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Free Internet Mosaic Netscape Navigator Available
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1994 OCT 13 (NB) -- Mosaic
Communications, a six-month old corporation, headed by Jim Clark,
founder of Silicon Graphics, has announced a beta version of its
Mosaic Netscape free to any individual, academic or research user.
Available immediately, the new Internet navigator features document
interaction before the entire document is downloaded, concurrent
downloading of documents from different servers, and native support
for Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format.
Many users are expected to welcome the capability of working on a
document prior to completing its download. One of the main
complaints with Internet and other online services is the idle time
created while a document is downloaded. Also, the opportunity to
access multiple servers simultaneously promises to further reduce
idle time.
Jim Clark developed the navigator with Mosaic cretor, Marc
Andreessen, who is now vice president at Mosaic Communications. The
company also addressed the always prevalent topic of network
security necessary for commercial transactions. Mosaic Netscape
provides encryption and server authentication which is designed to
pair with Mosaic Netsite Commerce Server, due to be released this
November.
Mosaic Netscape, in its final version, should be ready about the
same time as the Commerce Server. In keeping with the Internet
tradition of free downloads, Mosaic Communications says the final
version will be available on the Net free.
The company says this new navigator is optimized to run on 14,400
bits-per- second (bps) modems and a speed of 10 times that of other
network browsers is predicted. Netscape runs on Windows, Macintosh,
and X Window environments.
Mosaic Netscape is for personal use only. A licensed version for
commercial use is available through Mosaic Communications. The free
beta version may be obtained by anonymous FTP (file transfer
protocol) from the following address: ftp.mcom.com.
Speaking for Mosaic Communications, Rosanne Silino told Newsbytes,
"After taking a good look at the number on PC and Mac users
accessing the 'Net,' we decided there was a great demand for
Internet tools on both platforms. This first release of Netscape is
just a beginning of features we intend to provide. A lot of people
think of a browser as just something to view the World Wide Web.
Mosaic Netscape has been developed as a complete Internet
navigator."
Readers may wonder how a company makes money off of a free
navigator. The company said it has never looked at the navigation
side as a source of profit and its source of revenue is from the
server, support, and services side of the business.
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PS: Note that mcom has just changed the price of its secure
commercial server product from $25K to $5K.
Robert Hartil wrote:
> This is the beginning of the end for NCSA Mosaic, which is a shame
> since Mosaic was the main reason for the success of the www.
Let's not count anyone out yet, shall we. If the history of the
Internet (and the Web) illustrates anything, it's the benefits of
open systems and software diversity. Any thought that one single
commercial entity may gain de facto control of the WWW interface is
scary. I'm sure marca would agree.
Netscape is a winner, a good demonstration of what experienced
coding from scratch can do for you, but the more the merrier!