The browser choked on simple webpages and was inefficient and buggy, so they open sourced their code. It was a first in testing the merits and viability of open source. It was a global effort, it took a few years, it was rocky and all eyes where on the developers, who were largely volunteers, but it succeeded in spades. And this is where Mozilla and Firefox came from. We take a lot for granted now, but Firefox was revolutionary at the time and saved all of our bacon.
Damn! That splash screen triggered some fine memories. I’m about to get into something great. No Facebook or news with shitloads of ads yet. Just some raw html only web pages. At the time it was like a door to another world.
Well, I had whitechocolate84@aol.com... I didn't get a majestic title like being first couple of 100,000. I did get a lot, and I mean a lot, of pedophiles who thought I was an underage girl.
Like, an insane amount... worlds a scary place... like triply so if youre a pre-teen girl... probably should have told my parents about all the pedophiles...
Changed it to JohnJohnJohn58008@yahoo.com which helped a lot with the pedophiles
Who'd have thought the software engineer behind this browser ends up a billionaire in league with other nefarious billionaires... that includes Peter Thiel and Elon Musk?
or if you were on Amiga, configuring the tcpip stack based on BBS forums. I remember manually pulling from FTP then pushing them onto other local non www BBS dialups
I just did a search through the Firefox source code. Still lots of references to Netscape. Hard to say how much of that is just compatibility with internet standards, though.
My old ISP would block access unless you were willing to pay a subscription fee, this was before I had a VPN so I quit trying. I've also heard rumors that UseNet was acquired by Google, which essentially ruined most of the groups when they dropped support last year.
Usenet is a protocol, NNTP, so nobody can "acquire" it. Google did/does have the largest and most comprehensive archive of Usenet posts, goes back to 1982 or something, but they jacked it up big time a few years ago by disabling NNTP access and not taking on any new posts.
There's still plenty of news servers out there, but nowadays they're all for-pay so it's a much smaller community.
Yeah, it wasn’t that bad. Worst, though, was once you beat it and knew the end code, it didn’t change so you could beat it again virtually instantly, killing some of the replay value.
I did! A long time ago but still a while after it and Riven had come out. I also beat Riven, both without guides, but it took me a whole life of hours and running around. I also remember having a notebook full of notes for them.
Weirdly, both games made me uneasy and I don't think I actually enjoyed playing them. I just like solving puzzle games and I wanted to beat them.
I beat the masterpiece version which is identical except that you’re controlling a character in a 3D environment rather than clicking through screens. I dont know if I’d have the patience for the old version. Obsessed with the aesthetic.
Not as a kid. As an adult, yes. But I totally cheated. I played so many hours of that game when I was little. I would turn off the lights sonic was extra spooky. Still want to live in the tree-forts-above-water place.
I still use its (now distant) descendant, Firefox.
It only lost popularity to MSIE because Microsoft being Microsoft, they went all propriatary and touted how they were the most popular browser ever (nevermind the shady reasons for how and why that came to be). And all the web designers had to either design basically two different sites--one compatible with MSIE and one for everyone else--and the spineless twats decided to side with Microsoft's BS. Because of course they did.
I used to code two versions of my gaming clan's website to cater to both IE and Netscape. Even absolute positioning via CSS didn't behave the same, so specifying a coordinate would place an object in different places for each browser. Relative positioning was even worse. To render at the very corner, one of them could use 0,0. The other had to use negative values.
We used to test our websites in Navigator when I did design back in the 90’es (being a web programmer was really big back then). They argument for testing in Navigator was ‘if it works there we know it’s made correctly’.
And now, Google is basically unilaterally pissing on established common standards, and slapping everything with their proprietary crap, and breaks websites if not made to Google spec for the Chrome derivates. PS: Brave is not an alternative, it is also a Chrome derivate.
Explorer has always been shipped with windows as that handles a large part of the UI (and shares many elements with internet explorer, but its not the same)
not in its very first instances. Originally it was part of the add-on Plus! pack. Once it was bundled with the OS and people couldn't remove or disable it, Microsoft was hit with anti-trust lawsuits by the DOJ, but the writing was on the wall for Netscape. https://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-bundling-internet-explorer-windows-29-years/
(Window) Explorer has been a part of windows since 95, thats the part thats actually manages the windows. Internet Explorer expands upon it.
Hence why you could open a folder and type in an url in the bar, and yould be in internet explorer, also hence why you couldnt just remove internet explorer, as its integrated into explorer, and you would lose a big part of windows ui. That made the antitrust thing more serious, because Microsoft had hardwired it like that
I guess you only look at features then i guess. Firefox is simply the better one since it adheres to standards better and way less rendering bugs. No chromium based browser tops that
Edge is Chromium with MS branding - and MS reinforced multiple times that they will bend over, spread wide and comply with any changes pushed by Google, to the letter.
WolvesAreTheBestPeople
This may be my first memory.
4sambucas
Im old enough to remember Norton Commander
danielsan1977
TheUglyGuy
I remember meeting a guy named Tim at a conference where he was talking about this new think he was pushing - HTML or something like that...
Beardedgeek72
Gods I have witnessed ALL the enshittification.
Drack69
You posted it so you knew what it was. Sooooo YOU’RE OLD!
mistertheloaf
1996 I signed up with a local ISP - I had to print the form and mail it to them - and then they sent me this, in the mail, on a floppy disk.
TheChunguskaEvent
Cavalrysword
I still have a netscape.net email.
gorgeousninja
ironymus
Lassannn
OhIfIMust
(Sound on)
fivefrozenfishfingers
The browser choked on simple webpages and was inefficient and buggy, so they open sourced their code. It was a first in testing the merits and viability of open source. It was a global effort, it took a few years, it was rocky and all eyes where on the developers, who were largely volunteers, but it succeeded in spades. And this is where Mozilla and Firefox came from. We take a lot for granted now, but Firefox was revolutionary at the time and saved all of our bacon.
fripding
Damn! That splash screen triggered some fine memories. I’m about to get into something great. No Facebook or news with shitloads of ads yet. Just some raw html only web pages. At the time it was like a door to another world.
Type17
A very tiny, 28.8k door...
Mansooratyale
Zuegma197777
I used webcrawler, yahoo, lycos, geocities... Then there was one called Google but when you hit search thousands of pages would endlessly show up..
Sebastopol140
Damn!!!!
RetrogradeLlama
I used to carry it on a single floppy disk for re-installs.
funkingded
I am so old I had @netscape.com one of the first couple of 100,000 users.
JustUsLeagueUnlimited
Well, I had whitechocolate84@aol.com... I didn't get a majestic title like being first couple of 100,000. I did get a lot, and I mean a lot, of pedophiles who thought I was an underage girl.
Like, an insane amount... worlds a scary place... like triply so if youre a pre-teen girl... probably should have told my parents about all the pedophiles...
Changed it to JohnJohnJohn58008@yahoo.com which helped a lot with the pedophiles
film888master9
I was there Gandalf
J3lek
FlyNaked
It was a classy Splash Screen.
cytherians
Who'd have thought the software engineer behind this browser ends up a billionaire in league with other nefarious billionaires... that includes Peter Thiel and Elon Musk?
DocNitro
Is it just me, or does he remind anyone else of 'Coneheads'?
vegivamp
Now there's a Luigi list.
WellWellWellLookWhoItIs
At least he's the poorest one! Hahahahaha...hahaha....ha..........heh
ps238principal
Let me go find a copy of WinSock.exe.
Aurzyerne
I recall having a fair amount of devious fun BSODing IRC trolls using WinNuke. Before the port 139 patch was released.
TerminalInterface
or if you were on Amiga, configuring the tcpip stack based on BBS forums. I remember manually pulling from FTP then pushing them onto other local non www BBS dialups
bikergeek6249
I'm older.
BloodBlight
drizztx
I'm even older.
CyanideBreathMint
Needs an abacus;)
PostalHeathen
That's not old.
manystripes
It really is, you should have upgraded to Netscape Navigator Gold 3.x by now
TheSilverSeraph
Yeah, not as old as Usenet, FTP or Gopher (and many other ancient internet protocols)
WellWellWellLookWhoItIs
It kind of is.
PostalHeathen
It can't be. If it's old, that means I'm old. Since I'm not old, then, QED, Netscape's not old.
solrev
Aka Firefox
ComicSansHumor
I just did a search through the Firefox source code. Still lots of references to Netscape. Hard to say how much of that is just compatibility with internet standards, though.
solrev
This is great. Made my day
ComicSansHumor
It's quite the trip. There are still in-use DOM components and variable names from that era. Browsers are huge: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amozilla%2Fgecko-dev%20netscape&type=code
acetothermus
More like Firefox's grandfather.
solrev
Fair
BurlRavenscroft
But then who is dad?
Mechwarrior719
We didn’t know we wanted a browser that helped maintain our data privacy back then. Perhaps I judged you too harshly, Netscape.
solrev
Netscape will always be my favourite
Mxlespxles
Yrp. Me too. And Alta Vista for search
Canigetbannedagain2
Wait, then who's Firefox's grandmother?
end100
Stallman?
nullbr
Probably Novell
Acquiredtaste
Browsers don't fuck. They reproduce by copy-paste.
acetothermus
I thought it was through code execution exploits.
Discgolfing
This is a really good one, thanks for the laugh
StrayCatsMakeGreatKibble
I remember the early internet before web browsers existed: Archie, Finger, FTP, Gopher, IRC, Telnet, UseNet, Write, etc.
br0da
Of all of them, I miss Usenet the most...
hoopyhoop
We had to use bang paths. In a cardboard box, in the middle of a motorway.
BonkyMcSignFace
Bulletin boards. BBS
LeScarla
Came to say that 😂 good times!
TerminalInterface
still remember finger nasanews@space.mit.edu
HashMaster9k
I used to use UseNet. I still do, but I used to too.
Doismellbacon
Thanks Mitch, RIP Miss you man!
StrayCatsMakeGreatKibble
My old ISP would block access unless you were willing to pay a subscription fee, this was before I had a VPN so I quit trying. I've also heard rumors that UseNet was acquired by Google, which essentially ruined most of the groups when they dropped support last year.
PballQhead
Usenet is a protocol, NNTP, so nobody can "acquire" it. Google did/does have the largest and most comprehensive archive of Usenet posts, goes back to 1982 or something, but they jacked it up big time a few years ago by disabling NNTP access and not taking on any new posts.
There's still plenty of news servers out there, but nowadays they're all for-pay so it's a much smaller community.
Orlandonuts
Has anyone actually beat Myst?
OhIfIMust
Has anyone actually played Iron Helix??
MadKraken
16bitStarbuck
No, but I got lots of "amazing" screenshots of the environments for my desktop. At the time it was the best-looking game I'd ever seen.
Imalwaysready
Yeah, it wasn’t that bad. Worst, though, was once you beat it and knew the end code, it didn’t change so you could beat it again virtually instantly, killing some of the replay value.
qshamtech
I fell and got trapped in a valley. Got pissed and never played again. I went back to playing Doom.
PineappleLoopsBroether
They screwed up and made a garbage gameplay out of great graphics. Everyone could figure out how to beat doom, cyberia and descent.
crazyfishlady
My dad's friend had the guide/hint book, so....yes.
PipWhipple
I have (with a guide)!
PlanckEraWasMyBestEra
I did! A long time ago but still a while after it and Riven had come out. I also beat Riven, both without guides, but it took me a whole life of hours and running around. I also remember having a notebook full of notes for them.
Weirdly, both games made me uneasy and I don't think I actually enjoyed playing them. I just like solving puzzle games and I wanted to beat them.
Cinnaderps
I did as a kid when my aunt couldn't beat it lol don't remember shit but having a good time solving puzzles though.
Memaleph
I've never found where to click, where to push in Myst. It's always finding the first button that was hard. No I never finished.
alcaray
It was easy for me at the time (though my crap PC had a lot of trouble with it). I've tried to replay it but I can't make myself get very far into it.
totallyruinedyourday
If you know what to do, you can beat it in less than 5 mins
TheMeatClownCometh
With a walkthrough book…no, not even then.
cybergeek
YEP! At age 10! only needed one (1) hint, and it WASN'T for the minecarts.
SweetRedDog
I never got past that first room. I fucking hate Myst.
zachnanaman
I beat the masterpiece version which is identical except that you’re controlling a character in a 3D environment rather than clicking through screens. I dont know if I’d have the patience for the old version. Obsessed with the aesthetic.
cbale2000
My dad owned the disk but I don't think he ever installed/ran it. It's still probably on a shelf in our basement somewhere.
Cloud9Light
Go this way / go over there / go that way / press button *clunk* / … / da fucc did that do?!
pollypocketfullofposies
Not as a kid. As an adult, yes. But I totally cheated. I played so many hours of that game when I was little. I would turn off the lights sonic was extra spooky. Still want to live in the tree-forts-above-water place.
DrankTooMuchMead
They made a satiracle comedic Myst called Pissed, and John Goodman was the narrator. I saw the review back then, but never found the game.
Rocketpocketpants
Brutalmoose on YouTube does a review of Pyst, it is pretty funny if people want to see the game.
ryandob
PSA if you liked Myst check out Obduction, it’s incredible (and Firmament is meant to be good too, haven’t played that though)
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
.
MissivesFromTheTower
Thank you for both of those. Will check them out.
AgainstMethod
More importantly, can you still play Myst?
zerby
You absolutely can and all the different version available are all viable
ryandob
There’s a remake of both Myst and Riven on the unreal engine. Never finished the Myst remake but it’s amazing
Imalwaysready
Yeah. It’s all over and has even gotten several updated versions. o to GOG.com and it’s often on same.
SMB42
I have the remastered versions fro GOG. They're still fun
captainjuicy
There's a few versions available on Steam, I played through the game in VR not long ago. Wonderful experience.
Dreyzzyn
They have a remastered version. It's great and kicks me right in the nostalgia
GravyEducation
Idk but you can replicate the experience by banging your head against the wall in between solving rubiks cubes and crossword and sudoku puzzles
howcanyourunwithanarrowinyourknee
DocFunkenstein
I still use its (now distant) descendant, Firefox.
It only lost popularity to MSIE because Microsoft being Microsoft, they went all propriatary and touted how they were the most popular browser ever (nevermind the shady reasons for how and why that came to be). And all the web designers had to either design basically two different sites--one compatible with MSIE and one for everyone else--and the spineless twats decided to side with Microsoft's BS. Because of course they did.
JonWallace1985
Does the source still have NSObject as a base?
StrayCatsMakeGreatKibble
There was a time that Microsoft would actively uninstall other web browsers during their application updates, until they got in trouble.
IceWeaselX
I used to code two versions of my gaming clan's website to cater to both IE and Netscape. Even absolute positioning via CSS didn't behave the same, so specifying a coordinate would place an object in different places for each browser. Relative positioning was even worse. To render at the very corner, one of them could use 0,0. The other had to use negative values.
ChikaChickaBowWow
We used to test our websites in Navigator when I did design back in the 90’es (being a web programmer was really big back then). They argument for testing in Navigator was ‘if it works there we know it’s made correctly’.
fivefrozenfishfingers
The browser wars were serious business back then. MS wanted to destroy Firefox and people were furious.
lostlittletimeonthis
We can thank the EU who forced Microsoft to separate the browser from the.OS.. something they did half heartedly
DocNitro
And now, Google is basically unilaterally pissing on established common standards, and slapping everything with their proprietary crap, and breaks websites if not made to Google spec for the Chrome derivates. PS: Brave is not an alternative, it is also a Chrome derivate.
vegivamp
As is edge.
DerpyBestPrincess
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/browsing/firefox-users-slam-mozilla-over-controversial-data-privacy-update
rubypilgrim
the killer was when Microsoft packaged Explorer with its OS. That landed it in legal hot water, but not before it killed Netscape.
Z0op
*internet explorer
Explorer has always been shipped with windows as that handles a large part of the UI (and shares many elements with internet explorer, but its not the same)
rubypilgrim
not in its very first instances. Originally it was part of the add-on Plus! pack. Once it was bundled with the OS and people couldn't remove or disable it, Microsoft was hit with anti-trust lawsuits by the DOJ, but the writing was on the wall for Netscape. https://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-bundling-internet-explorer-windows-29-years/
Z0op
Again, thats Internet Explorer.
(Window) Explorer has been a part of windows since 95, thats the part thats actually manages the windows. Internet Explorer expands upon it.
Hence why you could open a folder and type in an url in the bar, and yould be in internet explorer, also hence why you couldnt just remove internet explorer, as its integrated into explorer, and you would lose a big part of windows ui. That made the antitrust thing more serious, because Microsoft had hardwired it like that
Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea
At least the EU kind of stopped them turning chromium into a pseudo closed garden....Edge could have been even shitter
[deleted]
[deleted]
Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea
Did I say anything about Firefox?
Z0op
I guess you only look at features then i guess. Firefox is simply the better one since it adheres to standards better and way less rendering bugs. No chromium based browser tops that
DocNitro
Edge is Chromium with MS branding - and MS reinforced multiple times that they will bend over, spread wide and comply with any changes pushed by Google, to the letter.
DerpyBestPrincess
Brave is also Chromium. So?
DocNitro
With added Cryptobro and pocketing the money website owners should get from their 'whitelisted ads'.
valen00
edge is chrome in microsoft branding
DerpyBestPrincess
Chromium =/= Chrome
valen00
keep telling yourself that