Early research and development:
55-474: The Line Mode Browser (also known as LMB , WWWLib , or just www ) is the second web browser ever created. The browser was the first demonstrated to be portable to several different operating systems . Operated from a simple command-line interface , it could be widely used on many computers and computer terminals throughout the Internet . The browser was developed starting in 1990, and then supported by
110-615: 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 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
165-416: A proxy client. The browser could run as a background process and download files. The Line Mode Browser has had problems recognizing character entities , properly collapsing whitespace , and supporting tables and frames . 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
220-419: 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 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
275-446: 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 the server again. Cached items are usually only stored for as long as the web server stipulates in its HTTP response messages. During
330-480: 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
385-403: A command-line interface specifying a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The requested web page was then printed line by line on the screen, like a teleprinter . Websites were displayed using the first versions of HTML . Formatting was achieved with capitalization, indentation, and new lines. Header elements were capitalized, centered and separated from the normal text by empty lines. Navigation
440-522: 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 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
495-466: A project to standardise microprocessor development across CERN. The short development time produced software in a simplified dialect of the C programming language . The official standard ANSI C was not yet available on all platforms. The Line Mode Browser was released to a limited audience on VAX , RS/6000 and Sun-4 computers in March 1991. Before the release of the first publicly available version, it
550-512: 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
605-571: A separate browser component was in 1995, and the browser became part of libwww. The Agora World Wide Web email browser was based on the Line Mode Browser. The Line Mode Browser was very popular in the beginning of the web, since it was the only web browser available for all operating systems. Statistics from January 1994 show that Mosaic had quickly changed the web browser landscape and only 2% of all World Wide Web users browsed by Line Mode Browser. The new niche of text-only web browser
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#1732772276296660-420: 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 ,
715-868: 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,
770-482: 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
825-546: 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) Merging
880-437: 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
935-558: 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 the most popular browser in 2012. Chrome has remained dominant ever since. By 2015, Microsoft replaced Internet Explorer with Edge for
990-616: The MacWWW project, and both browsers began to share some source code . In the May 1993 World Wide Web Newsletter Berners-Lee announced that the browser was released into the public domain to reduce the work on new clients. On 21 March 1995, with the release of version 3.0, CERN put the full responsibility for maintaining the Line Mode Browser on the W3C. The Line Mode Browser and the libwww library are closely tied together—the last independent release of
1045-482: 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 the world, enabling people to access data-intensive content, such as streaming HD video on YouTube , that
1100-543: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as an example and test application for the libwww library . One of the fundamental concepts of the " World Wide Web " projects at CERN was " universal readership ". In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee had already written the first browser, WorldWideWeb (later renamed to Nexus ), but that program only worked on the proprietary software of NeXT computers, which were in limited use. Berners-Lee and his team could not port
1155-581: 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 ,
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#17327722762961210-494: 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
1265-450: 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
1320-460: 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
1375-490: The WorldWideWeb application with its features—including the graphical WYSIWYG editor— to the more widely deployed X Window System , since they had no experience in programming it. The team recruited Nicola Pellow , a math student intern working at CERN, to write a "passive browser" so basic that it could run on most computers of that time. The name "Line Mode Browser" refers to the fact that, to ensure compatibility with
1430-555: 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 the most popular browser. Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer in 1995, leading to a browser war with Netscape. Within
1485-433: 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 a section in the menu for deleting cookies. Finer-grained management of cookies usually requires a browser extension . The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb ,
1540-692: 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
1595-581: The earliest computer terminals such as Teletype machines , the program only displayed text, (no images) and had only line-by-line text input (no cursor positioning). Development started in November 1990 and the browser was demonstrated in December 1990. The development environment used resources from the PRIAM project, a French language acronym for "PRojet Interdivisionnaire d'Assistance aux Microprocesseurs",
1650-569: 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
1705-441: 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
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1760-534: 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
1815-587: 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
1870-400: 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
1925-588: 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
1980-758: 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
2035-518: 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
2090-476: 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
2145-441: 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
2200-463: 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
2255-508: 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, 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
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2310-442: 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
2365-414: 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 a web browser is to fetch content and display it on the user's device. This process begins when the user inputs
2420-461: 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 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
2475-907: The whole project was the public release of the Line-Mode Browser. It gave the Internet hackers immediate access, but only from the point of view of the passive browser—no editing capabilities" The Line Mode Browser was designed to be able to be platform independent . There are official ports to Apollo/Domain , IBM RS6000 , DECStation/ultrix, VAX/VMS, VAX/Ultrix, MS-DOS , Unix , Windows , Classic Mac OS , Linux , MVS , VM/CMS , FreeBSD , Solaris , and to macOS . The browser supports many protocols like File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Gopher , Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), and Wide area information server (WAIS). Other features included rlogin and telnet hyperlinks , Cyrillic support (added on 25 November 1994 in version 2.15), and ability to be set up as
2530-416: 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
2585-556: Was also the first web server). The spreading news of the World Wide Web in 1991 increased interest in the project at CERN and other laboratories such as DESY in Germany , and elsewhere throughout the world. The first stable version, 1.1, was released in January 1992. Since version 1.2l, released in October 1992, the browser has used the common code library (later called libwww ). The main developer, Pellow, started working on
2640-529: 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 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
2695-466: Was entered, and scrolled up with the command " u ". The command " b " navigated backwards in history, and new pages were navigated with " g http://... " (for go to ) and the URL. The browser had no authoring functions, so pages could only be read and not edited. This was considered to be unfortunate by Robert Cailliau , one of the developers: "I think in retrospect the biggest mistake made in
2750-461: Was filled by Lynx , which made the Line Mode Browser largely irrelevant as a browser. One reason was that Lynx is much more flexible than the Line Mode Browser. It then became a test application for the libwww. The simplicity of the Line Mode Browser had several limitations. The Line Mode Browser was designed to work on any operating system using what were called "dumb" terminals. The user interface had to be as simple as possible. The user began with
2805-602: Was integrated into the CERN Program Library (CERNLIB), used mostly by the High-Energy Physics -community. The first beta of the browser was released on 8 April 1991. Berners-Lee announced the browser's availability in August 1991 in the alt.hypertext newsgroup of Usenet . Users could use the browser from anywhere in the Internet through the telnet protocol to the info.cern.ch machine (which
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#17327722762962860-414: Was not controlled by a pointing device such as a mouse or arrow keys , but by text commands typed into the program. Numbers in brackets are displayed for each link; links are opened by typing the corresponding number into the program. This led one journalist of the time to write: "The Web is a way of finding information by typing numbers." The page scrolled down when an empty command ( carriage return )
2915-550: 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 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
2970-407: 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
3025-400: 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
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