Editing Netscape 6 (section)

==History and development==
In March 1998, Netscape split off most of the Communicator code and put it under an open source license.<ref>{{Cite news| issn = 8750-6874| issue = 678| pages = 85–90| last = Levitt| first = Jason| title = Netscape releases the source| work = InformationWeek| date = 1998-04-20}}</ref> The project was dubbed [[Mozilla]]. It was estimated that turning the gutted [[source code]] (all proprietary elements had to be removed) into a new browser release might take a year, and so it was decided that the next release of the corporate Netscape browser, [[Netscape 5|version 5.0]], would be based on it. Netscape assigned its browser development engineers to help with the project.

Later that year it was quite evident that development on Mozilla was not proceeding quickly, so Netscape reassigned some of its engineers to a new Communicator 4.5 release. This had the result of redirecting part of the browser effort into a dead-end branch while Internet Explorer 5.0 was still building momentum.

The version 5 of the browser was skipped, at the time when [[Internet Explorer 5|Internet Explorer 5.0]] had been available for a year and a half. There were plans to release an almost-ready version 5.0 based on the 4.x codebase, but this idea was scrapped.<ref>{{Cite news| last = Zawinski| first = Jamie| title = Nomo Zilla| work = JWZ.org| date = 1999-03-31| url = https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html| access-date = January 5, 2016| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20040807025430/https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html| archive-date = August 7, 2004| url-status = dead}}</ref> The Mozilla engineers decided in late October 1998 to scrap the Communicator code and start over from scratch using the standards-compliant [[Gecko (software)|Gecko]] rendering engine.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Koman |first=Richard |title=Gecko Changes Everything |work=WebTools |access-date=2016-01-05 |date=1998-12-23 |url=http://www.webtools.com/story/printableArticle?doc_id=TLS19981223S0001 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19990930044346/http://www.webtools.com/story/printableArticle?doc_id=TLS19981223S0001 |archive-date=September 30, 1999 }}</ref> All resources were bound to work on the Netscape 6.0 release using Gecko, which some Netscape employees deem one of the bigger mistakes in the company's history.

The first public builds of Mozilla two years later (2000) were rather disappointing, with many mid-level PCs of the time too slow to run the larger codebase, which used its own custom set of [[graphical user interface]] [[Web widget|widgets]] and had a customizable UI built in a custom [[XML]] dialect known as [[XUL]]. With public beta versions released in April,<ref>{{Cite news| last = Corre| first = Catherine| title = Netscape Launches Next-generation Netscape 6 Browser, Available Today for Download On Netscape Netcenter| work = Business Wire| date = 2000-04-05}}</ref> August,<ref>{{Cite news| last = Mains| first = Derick| title = Netscape 6 Preview Release 2 Available Today| work = Business Wire| date = 2000-08-08}}</ref> and October,<ref>{{Cite news| last = Mains| first = Derick| title = Netscape Unveils Redesigned Netscape.com, Launches Netscape 6 Preview Release 3| work = Business Wire| date = 2000-10-04}}</ref> Netscape 6.0 shipped in November 2000.<ref>{{Cite news| last = Corre| first = Catherine| title = Netscape launches groundbreaking Netscape 6 Browser| work = Business Wire| date = 2000-11-14}}</ref> At release, the browser was deemed too unstable for production use.

Versions 6.1 and 6.2, released in 2001, addressed stability problems, and were more respected, but still had a relatively small number of users, and Netscape 6 was facing new competition from [[Internet Explorer 6|Internet Explorer 6.0]], released in the summer of 2001.