I will always look back at the first time I ever opened Netscape Navigator, ver. 1.0a as THE turning point in my career. In 1994, the browser was released in the first non-beta version and was passed around on disks to friends at work who were lucky enough to either have a modem or, gasp, a connection to BBN Planet.

On February 1, 2008, the sometimes bane and sometimes joy of my existence, Netscape Navigator, will cease to be. And while I haven’t felt the same about Netscape since the 1999 acquisition by AOL, I will always and forever blame my love/hate relationship with javascript on version 4.7.

For those of you who feel nostalgic and wish to keep your old-school roots in tact, brave it out and download the skin for Firefox.

Maybe I’m just feeling nostalgic on a cold, rainy Saturday, but the industry seemed so much smaller back then and you felt like you were part of something big that most everyone else thought was just a fad. For those who knew better, this was “it”. You were paid well for knowing your hacks. You were called three to five times per week with lucrative job offers.

These days we still have similar issues as we fight our way through user experience designs being presented correctly in all browsers. We still wish to God Almighty (or your power of choice) that there wasn’t the need for CSS hack repositories (thank you, Ethan).

So, while I may feel nostalgic for the old days, I’m glad to see things change and I’m ecstatic that I still get to call this industry my home.

Netscape Navigator, I bid you farewell. Thanks for the memory (leaks).