AOL, who these days own Netscape, have announced that they’re to cease development of the browser. I’ve mixed feeling weirdly enough, although from a professional point of view it’s good news as it’s one less browser to have to test websites against in the long term.
When I started out developing websites, Netscape was the browser our company mainly tested against, mainly because it was a lot more powerful and popular than the Microsoft browser at the time. As time progressed this situation obviously changed, but there was a time when companies proudly displayed “built for Netscape Navigator” icons at the bottom of their sites.
I don’t think anyone has seriously used Netscape for years; it kinda turned into a weird mish-mash of Firefox and IE in the end, and because they haven’t managed to make a dent in IE’s market share they’ve decided to quit.