What's the difference, anyway? Netscape, founded in 1994, invented the first widely used Internet browser. Navigator was an efficient, innovative, and intelligent program used to surf the Internet. Microsoft, just as it borrowed the Apple design for Windows, tried to imitate the Netscape model, but the result was criticized as an inferior, bulky, bug-infested product. However, Microsoft's aggressive marketing battered Netscape's control of the browser market.
Netscape users believed in the idealism of the early net pioneers; they believed in David vs. Goliath; many held on to Netscape software simply to spite Microsoft's alleged monopoly in the market. Yet with Netscape's sale to AOL in late 1998, everything changed. The most recent version of Netscape, 6.0, took 18 months to be released (an eternity in the Internet world). And despite a year and a half of programming, the newest Netscape is criticized as being unintuitive, slow, and riddled with bugs. Having added clunky bells and whistles to the software, a trademark of the poor Microsoft programs of the Nineties, the latest Netscape has disappointed many die-hard fans.
While web sites were "optimized for either [Navigator or Explorer] in the early days," according to Ken Ramberg, co-founder of JOBTRAK.com, "It seems that most sites these days are optimized for IE." Even Navigator-loving dinosaurs (myself included) grudgingly agree.
