Dozens of innovative web browsers have been developed by various people and teams over the years.
The first widely used web browser was NCSA Mosaic. The Mosaic programming team then developed the first commercial web browser called Netscape Navigator, later renamed Communicator, then renamed back to just Netscape. The Netscape browser led in user share until Microsoft Internet Explorer took the lead in 1999 due to its distribution advantage. A free open source software version of Netscape was then developed called Mozilla, which was the internal name for the old Netscape browser, and released in 2002. Mozilla has since gained in market share, particularly on non-Windows platforms, largely due to its open source foundation, and in 2004 was released in the quickly popular FireFox version.
A chronological listing of some of the influential early web browsers that advanced the state of the art is provided below:
WorldWideWeb. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser on a NeXT computer, called WorldWideWeb, finishing the first version on Christmas day, 1990. He released the program to a number of people at CERN in March, 1991, introducing the web to the high energy physics community, and beginning its spread.
libwww. Berners-Lee and a student at CERN named Jean-Francois Groff ported the WorldWideWeb application from the NeXT environment to the more common C language in 1991 and 1992, calling the new browser libwww. Groff later started the first web design company, InfoDesign.ch.
Line-mode. Nicola Pellow, a math student interning at CERN, wrote a line-mode web browser that would work on any device, even a teletype. In 1991, Nicola and the team ported the browser to a range of computers, from Unix to Microsoft DOS, so that anyone could access the web, at that point consisting primarily of the CERN phone book.
Erwise. After a visit from Robert Cailliau, a group of students at Helsinki University of Technology joined together to write a web browser as a master's project. Since the acronym for their department was called "OTH", they called the browser "erwise", as a joke on the word "otherwise". The final version was released in April, 1992, and included several advanced features, but wasn't developed further after the students graduated and went on to other jobs.
ViolaWWW. Pei Wei, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, released the second browser for Unix, called ViolaWWW, in May, 1992. This browser was built on the powerful interpretive language called Viola that Wei had developed for Unix computers. ViolaWWW had a range of advanced features, including the ability to display graphics and download applets.
Midas. During the summer of 1992, Tony Johnson at SLAC developed a third browser for Unix systems, called Midas, to help distribute information to colleagues about his physics research.
Samba. Robert Cailliau started development of the first web browser for the Macintosh, called Samba. Development was picked up by Nicola Pellow, and the browser was functional by the end of 1992.
Mosaic. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina from the NCSA released the first version of Mosaic for X-Windows on Unix computers in February, 1993. A version for the Macintosh was developed by Aleks Totic and released a few months later, making Mosaic the first browser with cross-platform support. Mosaic introduced support for sound, video clips, forms support, bookmarks, and history files, and quickly became the most popular non-commercial web browser. In August, 1994, NCSA assigned commercial rights to Mosaic to Spyglass, Inc., which subsequently licensed the technology to several other companies, including Microsoft for use in Internet Explorer. The NCSA stopped developing Mosaic in January 1997.
Arena. In 1993, Dave Raggett at Hewlett-Packard in Bristol, England, developed a browser called Arena, with powerful features for positioning tables and graphics.
Lynx. The University of Kansas had written a hypertext browser independently of the web, called Lynx, used to distribute campus information. A student named Lou Montulli added an Internet interface to the program, and released the web browser Lynx 2.0 in March, 1993. Lynx quickly became the preferred web browser for character mode terminals without graphics, and remains in use today. Resources include the Browser.org Lynx page, the ISC Lynx page, and the Lynx User Guide.
Cello. Tom Bruce, cofounder of the Legal Information Institute, realized that most lawyers used Microsoft PC's, and so he developed a web browser for that platform called Cello, finished in the summer of 1993.
Opera. In 1994, the Opera browser was developed by a team of researchers at a telecommunication company called Telenor in Oslo, Norway. The following year, two members of the team -- Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy -- left Telenor to establish Opera Software to develop the browser commercially. Opera 2.1 was first made available on the Internet in the summer of 1996.
Internet in a box. In January, 1994, O'Reilly and Associates announced a product called Internet In A Box which collected all of the software needed to access the web together, so that you only had to install one application, instead of downloading and installing several programs. While not a unique browser in its own right, this product was a breakthrough because it distributed other browsers and made the web a lot more accessible to the home user.
Navipress. In February, 1994, Navisoft released a browser for the PC and Macintosh called Navipress. This was the first browser since Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb browser that incorporated an editor, so that you could browse and edit content at the same time. Navipress later became AOLPress, and is still available but has not been maintained since 1997.
Mozilla. In October, 1994, Netscape released the the first beta version of their browser, Mozilla 0.96b, over the Internet. On December 15, the final version was released, Mozilla 1.0, making it the first commercial web browser. An open source version of the Netscape browser was released in 2002 was also named Mozilla in tribute to this early version, and then released as the quickly popular FireFox in November, 2004.
Internet Explorer. On August 23rd, 1995, Microsoft released their Windows 95 operating system, including a Web browser called Internet Explorer. By the fall of 1996, Explorer had a third of market share, and passed Netscape to became the leading web browser in 1999.
Many other browsers were also developed in the 1990's to address niche requirements, several of which are listed below:
Historical Web Browsers
Active Worlds
MacWeb
Air_Mosaic
NetAttache
Amiga
NetCaptor
Arachne
NETCOMplete
Charlotte
NetCruiser
EI*Net
NetManage Chameleon
EmailSiphon
NetPositive
Enhanced NCSA Mosaic
PlanetWeb
GetRight
Quarterdeck WebC
HotJava
SPRY_Mosaic
IBM WebExplorer
Spyglass Enhanced Mosaic
internetMCI
TueV Mosaic for X
IWENG
WWWC
There are three leading web browser applications, and several other options.
Dozens of browsers have been developed over the years, many of which are described in the section on browser history. Today, most people use one of the mainstream browsers: Explorer or Mozilla. Some people run more than one browser, but you can conveniently keep all of your bookmarks only in one, and links only get marked as visited in the browser you use, so you probably want to standardize on one browser for most of your surfing.
A high-level trade-off matrix between the top three browsers is shown below. You can also ask your friends for their experiences, and download and try several browsers.
1)Internet Explorer
Pro
Integrated with OS, faster.
More sites ensure IE compliant first, some use MS multi-media software.
Con
Integrated with OS, more vulnerable to viruses.
More complex, deeper menus, not always standard.
2)Mozilla FireFox
Pro
Open source.
Good bookmark functionality.
Multi-platform.
Available email (Thunderbird), newsgroups, and IRC clients.
Con
Not quite as fast for some functions on Windows.
Less widely used on Windows.
This Living Internet site recommends Mozilla Firefox because it is well coded, multi-platform, free open source software, compliant with web standards, and has the best bookmarking and tabbed viewing functionality.
Mozilla also has developed a suite of basic Internet applications, including an email program and newsgroup reader called Thunderbird, and an associated ChatZilla IRC client. These open source applications perform well on all platforms, and get better with each release.
Other browsers. There are several other web browsers which compete on various feature sets and have different strengths:
*Lynx -- A venerable web browser for character mode terminals without graphics originally developed at the University of Kansas Academic Computer Services Distributed Computing Group.
*NeoPlanet -- Integrates several Internet applications together, including a browser, email, and chat.
*Opera -- Small, fast, customizable application.
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