Netscape 7.x

Netscape Navigator/Communicator was the first commercial web browser, displacing the free NCSA Mosaic. 1.0 was first released in December 1994, and initially offered advanced features such as progressively rendering pages as they loaded. It quickly gained many other features and capabilities and became the most popular web browser in the mid 1990s. One reason for its popularity, it was licensed freely for personal and non-profit use, although companies were expected to pay for a license. It later competed with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari, and eventually was open sourced in to the Mozilla browser.

Many other versions of Netscape can be found on the Sillydog Archive and the Netscape FTP. Some earlier versions can be located on the Mcom.com Archive.

Wanted: Genuine floppy/CD dumps - these often differed slightly from the free download versions.

Screenshots

Release notes

The 7.x versions were considered fairly stable, well featured, and usable. 7.0 was based on the current version of the Mozilla web browser.

Netscape 7.1 was released just prior to AOL, who had acquired Netscape Communications in 1998, shutting down the Netscape browser division.

While that might seem like it would be the end, AOL contracted with former Netscape employees to produce Netscape 7.2. Netscape 8 and 9 were produced by other outside contractors.