Netscape Navigator

What Does Netscape Navigator Mean?

Netscape Navigator was the first commercially successful Web browser. It was based off the Mosaic browser and was created by a team led by Marc Andreessen, a programmer who co-wrote the code for Mosaic. Netscape Navigator helped influence the development of the Web into a graphical user experience rather than a purely text-based one.

Techopedia Explains Netscape Navigator

In the 1990s, Netscape Navigator was on the leading edge of innovations in Web browsing. Among the many features that became standard after Navigator pioneered them are:

Displaying a Web page as it loads
Using Javascript to create forms and interactive content
Using cookies to keep session information

Despite its technical lead and its initial dominance of the consumer market, Netscape was eventually crushed by Microsoft during a period known as the browser wars.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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