Netscape is finally dead

The unquestioned king of browsers in the 90s has finally come to it's end; AOL is announcing that it shall no longer support the browser.

In mid90s, Netscape had nearly 80% marketshare and it was bundled with Windows till version 98.

After Windows 98 (when Microsoft only packaged Internet Explorer with the OS) the market share started to fall. People didn't really care what browser they used, just as long as it worked.
It didn't help that Internet Explorer wasn't standards compliant, and as soon as it's market share got to around 50% they announced their own modifications to the HTML-template, which Netscape for understandable reasons didn't support.
The end-result was that Netscape's browser showed some of the pages incorrectly. Thus we got those "Designed for Internet Explorer" buttons of the late 90s, and to the steady drop of userbase (in the diagram on the right, taken from Wikipedia).

In -99 Netscape was bought by AOL, after which the development of the browser was given to the newly-created Mozilla Foundation. Netscape still published a new browser more or less every other year, but it was just reskinned, skimmed Mozilla (without popup-killers etc.).

I used Netscape products loyally to around early 2002 or so, when a friend of mine introduced me to Opera. At that point, I was really disgusted with Netscape, and only the fact that I wanted to have total control over my surfing experience (I didn't have my own computer andthe rest of my family used IE) stopped me from jumping the ship.

I was kind of surprised to learn that after Netscape 6 (which was the last version I used) they still produced new numbers, going as far as to release Netscape 9 last October (being actually just Mozilla Firefox 2 with a new skin and few extensions).

But all in all, it used to be a king, and a king needs a proper burial.

Rest in peace.

Alfred J. Kwak

Remember Alfred? I remember. When I was kid, roughly 7-10 years, this came out from telly. The story was strange; the first ten episodes were about his childhood, and the next episodes - I dont know how many, but there were many, maybe around 40? -about him as adult. I have faint impression that Alfred would have been journalist by trade. He lived in Waterland (Vesimaa, in finnish), which was fashioned to be like Netherlands. From there, he traveled to around world, and even got to visit space. Maybe he timetraveled as well? Or am I thinking the later Moomin episodes? Can't remember. Episodes that have permanently been burned on my mind, included one where he visits oil-trilling comblex in the middle of the sea, and finds that the ancient civilisation of dodos lives in the bottom, encased in glass-domes. Or the episode where he visits Egypt and is lost in a pyramid... I would have impression that there lived an ancient (goodlooking) honest-to-god female pharaoh there too.. but I may remember wrong.

Or how Alfred's old classmate ends up as dictator.. If I remember correctly, he is a crow, and damn proud of the fact. Sadly, he has a secret; he is only halfblooded, and his mouthpiece is infact not black, but dyes it to make it look so..
I also remember he would have visited in Africa, in country with apartheid going on, and would return from there with his new girlfriend (picture).

The mole in the picture is the man who raised Alfred, after he was orphaned (I think his parents got swept in the sea).

Great show. I wonder, would the animation still be as cool as I remember it, the storylines as daring? As I know remember some of the plots, there might be good change that the show had political agenda going on. It wasnt Disney-program; it was japanese production based on some storybooks made in Netherlands. Would be really interesting to see some episodes again.