6 ms·

Netscape 1.x

63 points by neverrroot 3y ago

butz 3y ago
Remember the times, when manual for software application was bigger than actual application? And printed out. And included in package with software.
buro9 3y ago
I tried running Netscape 4 recently. It worked! Until it didn't. Where it failed was protocols, the old binaries know nothing of modern TLS, and the vast majority of the web is now using that even when there's just no need to, so the browser works, most things could still render, but very little works.
- blackhaz 3y ago
  There is a solution! https://github.com/atauenis/webone https://github.com/atauenis/webone
jeffbee 3y ago
You can still run old Netscape binaries on Linux/X11, if you gather the ancient libstdc++ against which it was dynamically linked.
news_to_me 3y ago
I got Netscape 1.12 working on an old Macintosh, and while it can't browse much by default, this[0] HTTP proxy makes the 'net much more accessible. I'm kind of surprised that proxies were supported so early in browsers, does anyone know why? Also, if you happen to design a website with Netscape 1 compatibility, and you want to replace SVG images with GIFs only for Netscape, you can use the <object> tag like this: <object class="banner" type="image/svg+xml" data="assets/banner.svg" role="img" width="487" height="180" style="pointer-events:none"> <center> <img src="assets/banner.gif" width="244" height="90" /> </center> </object> [0]: https://github.com/rdmark/macproxy https://github.com/rdmark/macproxy
- marban 3y ago
  Proxies — For Performance, I.e. local mirrors, security, private IP range in a corporate network, etc.
- electroly 3y ago
  Network Address Translation was invented the same year that Netscape Navigator was originally released, and it took years for it to become the de facto way to get a private local network onto the Internet. In the 90s I installed proxy servers at several small businesses in order to share a dialup connection to other PCs in the network.
  - nineteen999 3y ago
    > In the 90s I installed proxy servers at several small businesses in order to share a dialup connection to other PCs in the network. If your customer was cheap and needed more bandwidth you could use EQL[0] to load-balance a PPP connection over multiple POTS/ISDN lines if your ISP supported multiple connections. I set this up for a number of businesses back then when office staff started arguing with each over who was using all the bandwidth from a single 28K modem. [0]https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/eql.txt https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/eql.txt
mmaunder 3y ago
I wrote my first web app on netscapes commerce server in C around 1994. It was an online aptitude test for a distance learning college. I still remember banging my head against the desk trying to figure out why it was producing a 500. Until I realized that Content-type: text/html needed two \n’s after it, not just one.
- _the_inflator 3y ago
  > "distance learning college" Nice one. Haven't heard this phrase for quite some time now, but essentially, this is what remote/virtual/e-learning is all about today.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
39 years ago I went online. NNTP and FTP were the tools that I loved.
- 3x35r22m4u 3y ago
  When they installed a gopher client at our local university Vax system, it was a thrill. So many hours using Veronica search stuff. And I remember kept using gopher during the Mosaic and Netscape 1-2 era.
gamache 3y ago
> At release Netscape Navigator 1.0 competed against NCSA Mosaic. Over Mosaic, Netscape offered the ability to see documents and images as they load, loading both images and text at the same time, support for JPEG graphics, document caching, a friendlier GUI with more configuration options, and hierarchical bookmarks. This leaves out a huge differentiator -- Netscape supported background images. Every site looked blander in Mosaic (even if it were a lot easier to read). The other features TFA mentions are great but background images were the origin of "This site is best viewed using XXXX".
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I was an early employee at Netscape, and worked on the browser, server, and the services platforms. It was a hell of a ride - you felt the world changing under your keyboard. I am glad to see it still brings joy to people to use the product of our work in its original form. I often wonder how technology would look today if Netscape hadn’t been crushed for threatening Microsoft’s os dominance. After Netscape internet technologies went through a dark age without innovation until Chrome and related technologies, which were sadly in service of another monopolist - but this one protecting its dominance in pervasive surveillance.
- neverrroot 3y ago
  Thank you for replying, your work shaped me into what I came to be. I was a backend developer at the end of the 90’s, sadly not for Netscape Server, it was mostly C++ CGI. Have you been around during this time period (birth hour of Mozilla)? https://youtu.be/4Q7FTjhvZ7Y https://youtu.be/4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Oh I should sit and watch that. Yes I was there and helped a lot. Jwz was a friend at the time (although I later became too uncool for him). The launch party for Mozilla was awesome.
- Throw839 3y ago
  > often wonder how technology would look today if Netscape hadn’t been crushed for threatening Microsoft’s os dominance > technologies went through a dark age without innovation until Chrome IE was pretty innovative, it introduced AJAX (async javascript requests...), web version of Outlook in 1998... There was also Opera browser, pretty innovative, it introduced tabs, mouse gestures, user styles, no script, basic adblocking... It could run on anything, even phone without MMU.
  - sedatk 3y ago
    Besides AJAX, IE introduced CSS and IFRAMEs too as far as I remember.
haunter 3y ago
Works perfectly under Windows 10/11 with winevdm https://github.com/otya128/winevdm https://github.com/otya128/winevdm https://files.catbox.moe/xe1d3f.png https://files.catbox.moe/xe1d3f.png (you need to mount the virtual floppy disk image)
dang 3y ago
Submitted title was "29 years ago today I went online. Netscape Navigator 1.0 was the tool I loved" - that would be fine as a comment in the thread, but not as a submission title. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) and also you'll have a lot more room to share your story!
jwells89 3y ago
Netscape 2.x/3.x on System 7.5 is where I was introduced to the internet. Their splash screens and animated loading icon added a certain air of awe to what was already an impressive experience as a kid… kudos to whoever was in charge of the design of those graphics.
- myth_drannon 3y ago
  Every time I see the splash screen, the color scheme and the icon, it bring me to a sort of serenity state. I guess the subconscious is transfered to carefree and wonderous childhood.
  - mjhagen 3y ago
    And a lot of patience was needed for browsing the web back then.
  - theolivenbaum 3y ago
    There was a post about it sometime ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982856
neverrroot 3y ago
I’m the op, and 29 years ago today I went online. Netscape Navigator 1.0 was the tool I loved back then, it’s great to still see it around as a piece in the museum. Thankfully, there are still ways to run it nowadays, but virtually no websites keep working with it. Still brings back good memories.
jbverschoor 3y ago
I've always loved the animating navigation icon... gave you a sense of exploring unknown territory.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  It gave me something to do while loading a page over slow-ass dialup. The worst were pages had the same color for the text and background and relied on a slow loading background image to provide the contrast to read anything.
- netsharc 3y ago
  As someone else mentioned, there was a discussion about the Netscape meteor icon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982856 I modified my Vivaldi install to add the animated N (downloaded from http://www.netscape-communications.com/netscapes-throbber-and-logos/ http://www.netscape-communications.com/netscapes-throbber-an... ), as I described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36993118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36993118 . After writing that comment I modified it further so that the persona icon isn't circular, but square, by modifying the Vivaldi UI through CSS: https://gabevilela.vivaldi.net/2020/12/26/guide-customizing-vivaldis-ui-with-css-mods/ https://gabevilela.vivaldi.net/2020/12/26/guide-customizing-...
recursive 3y ago
I like to tell stories about going down to the local office super store and paying money for a web browser that came in a box.
sedatk 3y ago
33 years ago, I went online and sent an email to ARJ’s author Robert K. Jung over a BITNET-Internet gateway on a 3270 terminal connected to an IBM 4341. Robert was very friendly, and had replied to all my emails. ARJ was a very promising and feature rich compression software until PKZIP 2.x came out and basically devoured the archiver market.

63 points by neverrroot 3y ago

butz 3y ago

Remember the times, when manual for software application was bigger than actual application? And printed out. And included in package with software.

buro9 3y ago

I tried running Netscape 4 recently. It worked! Until it didn't. Where it failed was protocols, the old binaries know nothing of modern TLS, and the vast majority of the web is now using that even when there's just no need to, so the browser works, most things could still render, but very little works.

blackhaz 3y ago
There is a solution! https://github.com/atauenis/webone https://github.com/atauenis/webone

jeffbee 3y ago

You can still run old Netscape binaries on Linux/X11, if you gather the ancient libstdc++ against which it was dynamically linked.

news_to_me 3y ago

I got Netscape 1.12 working on an old Macintosh, and while it can't browse much by default, this[0] HTTP proxy makes the 'net much more accessible. I'm kind of surprised that proxies were supported so early in browsers, does anyone know why? Also, if you happen to design a website with Netscape 1 compatibility, and you want to replace SVG images with GIFs only for Netscape, you can use the <object> tag like this: <object class="banner" type="image/svg+xml" data="assets/banner.svg" role="img" width="487" height="180" style="pointer-events:none"> <center> <img src="assets/banner.gif" width="244" height="90" /> </center> </object> [0]: https://github.com/rdmark/macproxy https://github.com/rdmark/macproxy

marban 3y ago
Proxies — For Performance, I.e. local mirrors, security, private IP range in a corporate network, etc.
electroly 3y ago
Network Address Translation was invented the same year that Netscape Navigator was originally released, and it took years for it to become the de facto way to get a private local network onto the Internet. In the 90s I installed proxy servers at several small businesses in order to share a dialup connection to other PCs in the network.
- nineteen999 3y ago
  > In the 90s I installed proxy servers at several small businesses in order to share a dialup connection to other PCs in the network. If your customer was cheap and needed more bandwidth you could use EQL[0] to load-balance a PPP connection over multiple POTS/ISDN lines if your ISP supported multiple connections. I set this up for a number of businesses back then when office staff started arguing with each over who was using all the bandwidth from a single 28K modem. [0]https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/eql.txt https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/eql.txt

mmaunder 3y ago

I wrote my first web app on netscapes commerce server in C around 1994. It was an online aptitude test for a distance learning college. I still remember banging my head against the desk trying to figure out why it was producing a 500. Until I realized that Content-type: text/html needed two \n’s after it, not just one.

_the_inflator 3y ago
> "distance learning college" Nice one. Haven't heard this phrase for quite some time now, but essentially, this is what remote/virtual/e-learning is all about today.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

39 years ago I went online. NNTP and FTP were the tools that I loved.

3x35r22m4u 3y ago
When they installed a gopher client at our local university Vax system, it was a thrill. So many hours using Veronica search stuff. And I remember kept using gopher during the Mosaic and Netscape 1-2 era.

gamache 3y ago

> At release Netscape Navigator 1.0 competed against NCSA Mosaic. Over Mosaic, Netscape offered the ability to see documents and images as they load, loading both images and text at the same time, support for JPEG graphics, document caching, a friendlier GUI with more configuration options, and hierarchical bookmarks. This leaves out a huge differentiator -- Netscape supported background images. Every site looked blander in Mosaic (even if it were a lot easier to read). The other features TFA mentions are great but background images were the origin of "This site is best viewed using XXXX".

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I was an early employee at Netscape, and worked on the browser, server, and the services platforms. It was a hell of a ride - you felt the world changing under your keyboard. I am glad to see it still brings joy to people to use the product of our work in its original form. I often wonder how technology would look today if Netscape hadn’t been crushed for threatening Microsoft’s os dominance. After Netscape internet technologies went through a dark age without innovation until Chrome and related technologies, which were sadly in service of another monopolist - but this one protecting its dominance in pervasive surveillance.

neverrroot 3y ago
Thank you for replying, your work shaped me into what I came to be. I was a backend developer at the end of the 90’s, sadly not for Netscape Server, it was mostly C++ CGI. Have you been around during this time period (birth hour of Mozilla)? https://youtu.be/4Q7FTjhvZ7Y https://youtu.be/4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Oh I should sit and watch that. Yes I was there and helped a lot. Jwz was a friend at the time (although I later became too uncool for him). The launch party for Mozilla was awesome.
Throw839 3y ago
> often wonder how technology would look today if Netscape hadn’t been crushed for threatening Microsoft’s os dominance > technologies went through a dark age without innovation until Chrome IE was pretty innovative, it introduced AJAX (async javascript requests...), web version of Outlook in 1998... There was also Opera browser, pretty innovative, it introduced tabs, mouse gestures, user styles, no script, basic adblocking... It could run on anything, even phone without MMU.
- sedatk 3y ago
  Besides AJAX, IE introduced CSS and IFRAMEs too as far as I remember.

haunter 3y ago

Works perfectly under Windows 10/11 with winevdm https://github.com/otya128/winevdm https://github.com/otya128/winevdm https://files.catbox.moe/xe1d3f.png https://files.catbox.moe/xe1d3f.png (you need to mount the virtual floppy disk image)

dang 3y ago

Submitted title was "29 years ago today I went online. Netscape Navigator 1.0 was the tool I loved" - that would be fine as a comment in the thread, but not as a submission title. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) and also you'll have a lot more room to share your story!

jwells89 3y ago

Netscape 2.x/3.x on System 7.5 is where I was introduced to the internet. Their splash screens and animated loading icon added a certain air of awe to what was already an impressive experience as a kid… kudos to whoever was in charge of the design of those graphics.

myth_drannon 3y ago
Every time I see the splash screen, the color scheme and the icon, it bring me to a sort of serenity state. I guess the subconscious is transfered to carefree and wonderous childhood.
- mjhagen 3y ago
  And a lot of patience was needed for browsing the web back then.
- theolivenbaum 3y ago
  There was a post about it sometime ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982856

neverrroot 3y ago

I’m the op, and 29 years ago today I went online. Netscape Navigator 1.0 was the tool I loved back then, it’s great to still see it around as a piece in the museum. Thankfully, there are still ways to run it nowadays, but virtually no websites keep working with it. Still brings back good memories.

jbverschoor 3y ago

I've always loved the animating navigation icon... gave you a sense of exploring unknown territory.

giantrobot 3y ago
It gave me something to do while loading a page over slow-ass dialup. The worst were pages had the same color for the text and background and relied on a slow loading background image to provide the contrast to read anything.
netsharc 3y ago
As someone else mentioned, there was a discussion about the Netscape meteor icon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982856 I modified my Vivaldi install to add the animated N (downloaded from http://www.netscape-communications.com/netscapes-throbber-and-logos/ http://www.netscape-communications.com/netscapes-throbber-an... ), as I described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36993118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36993118 . After writing that comment I modified it further so that the persona icon isn't circular, but square, by modifying the Vivaldi UI through CSS: https://gabevilela.vivaldi.net/2020/12/26/guide-customizing-vivaldis-ui-with-css-mods/ https://gabevilela.vivaldi.net/2020/12/26/guide-customizing-...

recursive 3y ago

I like to tell stories about going down to the local office super store and paying money for a web browser that came in a box.

sedatk 3y ago

33 years ago, I went online and sent an email to ARJ’s author Robert K. Jung over a BITNET-Internet gateway on a 3270 terminal connected to an IBM 4341. Robert was very friendly, and had replied to all my emails. ARJ was a very promising and feature rich compression software until PKZIP 2.x came out and basically devoured the archiver market.