Netscape Communicator (or ''Netscape 4'') is a discontinued Internet suite produced by Netscape Communications Corporation, and was the fourth major release in the

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was on ...

line of browsers. It was first in beta in 1996 and was released in June 1997. Netscape Communicator addressed the problem of

Netscape Navigator Netscape Navigator was a web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in ...

3.x being used as both the name of the suite and the browser contained within it by renaming the suite to Netscape ''Communicator''. It included more groupware features intended to appeal to enterprises. In February 1998, Netscape announced that Mozilla.org would co-ordinate the development of Netscape Communicator 5 as "a dedicated team within Netscape with an associated Web site that will promote, foster and guide open dialog and development of Netscape's client source code." However, the aging Communicator code proved to be difficult to work with, so it was abandoned. The whole source code of Communicator was re-written by Mozilla, who were then testing it as

Mozilla Application Suite The Mozilla Application Suite (originally known as Mozilla, marketed as the Mozilla Suite) is a discontinued cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition ...

. Netscape, now owned by

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

, finally released Communicator's successor

Netscape 6 Netscape 6 is a discontinued Internet suite developed by Netscape Communications Corporation, and was the sixth major release of the Netscape series of browsers. It superseded Netscape Communicator (4.x), as the release of Netscape Communicato ...

in November 2000, based on Mozilla Application Suite with changes and additions. Minor updates to Communicator continued to be issued, culminating in the release of Netscape Communicator 4.8 in August 2002.

Editions

Netscape Communicator was available in various editions, such as "Professional" and "Complete". The following components were included in Netscape Communicator (different editions had different components and some components were dropped in later editions):

Features

—

Web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

* Netscape Messenger —

e-mail client An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...

and (in version 4.5 and above)

news client A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet distributed throughout newsgroups. Newsreaders act as clients which connect to a news server, via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), to download articles and post new a ...

Netscape Collabra Netscape Mail and Newsgroups, commonly known as just Netscape Mail, was an email and news client produced by Netscape Communications Corporation as part of the Netscape series of suites between versions 2.0 to 7.2. In the 2.x and 3.x series, i ...

—

(merged into Messenger in version 4.5) *

Netscape Address Book Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

—

address book An address book or a name and address book is a book, or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields (for example: first name, last name, company name, address, telephone n ...

Netscape Composer Netscape Composer is a WYSIWYG HTML editor initially developed by Netscape Communications Corporation in 1997, and packaged as part of the Netscape Communicator, Netscape 6 and Netscape 7 range of Internet suites. In addition, Composer can also v ...

—

HTML editor An HTML editor is a program for editing HTML, the markup of a web page. Although the HTML markup in a web page can be controlled with any text editor, specialized HTML editors can offer convenience and added functionality. For example, many HT ...

*Netscape Netcaster —

push technology Push technology or server push is a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull/get, where the request for the transmission of informa ...

client (dropped in version 4.5) *Netscape Conference — multi-user communication client (dropped in version 4.5) *Netscape Calendar — enterprise calendar client (dropped in version 4.72 because Netscape's license to use the underlying technology expired)

Updates

In October 1998, a major update to the program was released as Netscape 4.5. This included many improvements, mostly to the Messenger e-mail client, which now also took on the features of Collabra. However, some of the less popular components, such as Netcaster, were dropped. A feature called "Roaming Profiles" was added in version 4.5 that synchronized a user's bookmarks, address book and preferences with a remote server, so that a user's home and work browsers could have the same bookmarks. By the time version 4.5 was released, Netscape had started the

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

project and had ceased charging for Communicator. The term "Navigator" referred to the browser component alone, while "Communicator" referred to the suite as a whole, as established in version 4.0. However, due to user confusion, the names were often used interchangeably. Also, because none of the applications besides Navigator were popular on their own, and because Netscape never produced any other desktop software that approached the popularity of Navigator, people would often refer to both the Communicator suite and the Navigator browser as simply "

". The Mozilla Foundation continued to develop the Netscape code base, providing the Mozilla Application Suite as a continuation of Netscape Communicator. The Mozilla Foundation decided in 2006 to discontinue development of the Application Suite. A community-maintained version called

SeaMonkey SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which itself grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netscape ...

has come to replace the Application Suite.

References

External links

*
Netscape Browser Archive - Communicator
SillyDog701 {{Timeline of web browsers, 1990s 1997 software Cross-platform software Discontinued software Discontinued internet suites Formerly proprietary software Gopher clients History of web browsers Netscape OS/2 web browsers

Editions

Features

Updates

See also

References

External links