Despite some genuine increases in performance and reliability, Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) is turning into a relic. Once an unbeatable web-browser that attracted anti-competition lawsuits the world over, its market-share (usage) has dropped below 10 percent, according to W3Schools. With Windows 10, Microsoft plans to completely rebrand the bundled web-browser.

Codenamed "Project Spartan," the browser will feature a new UI, and a different branding from MSIE. It will also shed useless code, and will have a smaller memory footprint, much in the same way Firefox was a toned, peppy rebrand of Mozilla/Netscape Navigator. You could even expect a new icon. Microsoft could undertake a massive marketing campaign for the new browser, of a scale similar to Google's, for its Chrome browser. Microsoft could even delink the browser from Windows Update, to facilitate faster security and bug fixes. The browser could debut with beta releases of Windows 10, and its first stable version could come out with Windows 10 RTM.

Adobe is working on a new sandboxed version of the Flash Player browser plugin for Firefox. The move will make it tougher to compromise a system's security using malicious Shockwave Flash objects. The new plugin for Firefox (and other browsers like Opera, which rely on the common Netscape Plugin Wrapper model of browser plugins), will work essentially similar to the Flash Player Google Chrome ships with, which works in a "Protected Mode". When "sandboxed" Shockwave Flash objects in webpages will work as separate processes, with much lower privileges than the actual user, the user's machine environment will be kept abstract to it. Adobe has already redesigned the browser plugin of its Reader X (PDF viewer) to work this way, and hasn't seen a significant successful exploit since November, last year.

While most of us hardly even thought that Netscape was still seeing regular updates and security patches, AOL was making sure that exactly that was happening. Apparently, that's all going to stop next week, as AOL is hunting for ways to cut costs around the house. Neowin published a nice eulogy for the classic web browser all too many of us with dial-up grew to know all too well...

Netscape was founded in 1994, and quickly won customers by providing software that made it easy for people to navigate the Internet. Netscape went public a year later and saw its stock price nearly triple on its first day of trading. At one point, the company had an $8 billion market cap and 90% of the Web browser market. But soon it all went south. Microsoft introduced its Internet Explorer browser and began eating into Netscape's market share. Microsoft later paid AOL, which bought Netscape in 2000, $750 million to settle antitrust charges.

Netscape accounts for less than 1% of internet users now. Anyone known using Netscape has been sent an E-mail from the Netscape development team, urging an immediate switch to Firefox or Flock browsers.

Netscape Navigator, the world's first commercial Web browser once used in 80 percent of all Internet sessions, will be pulled off life support Feb. 1 after a 13-year run. Its current caretakers, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, decided to kill further development and technical support to focus on growing the company as an advertising business. America Online Inc. paid $9.8 billion in 1999 for Netscape and after almost nine-years of efforts to revive Netscape, the browser will be killed once and for all.

While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer,

Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog entry Friday. People will still be able to download and use the Netscape browser indefinitely, but AOL will stop releasing security and other updates on Feb. 1. Drapeau recommended that Netscape users should shift to Firefox instead. A separate Netscape Web portal will continue to operate.

Netscape is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Netscape Navigator 9.0. Based on the latest Mozilla technologies, this release of Netscape Navigator includes variety of new features published in the release notes. You can get the 9.0 version for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X from the downloads page.

Although the Netscape name has now all but disappeared from most people's computers, the company (now owned by AOL) has just released version 9 of the once-loved Netscape Navigator. It's still a beta version at the moment, but the list of new features include a refreshed user interface, URL correction, a news menu and sidebar, in-browser voting, a sidebar mini-browser and compatibility with Firefox 2.0 extensions. Of course features like tabbed browsing and RSS feeds are a standard characteristic of modern browsers nowadays, so Netscape is no exception. If you're getting a little bored of your current browser or want to give Netscape another chance, you can download it from here. The complete list of new features can be read here. It's worth remembering that Netscape and Firefox are both based on the same architecture (which is why they can share extensions), so if there are any niggling issues for you with Firefox, Netscape might be worth a try.