Netscape Communications (formerly known as Netscape Communications Corporation and commonly known as Netscape) is an American computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California.
Netscape's web browser was once dominant in terms of usage share, but lost most of that share to Internet Explorer during the so-called first browser war. The usage share of Netscape had fallen from over 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than one percent by the end of 2006.
Netscape is credited with JavaScript, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages, as well as developing the Secure Sockets Layer Protocol (SSL) for securing online communication, that was much used, before its successor TLS took over.
Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when it was acquired by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth US$10 billion. Shortly before its acquisition by AOL, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization to coordinate future development of its product. The Mozilla Organization rewrote the entire browser's source code based on the Gecko rendering engine; all future Netscape releases were based on this rewritten code. The Gecko engine would later be used to power the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser.
Netscape Browser (or Netscape 8) is the eighth major release of the Netscape series of web browsers, now all discontinued. It was published by AOL, but developed by Mercurial Communications, and originally released for Windows on May 19, 2005.
Netscape Browser was the first browser of the Netscape series to be based on Mozilla Firefox, as opposed to Netscape versions 6 and 7 which were based on Mozilla Application Suite. Also, Netscape 6 and 7 were Internet suites whereas Netscape Browser (version 8) was solely a web browser.
As with other recent versions, it incorporates support for AOL Instant Messenger, and other AOL-related features.
Netscape Browser was succeeded by Netscape Navigator 9, which reverted to the Navigator name.
The browser was finally released on May 19, 2005. A minor update known as version 8.0.1 was released a few hours later to incorporate the key security patches added in Firefox 1.0.4.
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature introduced in Netscape Browser is the ability to use either of two layout engines to render websites — either Internet Explorer 6's Trident layout engine or the Gecko engine used by Mozilla and its derivatives. This is used as part of the browser's "Site Controls" system, which allows security settings to be altered on a per-site basis, and is also touted as a defense against phishing and similar attacks, with both blacklists and whitelists built in and automatically updated regularly. This system decides whether a site is "trusted" or "suspect", while only whitelisted sites use the Trident engine by default.
Netscape was the general name for a series of web browsers originally produced by Netscape Communications Corporation, now a subsidiary of AOL. The original browser was once the dominant browser in terms of usage share, but as a result of the first browser war, it lost virtually all of its share to Internet Explorer.
Netscape was discontinued and support for all Netscape browsers and client products was terminated on March 1, 2008.
Netscape Navigator was the name of Netscape's web browser from versions 1.0 through 4.8. The first beta release versions of the browser was released in 1994 and known as Mosaic and then Mosaic Netscape until a legal challenge from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (makers of NCSA Mosaic, which many of Netscape's founders used to develop), led to the name change to Netscape Navigator. The company's name also changed from Mosaic Communications Corporation to Netscape Communications Corporation.
I need to break out
I need to get away
Before I breakdown
Before I suffocate
We're on lock down
Freedom controlled
And this is not my home
This is not my home
[Pre Chorus:]
Lights out
No place to go
Lights out
[Chorus:]
There's no way to escape, escape, escape
I'm trapped and bound
Surrounded everyday all day, all day
I need out now
There's nothing I can do
I'm hearing voices
They tell me not to think
Limit my choices
My sentence penned in ink
And when i wake up
I'm not at home
My future so unknown
Future so unknown
[Pre Chorus]