update C|net has extensive coverage of Netscape's birthday.

Ten years ago, Netscape released the first publicly-available version of their web browser. Displaying Jpegs was considered a noteworthy feature. Licenses were $99 for commercial users.

I remember thinking it was ridiculous that I had to type out this long web locations perfectly, or nothing would happen.

I remember Time's idiotic, long Pathfinder URLs. I remember Yahoo being hosted at Stanford. I remember ESPN SportsZone being way ahead of their time.

I remember learning how to use the Pico editor and some basic UNIX commands to build something in my public_html folder. That way, I wouldn't have to remember all the URLs, every time I visited the computer lab between classes.

I remember it feeling like a whole new world had opened up to me.

I could write a freaking book on how browsing the web has made my life better. Suffice to say: thank you Jim, Marc and, most importantly, the hackers who built Netscape. I can only hope that one day, I'll write software that has such a long-lasting, far-reaching and meaningful effect on people's lives.

(via jwz)

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