Netscape Navigator 1.0

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Computers Software

The first web browser I ever used was Netscape Navigator version 1.0, back in 1995 if my memory serves me right. I didn't use it for very long, but when going through a bunch of old floppy disks in early 2003 I did come across one labeled "Concord College Internet Access Disk." This apparently was what Concord College (now a "university") distributed back in that era (in the good old pre-IE days), since the disk contained some basic Windows 3.1 internet applications, including:

• QWS3270 telnet client, version 3.2e
• Eudora e-mail program, version 1.4.4
• Netscape Navigator web browser, version 1.0N
• Trumpet Telnet, version 0.08
• Trumpet Winsock dialer, version 2.0
• WinSock PING client application (WS_PING), version 94.10.20
• WinSock FTP client application (WS_FTP), version 94.10.18

So, here are some screen shots from Netscape Navigator 1.0 (or actually 1.0N as the case may be), file date December 16, 1994. It's hardly what you'd call a "polished" product: This early version was fairly buggy, and does not support JavaScript, colors, tables, or even ampersand-prefixed HTML entity names. It isn't exactly lightning-quick either...somehow, images loaded faster for me in Netscape 4.08! But it was a start, and in comparing this release with the 2.0 betas from a mere year later, the difference is profound.

Netscape Navigator 1.0 was released at an awkward time after Mosaic Communications had changed its name to Netscape Communications, but before the corporation had adopted its famous shooting-comets logo. A big blocky "N" was used as an interim logo for the default icon and throbber, but the old Mosaic icon carried over to this dialog box that appears when running the setup program. After the "shooting comets" appeared with version 1.1, the blocky blue "N" was never seen again on a Netscape release, although interestingly it surfaced again in a very early Mozilla milestone from 1999. (For information on those milestones, see my Visual Browser History.)

Click each screen shot to display a larger (800x600) version.

This "about:authors" screen was later removed from subsequent Netscape versions.

You'd have thought Netscape's web site would look decent with their own web browser, wouldn't you? The blue "N" throbber punches itself in and out as the browser retrieves information. Netscape 1.x is also distinguished by its stylish red status bar.

External links

The Network Computers Software

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©2003-07 Andrew Turnbull.
Last update March 4, 2007.