Netscape 3.0.x

edited April 2022 in Product Comments
imageNetscape 3.0.x

Netscape Navigator/Communicator was the first commercial web browser, displacing the free NCSA Mosaic. 1.0 was first released in December 1994, and initially offered advanced features such as progressively rendering pages as they loaded. It quickly gained many other features and capabilities and became the most popular web browser in the mid 1990s. One reason for its popularity, it was licensed freely for personal and non-profit use, although companies were expected to pay for a license. It later competed with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari, and eventually was open sourced in to the Mozilla browser.

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  • I've added a small few of the freely downloadable Netscape Navigator/Communicator versions that I believe the Winworld community would find convenient to have here. For example Communicator 4.08 for Windows 3.1, which is the final version for Windows 3.1.

    If anyone believes any other specific version has some good specific historic reason to be here (like last for a platform or OS version) feel free to discuss it. If anyone knows of any other good archived mirrors, also feel free to discuss them.

    Any genuine original floppy or CD media dumps are welcome and wanted.

    Netscape produced multiple freely downloadable installation packages for each version release for each platform. There were versions for Windows 3.1, 95/NT, Macintosh, OS/2, Linux, and multiple Unixes as well as releases for many languages. Archving all of them is beyond the scope of Winworld, and would be huge.

    You can find many mirrors doing an internet search by filename.

    Windows 16/32-bit downloads used an "8.3" style name formatted as follows:

    N - Netscape Navigator (3.x naming and 4.x "standalone" browser)
    G - Netscape Gold (Includes HTML editor)
    C - Netscape Communicator (4.x naming)

    B - 4.x BASE
    C - 4.x Complete
    P - 4.x Enterprise Calendar

    32 - Windows 9x/NT 32-bit
    16 - Windows 3.1 16-bit

    E - Export encryption (40 or 56-bit) - during 4.x they stopped offering this
    D - Domestic US/Canada encryption (128-bit)

    XXX - Version number

    "P" after the version is "Standard Plus Components" (3.x naming, bundels Cooltalk)

    For example, CC32E451.EXE would be Netscape Communicator 4.51 complete package with international export grade encryption.

    Bundled products usually were not optional during setup, making it very important to download a "base" installation package if you did not want them.
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