Despite its youth and its small size, Mountain View, California-based Netscape Communications Corp is widely regarded as the hottest property in the Internet world so it is something of a coup for Sun Microsystems Inc that Netscape intends to license Sun’s Java programming language and implement it in the Netscape Navigator browser. It reckons Java is the first product to provide a comprehensive solution to the challenges of programming for the Internet, and the facility will enable Netscape Navigator to download small Java applets to be run on the client system so that designers can create applications for things such as interactive advertising and real-time share portfolio management. Programs written in Java are transported securely through the network us ing Netscape’s Secure Sockets Layer open protocol in a machine-independent format. Netscape Navigator is claimed to hold over 75% of the browser market.
