Talk:Netscape/Archives/2014

DOM misinformation
two things, IE 4 was DOM non-compliant, and the IE wikipedia article says that DOM compliance came with IE 6 around AUG 27 '01. this contradicts what is in this article. I leave this up to people familiar with wikipedia to act on. I don't know what tags to place.


 * Perhaps you failed to read the Document Object Model wiki article?67.165.116.17 (talk) 07:21, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Microsoft Bought the rights of Netscape
By an article published online, Microsoft has bought the rights of Netscape from AOL on April 9, 2012.

The reason for that isn't mentioned. Althoght, it's weird that they bought a 20-year old browser's code, which transformed to FireFox, an open-source project. Also, the fact that their latest version of IE is based on Chrome.

I saw it wasn't mentioned in any of the articles about Netscape. I don't really know in which it should be mentioned. Galzigler (talk) 18:42, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually Mozilla open source project is the basis of several browsers including Firefox, IceWeasel, and Google's Chrome. The Chrome rendering engine is not the Chrome browser.Shjacks45 (talk) 07:56, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality POV issue tied to revisionist view of history
Perhaps it is the young people that write Wiki pages? Back in early 1990's when I was in school Gopher and Veronica were used to "surf" the academic Arpanet (Internet). Used telnet, get, put, ls, ftp, and other Unix commands as well. one could ftp to WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL to get Prodigy software or Lynx text-based web browser in 1992. Note wiki Hypertext Transfer Protocol "The first version of the protocol had only one method, namely GET, which would request a page from a server." "Internet" connectivity was by dial-up modem (unless you went to a college on the backbone) and "Internet" was one option on primarily Bulletin Board "ISP"s like Compuserve or Prodigy. AOL, MSN, et al software actually didn't connect by IP. AOL cached web pages because the Web was slower than dial-up. The manifold small local ISPs typically used SLIP connection and paid a lot for BBS software. That's what Netscape did: they sold Netscape Web Server (which became SunONE, now part of Oracle Weblogic) to ISPs for a few hundred dollars and gave them the right to distribute Netscape Navigator for free to their customers, who had name/pw login to the service. Anyone on the Internet already could download Navigator, which noted a 45-day free trial (pre-DMCA) when installed but continued working after 45 days. (Of course students could get free browsers from NCSA, UM, and related academic sites.) The reseller I worked for never sold any packaged Netscape software that we carried in the stores. Our cost from distributor was ~$5 and usually gave it away with computers we sold. Microsoft sold (tried to sell) IE 1.0 for msrp $15; Navigator Gold was msrp $45, but Netscape was underselling Microsoft by distributing most of their copies of Navigator for free. Another Netscape blunder in the 90's was failure to work with developers. (Rem the Apple lawsuit that Microsoft only provided 1000 fre developer kits and wanted $150/ea for more.) Less well known Enterprise devs and more obvious AOL used IESDK to create custom browsers (and a Microsoft Journal article on coding your own custom 5KB "Iexplore".) AOL purchased Netscape, but too late realized that Navigator had no immediate potential for a development platform (that came later with Mozilla. Reference Netscape Enterprise Server. Almost all ISPs in the Pacific Northwest where I am were Unix based, especially Sun Microsytems Sparc based servers. Does not appear that Microsoft was a competitor, the Exchange Server wiki article notes that MS was on Xenix Servers until 1996. Shjacks45 (talk) 12:53, 6 January 2014 (UTC)


 * That's fine, but it's unclear where the current article has "neutrality" or "revisionist" issues. If you can point out which statements that have those issues, and/or cite sources that contradict the article, that might make the issue clearer.  -- HLachman (talk) 15:09, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Employee names
While it's clear that the early hires to the company made enormous contributions to its success, it's unclear that the lead paragraph of the "History" section is the place to name them. This could lead to the problem of leaving people out, and then the question is whom to include. My suggestion is to include in that paragraph only the names of the two founders and the CEO (who are listed as "key people" in the infobox), as they are the three people most commonly named in articles on the history of Netscape Communications. I have edited the article according to my suggestion. If there are other views, please discuss here. Thanks. -- HLachman (talk) 22:16, 18 May 2014 (UTC)