Misplaced Pages

#237762

42-572: In November 2023, the database contained 12,969 game listings, 12,784 member reviews, 51,762 member ratings, and 17,040 registered members. Some games can be played in the web browser using links on the IFDB web site. The database was founded by Michael J. Roberts in 2007. The IFDB is currently (2023) maintained by the IFDB committee of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFTF). The top 10 games on

84-529: A What's New page, and about one new link was being added per day. This was a time when access to the Internet was expanding rapidly outside its previous domain of academia and large industrial research institutions. Yet it was the availability of Mosaic and Mosaic-derived graphical browsers themselves that drove the explosive growth of the Web to over 10,000 sites by August 1995 and millions by 1998. Metcalfe expressed

126-501: A browser. The most-used browser is Google Chrome , with a 67% global market share on all devices, followed by Safari with 18%. A web browser is not the same thing as a search engine , though the two are often confused. A search engine is a website that provides links to other websites. However, to connect to a website's server and display its web pages, a user must have a web browser installed. In some technical contexts, browsers are referred to as user agents . The purpose of

168-531: A section in the menu for deleting cookies. Finer-grained management of cookies usually requires a browser extension . The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb , was created in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee . He then recruited Nicola Pellow to write the Line Mode Browser , which displayed web pages on dumb terminals . The Mosaic web browser was released in April 1993, and was later credited as

210-512: A separate browser began to decrease after the 1994 release of Netscape Navigator , the relevance of which was noted in The HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML : "Netscape Communications has designed an all-new WWW browser Netscape, that has significant enhancements over the original Mosaic program." In 1994, SCO released Global Access, a modified version of SCO's Open Desktop Unix , which became

252-420: A separate window). Named for supporting multiple Internet protocols , including Hypertext Transfer Protocol , File Transfer Protocol , Network News Transfer Protocol , and Gopher , its intuitive interface, reliability, personal computer support, and simple installation all contributed to Mosaic's initial popularity. Mistakenly described as the first graphical web browser, it was preceded by WorldWideWeb ,

294-835: A sync service and web accessibility features. Common user interface (UI) features: While mobile browsers have similar UI features as desktop versions, the limitations of touch screens require mobile UIs to be simpler. The difference is significant for users accustomed to keyboard shortcuts . The most popular desktop browsers also have sophisticated web development tools . Web browsers are popular targets for hackers , who exploit security holes to steal information, destroy files , and other malicious activities. Browser vendors regularly patch these security holes, so users are strongly encouraged to keep their browser software updated. Other protection measures are antivirus software and being aware of scams . Mosaic (web browser) Early research and development: Merging

336-868: A version specifically targeting OpenVMS operating system, is one of the longest-lived efforts to maintain Mosaic. Using the VMS support already built-in in original version (Bjorn S. Nilsson ported Mosaic 1.2 to VMS in the summer of 1993), developers incorporated a substantial part of the HTML engine from mMosaic, another defunct flavor of the browser. As of the most recent version (4.2), released in 2007, VMS Mosaic supported HTML 4.0, OpenSSL , cookies , and various image formats including GIF , JPEG , PNG , BMP , TGA , TIFF and JPEG 2000 image formats. The browser works on VAX , Alpha , and Itanium platforms. Another long-lived version, Mosaic-CK , developed by Cameron Kaiser,

378-495: A web browser is to fetch content and display it on the user's device. This process begins when the user inputs a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), such as https://en.wikipedia.org/ , into the browser. Virtually all URLs on the Web start with either http: or https: which means they are retrieved with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). For secure mode (HTTPS), the connection between

420-460: Is based on Mozilla 's code. Both of these codebases are open-source, so a number of small niche browsers are also made from them. The most popular browsers share many features in common. They automatically log users' browsing history , unless the users turn off their browsing history or use the non-logging private mode . They also allow users to set bookmarks , customize the browser with extensions , and can manage user passwords . Some provide

462-482: Is not the first web browser for Microsoft Windows; this is Thomas R. Bruce 's little-known Cello . The Unix version of Mosaic was already famous before the Microsoft Windows, Amiga, and Mac versions were released. Other than displaying images embedded in the text (rather than in a separate window), Mosaic's original feature set is similar to the browsers on which it was modeled, such as ViolaWWW. But Mosaic

SECTION 10

#1732787492238

504-437: Is well on its way to becoming the world's standard interface": When it comes to smashing a paradigm, pleasure is not the most important thing. It is the only thing. If this sounds wrong, consider Mosaic. Mosaic is the celebrated graphical "browser" that allows users to travel through the world of electronic information using a point-and-click interface. Mosaic's charming appearance encourages users to load their own documents onto

546-408: The most popular browser. Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer in 1995, leading to a browser war with Netscape. Within a few years, Microsoft gained a dominant position in the browser market for two reasons: it bundled Internet Explorer with its popular Windows operating system and did so as freeware with no restrictions on usage. The market share of Internet Explorer peaked at over 95% in

588-581: The About box. Internet Explorer 7 was audited by Microsoft to ensure that it contained no Spyglass Mosaic code, and thus no longer credits Spyglass or Mosaic. After NCSA stopped work on Mosaic, development of the NCSA Mosaic for the X Window System source code was continued by several independent groups. These independent development efforts include mMosaic (multicast Mosaic) which ceased development in early 2004, and Mosaic-CK and VMS Mosaic. VMS Mosaic ,

630-461: The IFDB Top 100 list, using an IMDb style Bayes estimator to calculate weighted ratings based on all IFDB ratings, are (2023): Emily Short has six entries among the top 100. Andrew Plotkin, Buster Hudson, Chandler Groover, Steve Meretzky, inkle, Brendan Patrick Hennessy, mathbrush, Steph Cherrywell, Jon Ingold has 3 entries each. In a September 2023 vote among members, the following were voted

672-494: The NCSA Mosaic source code. Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic in 1995 for US$ 2 million, modified it, and renamed it Internet Explorer . After a later auditing dispute, Microsoft paid Spyglass $ 8 million. The 1995 user guide The HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML , specifically states, in a section called Coming Attractions , that Internet Explorer "will be based on the Mosaic program". Versions of Internet Explorer before version 7 stated "Based on NCSA Mosaic" in

714-450: The Net, including color photos, sound bites, video clips, and hypertext "links" to other documents. By following the links – click, and the linked document appears – you can travel through the online world along paths of whim and intuition. Mosaic is not the most direct way to find online information. Nor is it the most powerful. It is merely the most pleasurable way, and in the 18 months since it

756-460: The Web might be better than sex. In the third generation, Andreessen and Bina left NCSA to found Netscape... Netscape Navigator was later developed by Netscape , which employed many of the original Mosaic authors; however, it intentionally shared no code with Mosaic. Netscape Navigator's code descendant is Mozilla Firefox . Spyglass, Inc. licensed the technology and trademarks from NCSA for producing its own web browser but never used any of

798-513: The basis for many other browsers, including Microsoft Edge , currently in third place with about a 5% share, as well as Samsung Internet and Opera in fifth and sixth places respectively with over 2% market share each. The other two browsers in the top four are made from different codebases . Safari , based on Apple 's WebKit code, is the second most popular web browser and is dominant on Apple devices, resulting in an 18% global share. Firefox , in fourth place, with about 3% market share,

840-424: The best games: Web browser A web browser is an application for accessing websites . When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on a range of devices, including desktops , laptops , tablets , and smartphones . By 2020, an estimated 4.9 billion people had used

882-494: The browser and web server is encrypted , providing a secure and private data transfer. Web pages usually contain hyperlinks to other pages and resources. Each link contains a URL, and when it is clicked or tapped , the browser navigates to the new resource. Most browsers use an internal cache of web page resources to improve loading times for subsequent visits to the same page. The cache can store many items, such as large images, so they do not need to be downloaded from

SECTION 20

#1732787492238

924-692: The creation of the first dynamic web pages . From 1994 to 1997, the National Science Foundation supported the further development of Mosaic. Marc Andreessen, the leader of the team that developed Mosaic, left NCSA and, with James H. Clark , one of the founders of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), and four other former students and staff of the University of Illinois , started Mosaic Communications Corporation. Mosaic Communications eventually became Netscape Communications Corporation , producing Netscape Navigator . Mosaic's popularity as

966-659: The early 2000s. In 1998, Netscape launched what would become the Mozilla Foundation to create a new browser using the open-source software model. This work evolved into the Firefox browser, first released by Mozilla in 2004. Firefox's market share peaked at 32% in 2010. Apple released its Safari browser in 2003; it remains the dominant browser on Apple devices, though it did not become popular elsewhere. Google debuted its Chrome browser in 2008, which steadily took market share from Internet Explorer and became

1008-624: The first browser that could submit forms to a server. Mosaic led to the Internet boom of the 1990s. Other browsers existed during this period, such as Erwise , ViolaWWW , MidasWWW , and tkWWW , but did not have the same effect as Mosaic on public use of the Internet. In the October 1994 issue of Wired magazine, Gary Wolfe notes in the article titled "The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don't look now, but Prodigy , AOL , and CompuServe are all suddenly obsolete – and Mosaic

1050-441: The first commercial product to incorporate Mosaic. However, by 1998, the Mosaic user base had almost completely evaporated as users moved to other web browsers. The licensing terms for NCSA Mosaic were generous for a proprietary software program. In general, non-commercial use was free of charge for all versions (with certain limitations). Additionally, the X Window System/Unix version publicly provided source code (source code for

1092-657: The first web browser to find mainstream popularity. Its innovative graphical user interface made the World Wide Web easy to navigate and thus more accessible to the average person. This, in turn, sparked the Internet boom of the 1990s, when the Web grew at a very rapid rate. The lead developers of Mosaic then founded the Netscape corporation, which released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator in 1994. Navigator quickly became

1134-534: The lesser-known Erwise , and ViolaWWW . Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign beginning in late 1992, released in January 1993, with official development and support until January 1997. Mosaic lost market share to Netscape Navigator in late 1994, and had only a tiny fraction of users left by 1997, when

1176-513: The most popular browser in 2012. Chrome has remained dominant ever since. By 2015, Microsoft replaced Internet Explorer with Edge for the Windows 10 release. Since the early 2000s, browsers have greatly expanded their HTML , CSS , JavaScript , and multimedia capabilities. One reason has been to enable more sophisticated websites, such as web apps . Another factor is the significant increase of broadband connectivity in many parts of

1218-524: The networks and creating the Internet: Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet: Examples of Internet services: NCSA Mosaic was among the first widely available web browsers , instrumental in popularizing the World Wide Web and the general Internet by integrating multimedia such as text and graphics. Mosaic was the first browser to display images inline with text (instead of

1260-400: The other versions was available after agreements were signed). Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, however, Mosaic was never released as open source software during its brief reign as a major browser; there were always constraints on permissible uses without payment. As of 1993 , license holders included these: Robert Reid notes that Andreessen's team hoped: ... to rectify many of

1302-588: The pivotal role of Mosaic this way: In the Web's first generation, Tim Berners-Lee launched the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and HTML standards with prototype Unix-based servers and browsers. A few people noticed that the Web might be better than Gopher. In the second generation, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina developed NCSA Mosaic at the University of Illinois. Several million then suddenly noticed that

Interactive Fiction Database - Misplaced Pages Continue

1344-814: The project was discontinued. Microsoft licensed one of the derivative commercial products, Spyglass Mosaic, to create Internet Explorer in 1995. In December 1991, the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 was passed, which provided funding for new projects at the NCSA, where after trying ViolaWWW , David Thompson demonstrated it to the NCSA software design group. This inspired Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina – two programmers working at NCSA – to create Mosaic. Andreessen and Bina began developing Mosaic in December 1992 for Unix's X Window System , calling it xmosaic . Marc Andreessen announced

1386-518: The project's first release, the "alpha/beta version 0.5," on January 23, 1993. Version 1.0 was released on April 21, 1993. Ports to Microsoft Windows and Macintosh were released in September. A port of Mosaic to the Amiga was available by October 1993. NCSA Mosaic for Unix (X Window System) version 2.0 was released on November 10, 1993 and was notable for adding support for forms , thus enabling

1428-476: The scene. Starting with next to nothing, the rates of the web growth (quoted in the press) hovering around tens of thousands of percent over ridiculously short periods of time were no real surprise. Ultimately, web browsers such as Mosaic became the killer applications of the 1990s. Web browsers were the first to bring a graphical interface to search tools the Internet's burgeoning wealth of distributed information services. A mid-1994 guide lists Mosaic alongside

1470-401: The server again. Cached items are usually only stored for as long as the web server stipulates in its HTTP response messages. During the course of browsing, cookies received from various websites are stored by the browser. Some of them contain login credentials or site preferences. However, others are used for tracking user behavior over long periods of time, so browsers typically provide

1512-441: The shortcomings of the very primitive prototypes then floating around the Internet. Most significantly, their work transformed the appeal of the Web from niche uses in the technical area to mass-market appeal. In particular, these University of Illinois students made two key changes to the Web browser, which hyper-boosted its appeal: they added graphics to what was otherwise boring text-based software, and, most importantly, they ported

1554-463: The software from so-called Unix computers that are popular only in technical and academic circles, to the [Microsoft] Windows operating system, which is used on more than 80 percent of the computers in the world, especially personal and commercial computers. Mosaic is based on the libwww library and thus supported a wide variety of Internet protocols included in the library: Archie , FTP , gopher , HTTP , NNTP , telnet , WAIS . Mosaic

1596-442: The traditional, text-oriented information search tools of the time, Archie and Veronica , Gopher , and WAIS but Mosaic quickly subsumed and displaced them all. Joseph Hardin, the director of the NCSA group within which Mosaic was developed, said downloads were up to 50,000 a month in mid-1994. In November 1992, there were twenty-six websites in the world and each one attracted attention. In its release year of 1993, Mosaic had

1638-416: The work of Berners-Lee and the hypertext theorists before him, is generally recognized as the beginning of the web as it is now known. Mosaic, the first web browser to win over the Net masses, was released in 1993 and made freely accessible to the public. The adjective phenomenal, so often overused in this industry, is genuinely applicable to the... 'explosion' in the growth of the web after Mosaic appeared on

1680-405: The world, enabling people to access data-intensive content, such as streaming HD video on YouTube , that was not possible during the era of dial-up modems . Google Chrome has been the dominant browser since the mid-2010s and currently has a 67% global market share on all devices. The vast majority of its source code comes from Google's open-source Chromium project; this code is also

1722-407: Was released, Mosaic has incited a rush of excitement and commercial energy unprecedented in the history of the Net. Reid also refers to Matthew K. Gray's website, Internet Statistics: Growth and Usage of the Web and the Internet , which indicates a dramatic leap in web use around the time of Mosaic's introduction. David Hudson concurs with Reid: Marc Andreessen's realization of Mosaic, based on

Interactive Fiction Database - Misplaced Pages Continue

1764-400: Was the first browser written and supported by a team of full-time programmers, was reliable and easy enough for novices to install, and the inline graphics proved immensely appealing. Mosaic is said to have made the Internet accessible to the ordinary person. Mosaic was the first browser to explore the concept of collaborative annotation in 1993 but never passed the test state. Mosaic was

#237762