netscape navigator (10. 885)

Declared defunct on this day in 1993 by its owners AOL TimeWarner after losing market dominance to Internet Explorer early on as a casualty of the first browser war, Netscape Communications Corporation (previously), which introduced the JavaScript programming language that transformed webpages and the HTTP cookie, proceeded on the same day to establish the Mozilla Foundation, having released the source code of its signature suite of products to allow continued and independent development of its internet tools. Pioneering features to enhance user experience included tabbed browsing, private mode, bookmarks, autocomplete (incremental search) bundled with email (equipped with a spam-filter) and newsgroups as well as interoperability for Mac and Windows-based systems—many of which are preserved in later iterations of the Firefox browser, considered the spiritual successor of Netscape and overtaking Explorer as the most popular search engine in 2009.