Editing Netscape Navigator (section)

===Origin===
[[File:Mosaic Netscape 0.9 on Windows XP.png|thumb|Mosaic Netscape 0.9, a preview version, with image of the Mozilla mascot, and the Mosaic logo in the top-right corner]]

Netscape Navigator was inspired by the success of the [[Mosaic (web browser)|Mosaic]] web browser, which was co-written by [[Marc Andreessen]], a part-time employee of the [[National Center for Supercomputing Applications]] at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign|University of Illinois]]. After Andreessen graduated in 1993, he moved to [[California]] and there met [[James H. Clark|Jim Clark]], the recently departed founder of [[Silicon Graphics]]. Clark believed that the Mosaic browser had great commercial possibilities and provided the seed money. Soon [[Mosaic Communications Corporation]] was in business in [[Mountain View, California]], with Andreessen as a vice-president. Since the University of Illinois was unhappy with the company's use of the Mosaic name, the company changed its name to Netscape Communications (suggested by product manager Greg Sands<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.costanoavc.com/team/greg-sands/|title=Greg Sands|access-date=20 February 2019 |url-status=dead |archive-date=21 February 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190221111932/http://www.costanoavc.com/team/greg-sands/ |website=Costanoa Ventures }}</ref>) and named its flagship web browser Netscape Navigator.

Netscape announced in its first press release (October 13, 1994) that it would make Navigator available without charge to all non-commercial users, and beta versions of version 1.0 and 1.1 were freely downloadable in November 1994 and March 1995, with the full version 1.0 available in December 1994.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease1.html|title=Netscape Communications Offers New Network Navigator Free on the Internet |date=October 13, 1994 |publisher=AOL.com|access-date=5 September 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061207145832/http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease1.html|archive-date=7 December 2006}}</ref> However, two months later, the company announced that only educational and non-profit institutions could use version 1.0 at no charge.<ref>{{cite press release|url=http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease8.html|title=Netscape Communications Ships Release 1.0 of Netscape Navigator and Netscape Servers |publisher=AOL.com|access-date=5 September 2015|url-status=dead |date=15 September 1994|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050326152726/http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease8.html|archive-date=26 March 2005}}</ref>

The reversal was complete with the availability of version 1.1 beta on March 6, 1995, in which a press release states that the final 1.1 release would be available at no cost only for academic and non-profit organizational use.

<!--Some security experts and cryptographers found out that all released Netscape versions had major security problems with crashing the browser with long [[URL]]s and 40 bits encryption keys.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Netscape (in)Security (problems) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19980129202401/http://hplyot.obspm.fr/~dl/netscapesec/ |archive-date=29 January 1998 |url=http://hplyot.obspm.fr/~dl/netscapesec/ |date=22 July 1996 |first=Laurent |last=Demailly |access-date=15 October 2011}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|work=The New York Times |date=26 September 1995 |page=D19 |title=Hackers Alert Netscape to Another Flaw |url=http://hplyot.obspm.fr/~dl/netscapesec/nyt2.txt |access-date=15 October 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19990116233126/http://hplyot.obspm.fr/~dl/netscapesec/nyt2.txt |archive-date=16 January 1999}}</ref>
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The first few releases of the product were made available in "commercial" and "evaluation" versions; for example, version "1.0" and version "1.0N". The "N" evaluation versions were identical to the commercial versions; the letter was intended as a reminder to people to pay for the browser once they felt they had tried it long enough and were satisfied with it. This distinction was formally dropped within a year of the initial release, and the full version of the browser continued to be made available for free online, with boxed versions available on floppy disks (and later CDs) in stores along with a period of phone support. During this era, "Internet Starter Kit" books were popular, and usually included a floppy disk or CD containing internet software, and this was a popular means of obtaining Netscape's and other browsers.<ref>{{cite book |author=Mark Robbin Brown|author2=Steven Forrest Burnett |author3=Tim Evans |author4=Heather Fleming |author5=Galen Grimes |author6=David Gunter |author7=Jerry Honeycutt |author8=Peter Kent |author9=Margaret J. Larson |author10=Bill Nadeau |author11=Todd Stauffer |author12=Ian Stokell |author13=John Williams |title=Netscape Navigator 3 Starter Kit |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nI3EKbLNT3AC |year=1996 |publisher=Que |isbn=978-0-7897-1181-6}}</ref> Email support was initially free and remained so for a year or two until the volume of support requests grew too high.

During development, the Netscape browser was known by the code name ''[[Mozilla (mascot)|Mozilla]]'', which became the name of a [[Godzilla]]-like cartoon dragon [[mascot]] used prominently on the company's web site. The Mozilla name was also used as the [[user agent|User-Agent]] in [[HTTP]] requests by the browser. Other web browsers claimed to be compatible with Netscape's extensions to HTML and therefore used the same name in their User-Agent identifiers so that web servers would send them the same pages as were sent to Netscape browsers. [[Mozilla]] is now a generic name for matters related to the [[open source software|open source]] successor to Netscape Communicator and is most identified with the browser [[Firefox]].