UdiWWW

Last updated

UdiWWW HTML3 Web Browser
Original author(s) Bernd Richter
Initial release1995;29 years ago (1995)
Final release
1.2.000 / April 9, 1996;27 years ago (1996-04-09)
Written in C/C++
Operating system Windows 3.1 / 3.11 / NT / 95 [1]
Size 1.7 MB (32-bit) [2]
570 KB (16-bit) [2]
Available inEnglish, German
Type Web browser
License Public domain [1]
Website www.uni-ulm.de/~richter/udiwww/index.htm at the Wayback Machine (archived July 24, 1997)

UdiWWW is an early, now discontinued freeware graphical HTML 3.2 web browser for 16-bit and 32-bit Microsoft Windows. It was written and developed by Bernd Richter in C/C++ from 1995 to 1996. Following the release of version 1.2 in April 1996, Richter ceased development, stating "let Microsoft with the ActiveX Development Kit do the rest." [2] [3] [4]

Contents

UdiWWW was among the first web browsers to support the then proposed HTML 3.0 standard. [5] [6] [7] In doing so, it was also among the first browsers to support the specifications html math, html figures, and the PNG image format, [7] which other leading browsers at the time such as Netscape and Internet Explorer 2.0 did not. [8] The browser gained some popularity during 1996, but after development was abandoned, the browser fell out of favor. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]

The browser is no longer available from its original homepage. However, it (and its source) can still be downloaded from mirror sites. [17] [18]

History

UdiWWW was created for the UDINE Projekt (Universal Document Information and Navigation Environment). UDINE was started in 1992 and the goal was to "create a flexible, multimedia information system that is able to show different files (text, picture, audio, and video) with a similar user interface on different systems." [19] [20] [21] To be able to read "web information" the UDINE project was expanded by a web browser. It was not able to integrate common browsers like the NCSA Mosaic because of the client-server architecture without modification. The source code of Mosaic was not available at that time, so the university started their own project. UDINE-WWW-Viewer was created and had most features of HTML 3 integrated. [7] [22] [23]

Features

UdiWWW has the following features as of Version 1.2: [24] [25] [26]

It also features a clock in the lower right hand corner that tells how long the browser has been up.

There is no official help file; rather, in the included .hlp file, Bernd Richter stated, "This help file was automatically created by the developing environment and is quite useless. As you know, UdiWWW is a 'One Man Show' and the author could not find time for writing help files." [33]

Criticism

UdiWWW was criticized for lacking many advanced features like news, FTP, HTML4, Dynamic HTML, support for targeted windows, a "new window" command for launching multiple sessions, client side image mapping, and security. It was also seen to be slow. [34]

Further reading

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Graham, Ian; Michael Lee. "PC WWW BROWSERS". WWW Software for Windows PCs. University of Toronto . Retrieved March 13, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 Bernd Richter (May 26, 1997). "UdiWWW". University of Ulm. Archived from the original on July 24, 1997. Retrieved March 13, 2010.
  3. ↑ Richter, Bernd (September 4, 1996). "UdiWWW: Coming soon". University of Ulm. Archived from the original on July 9, 1997. Retrieved March 16, 2010.
  4. ↑ "The 'link'-Element in (X)HTML". subotnik.net. March 30, 2004. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  5. ↑ "WORLD WIDE WEB FAQ". 1996. Retrieved March 16, 2010.
  6. ↑ "Microsoft Windows browsers". World Wide Web FAQ. Retrieved March 16, 2010.
  7. 1 2 3 Großmann, Prof. Dr. Hans Peter. "Department of Information Resource Management". University of Ulm. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
  8. ↑ Stauffer, Todd (June 1996). "Chapter 18". Html by Example. Que. ISBN   978-0-7897-0812-0.
  9. ↑ Stroud, Forrest. "UdiWWW Introduction". Software Reviews. Internet.com. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  10. ↑ Stroud, Forrest. "UdiWWW No Longer a Serious Contender". Software Reviews. Internet.com. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  11. ↑ Ornstein, David (November 20, 1995). "Latest browser rankings from BrowserCaps (UdiWWW is currently #1)". Webhistory. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  12. ↑ Brown, Mark (1996). "Chapter 2 How Web Browsers and Servers Work Together". Que Corporation . Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  13. ↑ Ornstein, David (November 20, 1995). "Latest browser rankings from BrowserCaps (UdiWWW is currently #1)". World Wide Web Consortium . Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  14. ↑ Gayle V. Davidson-Shivers; Karen L. Rasmussen (2006). Web-based learning: design, implementation, and evaluation. Pearson/Merrill/Prentice Hall. p. 378. ISBN   978-0-13-081425-8 . Retrieved March 16, 2010.
  15. ↑ B. Ram (2000). Computer fundamentals: architecture and organization. New Age International. p. 1.32. ISBN   978-81-224-1267-3 . Retrieved March 16, 2010.
  16. ↑ Mark Surfas; Mark Brown (November 1996). Using Intranet HTML. Que. p. 88. ISBN   978-0-7897-0852-6 . Retrieved March 16, 2010.
  17. ↑ Its original homepage at "Archived copy". Archived from the original on July 24, 1997. Retrieved March 13, 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) is no longer up. The original ftp page at ftp://ftp.rz.uni-ulm.de/pub/infosystems/UdiWWW/ is no longer up.
  18. ↑ "LEO – /pub/comp/general/infosys/www/browsers/UdiWWW/". Leo. December 6, 2004. Archived from the original on December 6, 2004. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
  19. ↑ Herrmann, B. (January 1998). "BelWü Spots" (PDF) (in German). BelWü (Baden-Württembergs extended LAN). Retrieved March 22, 2010.
  20. ↑ Müller, Paul; Hans Peter Großmann (June 10, 2003). "UDINE a universal document information and navigation entry". Computer Networks and ISDN Systems. 26: S29–S38. doi:10.1016/0169-7552(94)90096-5.
  21. ↑ "abgeschlossene Projekte". UDINE (in German). Ulm University. Retrieved March 24, 2010.
  22. ↑ "abgeschlossene Projekte". Forschung (in German). Ulm University. Retrieved March 24, 2010.
  23. ↑ Prof. Dr. H. P. Großmann. "Überblick über die Aufgaben des Universitätsrechenzentrums". Universitätsrechenzentrum (in German). Ulm University. Retrieved March 24, 2010.
  24. ↑ Bernd Richter (April 4, 1996). "New Features in UdiWWW". University of Ulm. Archived from the original on July 9, 1997. Retrieved March 16, 2010.
  25. ↑ "UdiWWW Test Verzeichnis". University of Ulm. July 9, 1997. Archived from the original on July 9, 1997. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
  26. ↑ Steel, Warren (May 17, 1996). "Proposal: List attributes". W3C. Retrieved March 24, 2010.
  27. ↑ Richter, Bernd (April 9, 1996). "Properties of UdiWWW". readme file. University of Ulm department of information research management. Archived from the original on July 9, 1997. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  28. ↑ Roelofs, Greg (February 23, 2000). "Browsers with PNG Support". Archived from the original on March 3, 2000. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  29. ↑ Gutfeldt, Matthias (February 23, 2004). "Browsers with LINK support" . Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  30. ↑ "Advanced HTML Taking Your Pages to the Next Level". TallTech. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
  31. ↑ "Chapter 18 – Other HTML 3.0 Proposals". Docs.rinet.ru. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
  32. ↑ Weinreich, Harald; Hartmut Obendorf, Winfried Lamersdorf (2001). "The look of the link - concepts for the user interface of extended hyperlinks". Proceedings of the twelfth ACM conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia - HYPERTEXT '01. p. 19. doi:10.1145/504216.504225. ISBN   978-1591134206. S2CID   14289046.
  33. ↑ From the help file "UDIWWW32.hlp" from the Version 1.2.000 installation.
  34. ↑ Stroud, Forrest (December 11, 1996). "UdiWWW – No Longer a Serious Contender". Windows Software Reviews. Win Planet . Retrieved March 22, 2010.
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