Netscape Navigator

Netscape navigator is a web browser that was forked off the earlier public domain NCSA Mosaic browser, that was offered as a shareware and freeware download in the mid 1990's. A few programs, such as some versions of the Feature Installer have Navigator as a dependency which occasionally makes it prudent to have it installed even in this day and age, however the 2.02 1998 refresh version works as well as the later Communicator version for that purpose and is a lot smaller.

Differences from the original Windows version

Even though the Netscape Navigator 2.0x version was in theory officially distributed by Netscape and not by IBM, it was ported by IBM and contained a number of differences, some of which later showed up in Navigator on other systems. The original Navigator/2 v2.02 release supported IBM's VoiceType technology and could be controlled entirely by voice commands, the Link Menu feature from WebExplorer was ported to Ns/2 but that is a feature that automatically populates a menu with either links and/or user selectable "hot words" from the document. The latter feature makes not only for faster browsing on some sites but also with using VoiceType and helps blind users navigate as well.

Netscape/2 2.02 also had support for bidirectional drag and drop, objects such as photographs and text blocks could be dragged from the browser to another application or a folder and similarly you could drag an object from the file system to the browser. The OS/2 version of Navigator 2.02 was also for some reason considerably faster than the Windows version on the same hardware, presumably due to the use of better compilers.

Plugins

OS/2 versions of Netscape Navigator can use plugins intended for Microsoft Windows v3.x as well as native 32 bit plugins.

Versions

• Last known version: Netscape Communicator 4.61 (US English version)
• Netscape Communicator 4.04 (1998 - US English version) Netscape Communicator 4.04 (Danish version)
• Netscape Navigator 2.02 (1996 - US English version) - Netscape Navigator 2.02 (1998-06 Refresh - US English version)
  • Netscape Navigator Plugin Pack for OS/2 (1996 - Danish version)

Prerequisites

• OS/2 Warp Version 3 with fixpack 26 or higher.
• The Netscape Navigator 2.02 Refresh versions do not include Java and you will need an IBM Java v1.1.4 ~ Java v1.1.8 to work with the Feature Installer etc.

Links & publications

• Netscape Navigator for OS/2 Warp - plug-ins hints and tips Alex Chapman's info regarding Netscape Navigator 2.02.
• Edward Stangler: Navigator/2 Unleashed - 1996 - From OS/2 e-Zine
• Netscape Navigator history

Author

• Netscape Communications
• IBM