Editing Netscape Navigator (section)

===Rise===
When the consumer [[Internet]] revolution arrived in the mid-1990s, Netscape was well-positioned to take advantage of it and the influx of new users it brought. With a good mix of features and an attractive [[software license|licensing]] scheme that allowed free use for non-commercial purposes, the Netscape browser soon became the [[de facto]] standard, particularly on the [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] platform. [[Internet service provider]]s and computer magazine publishers helped make Navigator readily available.

An innovation that Netscape introduced in 1994 was the on-the-fly display of web pages, where text and graphics appeared on the screen as the web page downloaded. Earlier web browsers would not display a page until all graphics on it had been loaded over the network connection; this meant a user might have only a blank page for several minutes. With Netscape, people using [[dial-up Internet access|dial-up]] connections could begin reading the text of a web page within seconds of entering a web address, even before the rest of the text and graphics had finished downloading. This made the web much more tolerable to the average user.

Through the late 1990s, Netscape made sure that Navigator remained the technical leader among web browsers. New features included [[HTTP cookie|cookies]], [[Framing (World Wide Web)|frames]],<ref>{{cite web
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071030083252/http://docs.rinet.ru/HTMLnya/ch13.htm
| archive-date = 30 October 2007
| url = http://docs.rinet.ru/HTMLnya/ch13.htm
| title = Using HTML 3.2, Java 1.1, and CGI; Ch. 13, Frames
| first = Eric
| last = Ladd
}}</ref> [[proxy auto-config]],<ref>{{cite web
 |url         = http://wp.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/proxy-live.html
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20061218002753/http://wp.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/proxy-live.html
 |date        = March 1996
 |archive-date = 18 December 2006
 |title       = Navigator Proxy Auto-Config File Format
 |access-date  = 15 January 2011
 |website        = Netscape Navigator Documentation
 |url-status     = dead}}</ref> and [[JavaScript]] (in version 2.0). Although those and other innovations eventually became open standards of the [[World Wide Web Consortium|W3C]] and [[Ecma International|ECMA]] and were emulated by other browsers, they were often viewed as controversial. Netscape, according to critics, was more interested in bending the [[World Wide Web|web]] to its own de facto "standards" (bypassing standards committees and thus marginalizing the commercial competition) than it was in fixing bugs in its products. Consumer rights advocates were particularly critical of cookies and of commercial web sites using them to invade individual privacy.

In the marketplace, however, these concerns made little difference. Netscape Navigator remained the market leader with more than 50% [[Usage share of web browsers|usage share]]. The browser software was available for a wide range of operating systems, including Windows ([[Windows 3.1x|3.1]], [[Windows 95|95]], [[Windows 98|98]], [[Windows NT|NT]]), [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]], [[Linux]], [[OS/2]],<ref>{{Cite web
 |last        = Watson
 |first       = Dave
 |title       = A Quick Look at Netscape
 |url         = http://www.scoug.com/os24u/2001/netscape.html
 |publisher   = The Southern California OS/2 User Group
 |access-date  = 16 August 2010
 |date        = 21 July 2001
 |url-status     = live
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20110716021316/http://www.scoug.com/os24u/2001/netscape.html
 |archive-date = 16 July 2011}}</ref> and many versions of Unix including [[Tru64 UNIX#OSF.2F1|OSF/1]], [[Solaris (operating system)|Sun Solaris]], [[BSD/OS]], [[IRIX]], [[IBM AIX|AIX]], and [[HP-UX]], and looked and worked nearly identically on every one of them. Netscape began to experiment with prototypes of a web-based system, known internally as "Constellation", which would allow users to access and edit their files anywhere across a network no matter what computer or operating system they happened to be using.<ref>{{Cite web
 |first       = John
 |last        = Gordon
 |title       = Why Google loves Chrome: Netscape Constellation
 |url         = https://notes.kateva.org/2008/12/why-google-loves-chrome-netscape.html
 |publisher   = Gordon's Notes
 |access-date  = 18 December 2020
 |date        = 24 December 2008
 }}</ref>

Industry observers forecast the dawn of a new era of connected computing. The underlying [[operating system]], it was believed, would not be an important consideration; future applications would run within a web browser. This was seen by Netscape as a clear opportunity to entrench Navigator at the heart of the next generation of computing, and thus gain the opportunity to expand into all manner of other software and service markets.