for replying, your work shaped me into what I came to
| be. I was a backend developer at the end of the 90's, sadly not
| for Netscape Server, it was mostly C++ CGI.
|
| Have you been around during this time period (birth hour of
| Mozilla)? https://youtu.be/4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Oh I should sit and watch that. Yes I was there and helped a
| lot. Jwz was a friend at the time (although I later became
| too uncool for him). The launch party for Mozilla was
| awesome.
| Throw839 wrote:
| > often wonder how technology would look today if Netscape
| hadn't been crushed for threatening Microsoft's os dominance
|
| > technologies went through a dark age without innovation until
| Chrome
|
| IE was pretty innovative, it introduced AJAX (async javascript
| requests...), web version of Outlook in 1998...
|
| There was also Opera browser, pretty innovative, it introduced
| tabs, mouse gestures, user styles, no script, basic
| adblocking... It could run on anything, even phone without MMU.
| sedatk wrote:
| Besides AJAX, IE introduced CSS and IFRAMEs too as far as I
| remember.
| alberth wrote:
| > _"After Netscape internet technologies went through a dark
| age without innovation until Chrome"_
|
| No innovation came pre-Chrome?
|
| Like KHTML (or WebKit) ... or Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I didn't say no one released rendering engines (note Firefox
| is Netscape reborn). But these products didn't do any
| fundamental additions to HTML, HTTP, or ancillary web and
| internet technologies. They provided alternatives to IE.
| wk_end wrote:
| No personal offense intended, but Netscape was crushed by its
| own technological problems and missing business model as much
| as anything else. By the time IE4 was out, it was
| unquestionably the better browser - the Communicator suite was
| buggy and bloated by comparison, and only fell further behind
| as Mozilla scrambled to rewrite the whole thing.
|
| Certainly, bundling IE into the OS helped - not to mention
| Microsoft's classic EEE approach to web standards - but post-
| Netscape but pre-Chrome there was a time when people were happy
| to switch to Firefox from IE because Firefox was simply the
| superior browser.
| wilsynet wrote:
| The business model was to license the browser to
| corporations. And they would have done pretty well except
| Microsoft gave away the browser for free.
|
| The model of licensing software was pretty typical for the
| time. I disagree that they didn't have a sustainable business
| model. Sure, IE4 was better and Netscape didn't respond very
| well, but by 1997 it's market share and revenues were already
| significantly eroded.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Microsoft redirected billions of dollars from their OS
| monopoly into developing a free product bundled into the
| operating system to bring down a competitor in a different
| market. It's not my take, it's the judgement of the courts.
|
| Mozilla was based on gecko and related technologies which
| were being developed for communicator, but when the revenues
| associated with the browser evaporated, there was no point in
| investing in it any further. Rather than simply letting it
| rot we decided that the way to stick a thumb in Microsoft's
| eye was to take one step further and not just make it free,
| but make it open, with an organization to perpetuate open
| browser technologies. But everything that went into Mozilla
| was already long in development.
|
| That said, IE 4 was a better product - which goes to show an
| unlimited war chest, a singular drive, and no commercial
| necessities can go a long way in developing software. They
| also had a lot of layout experience internally with office,
| and made smart key decisions that we had blundered on early
| due to lack of layout experience. We were mostly an internet
| protocol company, and our layout experience was fairly
| simple. That translated into a really key early mistake -
| when calculating table layout, which were the primary way of
| organizing visual elements at that time, we assumed tables
| were infinitely large and as we loaded elements and
| calculated their size we sized the table to fit them.
| Microsoft did the opposite and assumed they were zero sized
| and rendered each element in lay out as its size is known.
| This allowed a perception of faster loading because you could
| see the loading as it progressed. Unfortunately the layout
| engine in early Netscape browsers was so deeply enmeshed in
| the code that removing it and replacing it with gecko was a
| multi year effort, and we were being driven my marketing and
| product to release versions so as to not be seen as falling
| behind.
|
| Ultimately that was the downfall of Netscape - product had
| way too much power over engineering, and while we had the
| best engineering team I've ever worked with in my career
| (including at multiple FAANG, unicorns, Wall Street quant
| groups, etc), we were constantly hamstrung by product chasing
| some short term priorities to keep notching differentiating
| features. Microsoft had a very clear goal - eliminate
| Netscape's browser revenue at any cost - and the ability to
| redirect most of their engineering talent into that goal.
| Once they released a bundled browser that was technically
| superior as a web rendering tool for absolutely free (not
| just free, but mandatory and inseparable from their OS), it
| was all over for us. All the differentiating features were
| buggy baggage on a partially completed product vision that
| had no revenue model - so, the product never finished.
|
| The key is there -was- a business model, and it was
| successful. But no one can compete against a monopoly price
| dumping to zero. Given another six months we would have had
| the new layout and rendering engine in place, and would have
| had the better browser again. But with no revenue possible,
| the only option was to fold. But the smarter option was the
| one we took, and thus set up the precedent for large open
| source transfers and foundations. And, IE languished and
| rotted, because why bother investing in something that makes
| no revenues?
| tyingq wrote:
| Netscape did have a nice http server. NSAPI was, as I recall,
| the earliest version of something like FastCGI, where your
| backend processes were separate from the web server, but
| didn't have to fork/exec/exit for every request.
| haunter wrote:
| Works perfectly under Windows 10/11 with winevdm
| https://github.com/otya128/winevdm
|
| https://files.catbox.moe/xe1d3f.png
|
| (you need to mount the virtual floppy disk image)
| dang wrote:
| Submitted title was "29 years ago today I went online. Netscape
| Navigator 1.0 was the tool I loved" - that would be fine as a
| comment in the thread, but not as a submission title. From
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: " _Please use
| the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't
| editorialize._"
|
| If you want to say what you think is important about an article,
| that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then
| your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's
| (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...)
| and also you'll have a lot more room to share your story!
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I've always loved the animating navigation icon... gave you a
| sense of exploring unknown territory.
| giantrobot wrote:
| It gave me something to do while loading a page over slow-ass
| dialup. The worst were pages had the same color for the text
| and background and relied on a slow loading background image
| to provide the contrast to read anything.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Netscape 2.x/3.x on System 7.5 is where I was introduced to the
| internet. Their splash screens and animated loading icon added a
| certain air of awe to what was already an impressive experience
| as a kid... kudos to whoever was in charge of the design of those
| graphics.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Every time I see the splash screen, the color scheme and the
| icon, it bring me to a sort of serenity state. I guess the
| subconscious is transfered to carefree and wonderous childhood.
| mjhagen wrote:
| And a lot of patience was needed for browsing the web back
| then.
| theolivenbaum wrote:
| There was a post about it sometime ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982856
| neverrroot wrote:
| I'm the op, and 29 years ago today I went online. Netscape
| Navigator 1.0 was the tool I loved back then, it's great to still
| see it around as a piece in the museum.
|
| Thankfully, there are still ways to run it nowadays, but
| virtually no websites keep working with it. Still brings back
| good memories.
| recursive wrote:
| I like to tell stories about going down to the local office super
| store and paying money for a web browser that came in a box.
| sedatk wrote:
| 33 years ago, I went online and sent an email to ARJ's author
| Robert K. Jung over a BITNET-Internet gateway on a 3270 terminal
| connected to an IBM 4341. Robert was very friendly, and had
| replied to all my emails. ARJ was a very promising and feature
| rich compression software until PKZIP 2.x came out and basically
| devoured the archiver market.
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