I preferred 3.0.3 SE. The standard editions seemed more stable and faster than the gold editions, and I really didn't need the extra functionality. Unfortunately with the 4.0 series everything was folded into the Communicator suite.
One big problem a lot of people forget is how quickly the web was moving back then. 3.0 came out in mid-1996, and soon there were many sites that wouldn't work with 2.0. 4.0 came out in mid-1997 (technically before 3.0.3), and by late 1998 I had to upgrade to the 4.0 series, because a lot of the web didn't work in 3.0.
It was actually DoubleClick that made me switch to IE - they started serving Javascript that hung every version of Netscape, which broke a lot of the web.
One big problem a lot of people forget is how quickly the web was moving back then. 3.0 came out in mid-1996, and soon there were many sites that wouldn't work with 2.0. 4.0 came out in mid-1997 (technically before 3.0.3), and by late 1998 I had to upgrade to the 4.0 series, because a lot of the web didn't work in 3.0.
It was actually DoubleClick that made me switch to IE - they started serving Javascript that hung every version of Netscape, which broke a lot of the web.