This month marks the sixth birthday anniversary of Netscape Navigator 4, whose first non-beta version was released in July 1997. This version, one of the most famous in the history of the Web, was an attempt by Netscape to regain the market share it was losing to Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer was making huge inroads in the Web browser market. Even with the added support to then emerging Web standards, Netscape 4 proved itself unable to face Internet Explorer 4, whose support to new formats and technologies was incontestably better at the time. When Netscape made the fatidic decision of opening the source code of its flagship product and later of rewriting it from the scrath it became clear that an era had ended.

Although it lost the market, Netscape 4 continued to be used for many years, and it’s still used in some companies. Many Web development shops have labored to create sites that support this six-year-old browsers at the expenses of Web standards, usability and accessibility. I think it’s time our customers recognize the truth that Netscape 4 is dead. It makes no sense to support a browser which has little support for standards that are already a decade old and no support at all for modern standards — it only makes development harder and costlier. I have once developed a site that supported Netscape 4 because one man — yes, you read that correctly — in the whole company used that browser.

So. next time a customer asks for Netscape 4 support, politely explain to him the reasons that is not feasible anymore. Your customer and the Web standards will surely be grateful in the long run.