[avuton]

You remember a different Netscape than I do. Netscape was the kind of browser you hated to recommend to a loved one. The experience was truly subpar. When Firebird was announced, the user experience improved significantly over what Netscape could have ever hoped to attain, though it still took some time before recommending it to a loved one would turn out not to be a mistake.

[torstenvl]

You're talking about the change from Netscape Communicator 6+ to Firebird and eventually Firefox in ~2003. That was a positive change.

I'm talking about the the change from Navigator 4.x to the MAS-based buggy crashy slow XUL monstrosity in 1998-2000. That was a terrible change, it killed Netscape as a company, almost gave Microsoft complete control over the future of the Web, and ended up necessitating Firebird/Firefox.