Netscape Communicator: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Netscape Communicator was the proper brand name of an Internet suite produced by Netscape Communications Corporation in the late 1990s. This suite included the Netscape Navigator web browser (its most prominent component) along with applications for email, Usenet news, and other miscellany such as AOL Instant Messenger and RealAudio.

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. And 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 Navigator as simply "Netscape".

See the Netscape Navigator article for a history of the browser software.

See also: Mozilla