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| Netscape Communicator | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | Netscape Communications Corporation |
| Initial release | June 1997; 28 years ago (1997-06) |
| Final release | |
| Platform | Cross-platform |
| Successor | Netscape 6 |
| Type | Internet suite |
| Website | archive.netscape.com at theWayback Machine (archived June 21, 2011) |
Netscape Communicator (orNetscape 4) is a discontinuedInternet suite produced byNetscape Communications Corporation, and was the fourth major release in theNetscape line of browsers. It was first in beta in 1996 and was released in June 1997.[4][5] Netscape Communicator addressed the problem ofNetscape Navigator 3.x being used as both the name of the suite and the browser contained within it by renaming the suite to NetscapeCommunicator.[6] It included moregroupware features intended to appeal to enterprises.
In February 1998, Netscape announced thatMozilla.org would coordinate the development of Netscape Communicator 5 as "a dedicated team within Netscape with an associated Web site that will promote, foster, and guide open dialog and development of Netscape's client source code."[7] However, the aging Communicator code proved to be difficult to work with, so it was abandoned. The whole source code of Communicator was rewritten by Mozilla, which was then testing it asMozilla Application Suite. Netscape, now owned byAOL, finally released Communicator's successorNetscape 6 in November 2000, based on Mozilla Application Suite with changes and additions. Minor updates to Communicator continued to be issued, culminating in the release of Netscape Communicator 4.8 in August 2002.
Netscape Communicator was available in various editions, such as "Professional" and "Complete". The following components were included in Netscape Communicator (different editions had different components, and some components were dropped in later editions):
In October 1998, a major update to the program was released as Netscape 4.5.[9] This included many improvements, mostly to the Messenger e-mail client, which now also took on the features of Collabra. However, some of the less popular components, such as Netcaster, were dropped. A feature called "Roaming Profiles" was added in version 4.5 that synchronized a user's bookmarks, address book, and preferences with a remote server, so that a user's home and work browsers could have the same bookmarks.[10] By the time version 4.5 was released, Netscape had started theMozillaopen source project and had ceased charging for Communicator.
The term "Navigator" referred to the browser component alone, while "Communicator" referred to the suite as a whole, as established in version 4.0. However, due to user confusion, the names were often used interchangeably. Also, because none of the applications besides Navigator were popular on their own, and because Netscape never produced any other desktop software that approached the popularity of Navigator, people would often refer to both the Communicator suite and the Navigator browser as simply "Netscape".
The Mozilla Foundation continued to develop the Netscape code base, providing the Mozilla Application Suite as a continuation of Netscape Communicator. The Mozilla Foundation decided in 2006 to discontinue development of the Application Suite. A community-maintained version calledSeaMonkey has come to replace the Application Suite[11] - maintaining such things as a browser, an integrated POP/IMAP/SMTP style E-mail client, IRC, and other similar features.
| Preceded by Netscape Navigator (1-4.08) | Netscape Communicator (4) | Succeeded by Netscape 5 (developing suspended) |
