An historic name in software will effectively pass into history in February as AOL discontinues development and active support for the Netscape browser, according to an official blog.

AOL will keep delivering security patches for the current version of Netscape until Feb. 1, 2008, after which it will no longer provide active support for any version of the software, according to a Friday entry on The Netscape Blog by Tom Drapeau, lead developer for Netscape.com. The Netscape.com Web site will remain as a general-purpose portal.

Source: PCWorld: AOL to End Support for Netscape Browser

I didn’t use Netscape all that much even back then but it always sat on whatever PC I had at the time like some faithful old friend that was just waiting for the chance to do whatever job I asked of it. As soon as Internet Explorer 4 came out, I dropped Netscape altogether. Still, the name "Netscape" has always been synonymous with surfing the WWW almost since the WWW first came into existence. Anyone remember  a browser called Mosaic?.

Those who still use this piece of Internet history can take a bit of heart though. Although the browser, which lately has been an open source, Mozilla based affair, is headed into the virtual afterworld, There’s the Netscape theme and Netscape extensions for Firefox developed by the Netscape Add-ons team and the browser will still be able to be downloaded form the Netscape archives. Be aware though as of February 1, 2008, there will no longer be any security update support for the browser and that means increased vulnerability as time goes on.

So goodbye Netscape. The young ones may not understand what this means but us older folks will tip our hats in respect as the browser that was there in the beginning goes wafting by on it’s way to greener pastures.