Category Archives: Tech

SeaMonkey

Tech,

At work, my new default browser is SeaMonkey 1.1. It has, for the most part, replaced Netscape as my “official” work web browser. I chose it due to the fact that it is a full internet application suite and includes a fully functional mail client. It also includes a WYSIWYG HTML Editor as well as an IRC client, but I don’t see much use for it at the moment.

I’m very happy with it thus far. The integration of the mail client into the suite has made my work twice as easy now. I have had some trouble with a couple of websites (which is kind of weird since the underlying rendering engine is the same as that used by Netscape 9), but those sites are really unnecessary, time-killing sites like Facebook, Xanga, and Blogger. Hopefully I’ll work the bugs out over the next few days.

Products I Follow, #1

Tech,

I eventually want to compile a list of stuff I follow on this website, when my real world life dies down a little (right now, this is projected to happen in December 2009, upon which time I will have finished my B.A. coursework, hopefully).

I still occasionally use KompoZer, a WYSIWYG HTML editor. Although I usually prefer to code by hand (and use a combination of Max’s HTML Beauty++ 2004 and Dreamweaver at work), KompoZer is a great resource to put up simple HTML pages (like this little placeholder page I set up for one of my future projects which I am doing in collaboration with Katherine). My entire ‘Aiea Highlife website was built and still is maintained using KompoZer, for example, though I wrote the CSS for the page by hand.

The official development blog for KomPozer is located at http://kazhack.org/?tag/editor. I can’t wait for the final version 0.8 to be released.

Netscape is a dead brand, part II

Tech, , ,

I just noticed an announcement on UFAQ.org website that states that Netscape personal web sites are being brought offline on October 31.

I lamented in my previous post that as I no longer remember my Netscape password (I put these two websites online back in 2001), I cannot take my websites down. Well, it appears as if Netscape is taking care of this problem for me. (My old webpages are located: here, here, and here. Unless something changes, these links will cease to work on October 31.)

This current announcement, along with the fact that MyNetscape was taken offline a few weeks ago, seems to suggest to me that the Netscape brand is indeed being dismantled, one piece at a time.

Netscape is a dead brand

Tech, ,

I took a break from studying for my last two summer school finals to take a look at the state of Netscape. Truthfully, there was very little to investigate.

The Netscape browser has been dead for several months now.

Netscape.com is a green AOL.com clone. (However, you can view a stripped-down version of the old portal at isp.netscape.com. The Compuserve website, another brand that has been largely abandoned by AOL, also uses a stripped down version of the old Netscape portal.)

The Netscape social news portal has transformed into Propeller (which kind of surprised me; if you have a very visible and familiar brand, why abandon it and adopt a new brand and build it from the bottom up?). Interestingly, Netscape Newsquake is still up and running.

My.Netscape will be dead by month’s end.

The Netscape blog is still around, but as of late it has served mainly as a line of communication for the Netscape management to let its users know what product they are killing next.

The Netscape ISP is alive and well, but for how long? AOL will be splitting in half by next year, with its media services being separated from its access services. Who knows what will happen to the ISP by that time? Not that I care, no one who was at least slightly familiar with Netscape really considered the ISP to be part of Netscape anyway.

If one has been using Netscape for as long as I have, you’ll notice that some parts of the Netscape website are still around. The Netscape Community site is still online and apparently people still use it. The “Today’s Poll” section looks like it hasn’t been updated in years. The poll asks which search engine its users use most often. One of the options is “Ask Jeeves,” however, “Jeeves” was phased out almost three years ago. Links that formerly pointed to the Netscape browser section now forward, interestingly enough, to the Flock website.

For a real blast in the past, you can see vestiges of the old Netscape Netcenter days by visiting Netscape My Webpage. I still have two websites online with My Webpage, and because I no longer remember my old passwords there is virtually no way for me to take them down.

Netscape’s old press release section is also online. Reading some of these names from the open-sourcing press releases of the late 1990s was quite interesting.

There are a few other pages online, but these were the most interesting to me.

So the only real part of Netscape that still exists and is still being maintained is the Netscape ISP, which really isn’t part of Netscape anyway. Propeller is spun off and Netscape Newsquake is part of Propeller (though it still uses the Netscape name). The software division is dead. The portal is as good as dead. So Netscape itself has been dead since February. Where was the company’s obituary?

Perhaps after AOL splits next year and the Netscape ISP goes on its way, perhaps AOL can finally allow Netscape to die a merciful death. Or perhaps AOL could sell the brand to someone who could make better use of it?