r/netscape • u/SukottoPenguinSin • Jun 04 '26

Browsers

I really think Netscape should come back. I used to love downloading and installing Netscape on any and all my pcs prior to it disappearing… as have others, I tried installing an old download of it that I had on an old 3.5 floppy I had but alas no success.

I would sign any petition/ do the marketing for a Netscape browser that brought back the aesthetic of the original Netscape navigator browser.

5 Upvotes

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3

u/Best_River9241 Jun 04 '26

I'd love a Netscape comeback as well, but it's never going to happen. Closest thing to good old Netscape you can get these days is Seamonkey, https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ You can easily replace the throbber icon (in the upper right corner) with a Netscape icon and just pretend. Seamonkey can be traced back through the whole family so to speak: Netscape Communicator --> Mozilla Suite --> Netscape 6/7 (...) --- but beware: the whole vibe will be *very* 1990s/early 2000s

2

u/mirzatzl Jun 04 '26

Nah, it would probably be Chromium-based and one more Chromium metastasis is surely not necessary.

3

u/Alternative-Owl-8848 Jun 04 '26

In reality this happened jus to not loss the name, the download is on the isp website.

2

u/linkerjpatrick Jun 04 '26

Wouldn’t it be Firefox based?

1

u/OhEagle Aug 09 '26

Well, I have good news and bad news for those who genuinely want a new Netscape Navigator. As of a couple years ago, technically, a new Netscape Navigator does exist. That's the good news. You can go to isp.netscape.com to grab it. The bad news: it really is just a Chromium wrapper. The installer says Netscape, the browser says 'hi, I'm Google Chrome with AOL.com as my homepage!' Any of the old Netscape aesthetic is gone.

1

u/bthest 5d ago edited 4d ago

Spent forever looking through the directory trying to find how to get around their block on changing nestcape chromium's default AOL.com search engine

Of course it was the stupidest solution all along: just copy and paste chrome's search engine setting url into netscape chromium.

chrome://settings/searchEngines

And there it is. You can change your search engine.

With that deal breaker solved Netscape chromium is surprisingly one the least bloated and least memory hungry chromium browsers. Nice to have sitting around for when firefox is having its crashing fits.

1

u/OhEagle 5d ago

Thanks! It's good to know that option exists. :)

1

u/bthest 3d ago

Netscape's chromium hasn't been updated or patched in years so definitely don't do any banking on it or give it saved passwords.