RIP Netscape

As a follow up to my post about the future of Microsoft Internet Explorer, I should note the passing into history of another browser. AOL ended support for Netscape as of February 1st, effectively pulling the plug on its life support.

I started to learn web design and development at university in 1996. At that time, Netscape Navigator was a major player in the browser market. Since then its market share was eroded by Microsoft’s integration of IE with Windows, upstarts like Firefox and an apparent lack of interest and direction from AOL (who bought it in 1999).

So Netscape joins IE5 on the list of dead browsers where the difficulty of supporting them massively outweighs the benefit. The number of visits I get from Netscape users is so negligible (0.13%) that it is no longer worthwhile to test against it.

AOL’s advice to Netscape users is to upgrade to Firefox.

UPDATE: Corrected a factual inaccuracy in the original post.

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