Sometimes I feel like I'm becoming a senior citizen of the internet. I was there
pretty early on, when I purposefully set off for the computer lab in Hesburgh Library at Notre Dame, to teach myself to use a program called Mosaic to access the "internet," which at that time was only just beginning to be understood to actually
be the "information superhighway" that was being predicted in those years. It was the development of the web browser program that turned the internet into the popular public system it has since become, after being the abode of military and university computer types since its invention in 1970s. I got online with the express purpose of finding my way into NASA's databases so that I could look at high-quality photographs of the
Levy-Schumaker (back when it was called that) impact for longer than the second that they were being shown on CNN. I started making webpages within a year, first
one for me with little purpose behind it, where the ancestor of this journal first appeared in
1997 (internet senior citizen), as practice for my fulfilling Steve Warner's request to design the first webpage for the
Notre Dame Folk Choir.
So why am I feeling like an internet senior citizen? (Besides my early entry into the internet?) Because
a year-and-a-half after its discontinuation, I am in the process of giving up using
Netscape as my web browser.
Yes. Shocking. It's like I've insisted on driving an Edsel or a Fiero for years. And I know lots of you web-savvy friends reamed me out back then for still being on Netscape. What can I say? I'm a creature of habit, comfortable because I knew exactly where everything was? I have an overly-developed sense of loyalty, and have never quite gotten over the bliss of when Netscape became the first browser to dream up tabs, so that I didn't have to keep multiple windows open? All true. I have been part of the 0.56% global usage share of Netscape as a web browser in the second quarter of 2009 (which rather surprised me to discover, as I figured I might be the only one left at this point), down from about 90% usage share back in early 1996. But it's time for me to evolve whether I want to or not. And that's why I feel like an internet senior citizen (gross, ageist stereotypes of senior citizens aside).
At some point I had aboyandhis.com up and running, though I rarely maintained it. I'm pretty sure there was an older version, but this was the oldest link I could find in the Web Archive.
My first experience with tabbed browsing came with using Opera for the first time back in 2000 or 2001. It is a wonderful thing.