was a
Proprietary Internet Suite produced by
Netscape Communications Corporation . Initially released in June
1997 , Netscape Communicator 4.0 was the successor to
Netscape Navigator 3.x and included more
Groupware features intended to appeal to enterprises.
Netscape Communicator was available in various editions, such as "Professional" and "Complete". The following components were included in Netscape Communicator (different editions had different components and some components were dropped in later editions):
- Netscape Navigator — Web Browser
- Netscape Messenger — E-mail Client and (in version 4.5 and above) News Client
- Netscape Collabra — News Client (merged into Messenger in version 4.5)
- Netscape Address Book — address book
- Netscape Composer — HTML Editor
- Netscape Netcaster — Push Technology client (dropped in version 4.5)
- Netscape Conference — multi-user communication client (dropped in version 4.5)
- Netscape Calendar — enterprise calendar client (dropped in version 4.72 because Netscape's license to use the underlying technology expired)
In
1998 , a major update to the program was released as Netscape 4.5. This included many improvements, mostly to the Messenger e-mail client, which now also took on the features of Collabra. However, some of the less popular components, such as Netcaster, were dropped. By the time version 4.5 was released, Netscape had started the
Mozilla Open Source project and had ceased charging for Communicator.
Technically, "Navigator" was supposed to refer to the browser component alone, and "Communicator" was supposed to refer the suite as a whole. But due to user confusion, the names were often used interchangeably. Also, because none of the applications besides Navigator were popular on their own, and because Netscape never produced any other desktop software that approached the popularity of Navigator, people would often refer to both the Communicator suite and the Navigator browser as simply "
Netscape ".
In November 2000, Netscape Communicator was superseded by
Netscape 6 , an almost completely rewritten program based on Mozilla, or what later came to be known as
Mozilla Application Suite . However, minor updates to Communicator continued to be issued, culminating in the release of Netscape Communicator 4.8 in August
2002 .
- Netscape Communicator 4.0 — June 1997
- Netscape Communicator 4.01
- Netscape Communicator 4.02
- Netscape Communicator 4.03
- Netscape Communicator 4.04
- Netscape Communicator 4.05
- Netscape Communicator 4.06 — August 17 , 1998
- Netscape Communicator 4.07
- Netscape Communicator 4.08 — November 9 , 1998 (Last release for Windows 3.1x and 68k Macs)
- Netscape Communicator 4.5 — October 19 , 1998
- Netscape Communicator 4.61 — June 14 , 1999
- Netscape Communicator 4.7 — September 30 , 1999
- Netscape Communicator 4.71
- Netscape Communicator 4.72
- Netscape Communicator 4.73
- Netscape Communicator 4.74
- Netscape Communicator 4.75
- Netscape Communicator 4.76
- Netscape Communicator 4.77 — dated March 26 , 2001 (Linux version)
- Netscape Communicator 4.78
- Netscape Communicator 4.79 — 2001
- Netscape Communicator 4.8 — August 22 , 2002
