Netscape Navigator 9 is a discontinued

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application 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 scr ...

that was produced by the

Netscape Communications 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), Nets ...

division of parent AOL, first announced on January 23, 2007. It was the ninth major release of 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 o ...

line of browsers. After AOL outsourced the development of Netscape Browser 8 to Mercurial Communications in 2004, Netscape Navigator 9 marked the first Netscape browser to be produced in-house since the Netscape 7 suite. It also saw the return of the classic ''

Navigator A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's prim ...

'' name, which was previously used during Netscape's heyday between versions 1.0 and 4.08 in the 1990s. Netscape Navigator 9 is based on

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curren ...

2.0. The program's first

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

was released on June 5, 2007, with the Beta 2 on July 12, and Beta 3 on August 16. After a

release candidate The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

, the final release was issued on October 15, 2007. On December 28, 2007, Netscape developers announced that AOL would discontinue their web browser on February 1, 2008. On January 28, 2008, Netscape revised this date to March 1, 2008, and offered support for migration to Flock and

. It was the last web browser of the Netscape series.

Features

New features

The Beta releases of Netscape Navigator 9 included enhanced newsfeed support and were more integrated with the Netscape.com Internet portal, including enhanced methods of discussion, submission and voting of Web pages. However, starting with Netscape Navigator 9 beta 3, the Netscape.com integration was optional, and certain aspects of integration could be manually enabled or disabled, with integration being totally removed in Navigator 9.0rc1 as the portal relaunched as

Propeller A propeller (often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working flu ...

. The

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

of the program was also updated, and the theme was also later released for use on Mozilla Firefox. Like Netscape version 8.x, Navigator 9 was based upon the

, this time version 2.0, and should have had full support of all Firefox add-ons and plugins, some of which Netscape was providing. Netscape also released some of its features as extensions for Firefox, including th
Site Mail Notifier and Friends' Activity Sidebar
, th
Digg Tracker
, as well a
Netstripe
, the new default theme for Netscape 9. The browser also included

URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...

self-correction, which corrected common URL misspellings, an improved

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

listing interface and a dedicated ''News'' menu with integration to the Netscape.com news portal. A quick "link pad" was also included so Web pages could quickly be added to the pad for later viewing without adding to the bookmark lists.Netscape Navigator features
Retrieved on June 6, 2007 Navigator 9 also sees the browser return to multi-platform support across

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. Netscape's signature splash screen also reappeared in the release candidate of the final program.

Removed features

Unlike Netscape 8, the browser did not use

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

's Trident layout engine as an alternative engine option. Netscape Navigator did not include any

newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are not only discussion groups or conversations, but also a repository to publish articles, start ...

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

Email 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 ...

s as Netscape 6 and 7 did. Netscape did, however, plan to produce a companion email client to complement the Navigator, confirmed as Netscape Messenger 9. While that software was in development, Netscape advised its users to use the Netscape 7 series of suites, which includes an email client, alongside Navigator 9 for browsing purposes.

Decorative features

A new verse 8:20 of the

Easter egg Easter eggs, also called Paschal eggs, are eggs that are decorated for the Christian holiday of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. As such, Easter eggs are commonly used during the season of Eastertide (Easter season). The ...

'' The Book of Mozilla'' was written for the release of Netscape 9, consisting of ''"And thus the Creator looked upon the beast reborn and saw that it was good"''. This could have reference either to the re-development of Netscape in-house once again, or the

Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the Open-source software, open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...

and its contributors. Based on user feedback, Netscape decided to return the splash screen to Navigator 9. On September 10, 2007, Netscape decided to give their design team a break and let users submit their own idea for how the splash screen should look. The winning image would be used as the splash screen in the final 9.0 release of Navigator, and the designer would be listed in the browser credits. Many designs were submitted. In the end, Mario Herbert was chosen the winner and his design used as the final Navigator 9 splash screen.

Response

CNET Download.com claimed Navigator 9 had some "neat" components, contained many "tricks we love" and was "more than a backup browser"; which it previously used to describe Browser 8. Most of the bundled features from version 8 have been removed.Download.com review of Netscape Navigator 9
Retrieved on June 9, 2007

System requirements

Release history

References

External links

Netscape Browser Archive
{{Aggregators C++ software Discontinued web browsers Gopher clients MacOS web browsers Linux web browsers Web browsers based on Firefox Netscape POSIX web browsers Windows web browsers 2007 software