Netscape Navigator 2
Netscape Navigator 2 is a discontinued proprietary web browser released by Netscape Communications Corporation as its flagship product. Versions were available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, Linux, IRIX, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, SunOS, JavaOS, and FreeBSD.
The browser introduced and improved several features and also added proprietary extensions to the HTML standard. Notably, Netscape 2 was the first browser to support JavaScript and animated GIFs, two technologies still predominant on the web today.
Features
The browser introduced many new or improved features:- Support for progressive JPEGs
- Support for GIF89a
- Support for client-side image maps
- Support for plugins
- Improved bookmark organization
- Added support for FTP uploading
- Added support for JavaScript
- Added OLE support
- Added support for HTML frames
- Introduced Netscape Mail and Netscape News, an e-mail client and Usenet News reader, respectively
Netscape Now
To promote Netscape Navigator, Netscape developed the "Netscape Now" program. The program promoted the display of the "Netscape Now! 2.0" web badge on websites with newly supported features, including frames, live objects, Java applets, and JavaScript.Popular plugins
The support for plugins led to the development of several popular plugins to extend Navigator's functionality.- Acrobat Amber - Released in early 1996 by Adobe Systems, it allowed for a pdf to be streamed.
- Lightning Strike - Released by Inifinet, it offered non-standard real-time wavelet compression
- RealAudio Player
- MovieStar - Released by Intelligence at Large, it offered streaming of QuickTime videos
- Macromedia Shockwave Player
- Netcloak
Easter eggs
Netscape had several easter eggs. Navigator 2 featured verse 12:10 from The Book of Mozilla.The bottom of "about:authors" read: