Mosaic (web browser)

Last updated
NCSA Mosaic
Original author(s)
Developer(s) NCSA
Initial release0.5 / January 23, 1993;31 years ago (1993-01-23) [1]
Final release
3.0  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 7 January 1997;27 years ago (7 January 1997)
Repository
Written in C [2]
Platform
Available inEnglish
Type Web browser
License Proprietary
Website www.ncsa.illinois.edu/enabling/mosaic

NCSA Mosaic is a discontinued web browser, and one of the first to be widely available. It was instrumental in popularizing the World Wide Web and the general Internet by integrating multimedia such as text and graphics. [3] [4] [5] It was named for its support of multiple Internet protocols, such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol, File Transfer Protocol, Network News Transfer Protocol, and Gopher. [6] Its intuitive interface, reliability, personal computer support, and simple installation all contributed to its popularity within the web. [7] Mosaic is the first browser to display images inline with text instead of in a separate window. [8] It is often described as the first graphical web browser, though it was preceded by WorldWideWeb, the lesser-known Erwise, [9] and ViolaWWW.

Contents

Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) [8] at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign beginning in late 1992. NCSA released it in 1993, [10] and officially discontinued development and support on January 7, 1997. [11]

From late 1994, Mosaic lost market share to Netscape Navigator [12] and only had a tiny fraction of users left by 1997, when the project was discontinued. Microsoft licensed one of the derivative commercial products, Spyglass Mosaic, to create Internet Explorer in 1995.

History

Mosaic 1.0 running under System 7.1, displaying the Mosaic Communications Corporation (later Netscape) website NCSAMosaic1.0Mac.png
Mosaic 1.0 running under System 7.1, displaying the Mosaic Communications Corporation (later Netscape) website

In December 1991, the Gore Bill 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. [13] 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. [8] [10] [13] [14] Marc Andreessen announced the project's first release, the "alpha/beta version 0.5," on January 23, 1993. [15] Version 1.0 was released on April 21, 1993. [16] Ports to Microsoft Windows and Macintosh were released in September. [13] 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 [17] and was notable for adding support for forms, thus enabling the creation of the first dynamic web pages. From 1994 to 1997, the National Science Foundation supported the further development of Mosaic. [18]

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 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." [19] :332

In 1994, SCO released Global Access, a modified version of SCO's Open Desktop Unix, which became the first commercial product to incorporate Mosaic. [20] However, by 1998, the Mosaic user base had almost completely evaporated as users moved to other web browsers.

Licensing

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 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: [21]

Features

Robert Reid notes that Andreessen's team hoped:

... to rectify many of 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 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. [23] :xxv

Mosaic is based on the libwww library [24] [25] [26] and thus supported a wide variety of Internet protocols included in the library: Archie, FTP, gopher, HTTP, NNTP, telnet, WAIS. [10]

Mosaic 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. [8] But Mosaic 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 [27] but never passed the test state. [28]

Mosaic was the first browser that could submit forms to a server. [29] [30]

Impact

Mosaic led to the Internet boom of the 1990s. [23] :xlii 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. [31]

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 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 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 was released, Mosaic has incited a rush of excitement and commercial energy unprecedented in the history of the Net. [21]

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. [23] :xxv

David Hudson concurs with Reid:

Marc Andreessen's realization of Mosaic, based on 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 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. [32] :42

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 the traditional, text-oriented information search tools of the time, Archie and Veronica, Gopher, and WAIS [33] 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. [34]

In November 1992, there were twenty-six websites in the world [35] and each one attracted attention. In its release year of 1993, Mosaic had 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. [36] Metcalfe expressed 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 the Web might be better than sex.

In the third generation, Andreessen and Bina left NCSA to found Netscape...

Bob Metcalfe [37] [38]

Legacy

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. [39] [ page needed ]

Spyglass, Inc. licensed the technology and trademarks from NCSA for producing its own web browser but never used any of the NCSA Mosaic source code. [40] Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic in 1995 for US$2 million, modified it, and renamed it Internet Explorer. [41] After a later auditing dispute, Microsoft paid Spyglass $8 million. [41] [42] 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". [19] :331 Versions of Internet Explorer before version 7 stated "Based on NCSA Mosaic" in the About box. Internet Explorer 7 was audited by Microsoft to ensure that it contained no Spyglass Mosaic code, [43] 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) [44] which ceased development in early 2004, and Mosaic-CK and VMS Mosaic.

VMS Mosaic, 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), [45] developers incorporated a substantial part of the HTML engine from mMosaic, another defunct flavor of the browser. [46] 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. [47] The browser works on VAX, Alpha, and Itanium platforms. [48]

Another long-lived version, Mosaic-CK, developed by Cameron Kaiser, was last released (version 2.7ck9) on July 11, 2010; a maintenance release with minor compatibility fixes (version 2.7ck10) was released on January 9, 2015, followed by another one (2.7ck11) in October 2015. [49] The stated goal of the project is "Lynx with graphics" and runs on Mac OS X, Power MachTen, Linux and other compatible Unix-like OSs. [49]

Release history

The X, Windows, and Mac versions of Mosaic all had separate development teams and code bases.

Key:
Internal BuildPre-releaseStable release

NCSA Mosaic for X

SeriesVersionRelease dateNotes & FeaturesSupported Platforms
0.x
0.1Dec, 1992Browse plaintext and HTML documents, Gopher servers, anonymous FTP servers, and local files; HTTP/0.9
0.2Fixed fatal bug in 0.1
0.3Support for NCSA's DTM (broadcasts documents to real-time networked workgroup collaboration sessions)
0.4
0.5Jan 23, 1993Initial public release (as NCSA X Mosaic). Save/mail/print; History list; On-the-fly font selection; Hotlist
SGI (IRIX 4.0.2)
IBM (AIX 3.2)
Sun 4 (SunOS 4.1.2)
0.6Jan 31, 1993Different colors for visited links; Specify a start page
0.7Feb 11, 1993Links are now underlined; Able to mouse-select each character of text on a web page; Annotations; Program logo in top-right corner (predecessor to throbber)
All Above
+
DEC Ultrix
0.8Feb 14, 1993
0.9Mar 4, 1993Audio annotations (SGI only); Product name changed to NCSA Mosaic for the X Window System
0.10Mar 14, 1993Introduced <IMG> tag: inlined images (GIF & XBM) in HTML documents; Find in page
0.11Mar 17, 1993
0.12Apr 5, 1993Support for <OL>, <TT>, <B>, <I>, <EM>, <STRONG>, <CODE>, <SAMP>, <KBD>, <VAR>
All Above
+
SCO Open Desktop
Harris Nighthawk
0.13Apr 12, 1993
1.x
1.0Apr 21, 1993
All Above
+
Solaris 2.x
DEC alpha (OSF/1)
Dell SVR4
HP/UX 7.x, 8.x, 9.x
NeXT BSD
1.1-pre1May 31, 1993
1.1-pre2Jun 2, 1993
1.1Jun 4, 1993 Image map support; Print/save to PostScript; Support for <CITE> and <BLOCKQUOTE>; Support for group annotation servers
1.2Jun 30, 1993Support for file://localhost/ scheme for accessing local files; Many bug fixes and under-hood improvements
2.x
2.0-pre0Jul 21, 1993Displays the URL when mouse hovers over a link; "Search Keyword" area removed from bottom (moved to menu dialog box)
2.0-pre1Aug 2, 1993
2.0-pre2Aug 10, 1993Reload button now also reloads images
2.0-pre3Sep 5, 1993Support for forms; Support for <BR>, <HR>, <STRIKE>; HTTP/1.0 compliant
2.0-pre4Sep 29, 1993Can stop page loading; <IMG ALIGN> attribute support
2.0-pre5Oct 10, 1993Form INPUT types of RADIO, PASSWORD, OPTION added; Program logo becomes a throbber (now animates during page loads)
2.0-pre6Oct 20, 1993
2.0-pre7Nov 2, 1993
2.0-pre8Nov 7, 1993New colorful spinning globe throbber
2.0Nov 10, 1993
SunOS 4.1.3
Solaris 2.3
AIX 3.2.4 with X11R5
IRIX 4.x
DEC alpha (OSF/1)
DEC Ultrix
HP/UX 9.x (700 Series)
2.1Dec 11, 1993
2.2Feb 9, 1994
All from 2.1
+
IRIX 5.1.x
2.3Apr 8, 1994
2.4Apr 11, 1994Fixes a major bug with forms introduced in 2.3; Last widely used release of NCSA Mosaic for X
2.5 alpha 1Sep 22, 1994Limited support for tables; Kiosk Mode; Nested Hotlists; Common Client Interface (CCI) API
SunOS 4.1.3
Solaris 2.3
AIX 3.2.4
IRIX 4.0.x and 5.x
DEC alpha (OSF/1 1.3 and 3.0)
DEC Ultrix 4.x
HP/UX 7.x, 8.x, 9.x
Linux 1.1.94
2.5 beta 1Support for <SUP> and <SUB>
2.5 beta 2Oct 11, 1994Removed the word "Document" from the Title and URL fields
2.5 beta 3Dec 22, 1994Support for <U> (underline)
2.5 beta 4
2.5 beta 5Mar 4, 1995
2.5Mar 12, 1995
2.6 alpha 1Inline JPEGs; Can now enter URLs directly into the address bar and press return to load them; Support for mailto: links
All from 2.5
+
Solaris 2.4
2.6 alpha 2
2.6 beta 1Apr 6, 1995
2.6 beta 2May 20, 1995
2.6 beta 3
2.6Jul 6, 1995Official "final" release
2.7 beta 1Jul 27, 1995Inline PNGs; Support for SSL (MD5 & Kerberos 4/5); Security Icon in lower-left corner of window; Keepalive connections
SunOS 4.1.3
Solaris 2.3 and 2.4
AIX 4.4
IRIX 4.0.x and 5.x
DEC alpha (OSF/1 1.3 and 3.0)
DEC Ultrix 4.x
HP/UX 7.x, 8.x, 9.x
Linux 1.2.13
BSD/OS 2.1
2.7 beta 2Oct 19, 1995Document title moved to window Title Bar; Load progress bar in lower-right corner of window
2.7 beta 3Feb 26, 1996Background colors; Can enter URLs without http:// prefix; Detachable Toolbar; Contextual right-click menus; Support for border attribute for linked images; action=mailto support in forms; Splash screen; Customizable Throbber; New application icons
2.7 beta 4Mar 30, 1996Background Images; Cleaned up and colorized toolbar icons; User Agent spoofing
2.7 beta 5Jul 18, 1996Printing in Kiosk Mode
All from 2.7b4 + SCO System V 3.2
2.8 alpha 1Aug 20, 1996A complete re-write code named "Project: Hyperion": Supports HTML 3.2; Options for loose or strict HTML parsing; Style sheets
2.8 alpha 2Sep 10, 1996
2.8 alpha 3Nov 14, 1996

NCSA Mosaic for Windows

SeriesVersionRelease dateNotes & Features
0.x
0.1aJun, 1993Support for inline GIFs; Support for .au sound files; Optional status bar to display hyperlink destinations; Customizable font selection
0.2aLocal file support; User-configurable Hotlist
0.3aSupport for inline XBMs; Option to set a start page; Support for AIFF sound files
0.4aSupport for <BR>, <B>, and <I>
0.5aSep 16, 1993Find in page; Image caching; Much faster scrolling; Hyperlinks to anchors within a document; Standard file dialog to open files on local disk; Drag and Drop local files into browser
0.6bSep 28, 1993Image map support; Support for <HR>; Scrolling via keys
0.7bOct 17,1993Document caching; HTTP/1.0 compliant
1.x
1.0Nov 11, 1993Can stop page loading; Images can now be aligned middle, top, or bottom; Better looking horizontal rules
2.x
2.0 alpha 1Jan 31, 1994Support for forms; Inlined image caching across pages
2.0 alpha 2Feb 28, 1994New Hotlist/Menu UI; DNS caching; Faster GIF decoding; Support for form INPUT type HIDDEN
2.0 alpha 3Apr 6, 1994Application is now 32-bit; Can now print documents; Viewing and saving document source; Support for <EM> and <STRONG>; Horizontal scrollbars for documents wider than the screen
2.0 alpha 4Apr 14, 1994
2.0 alpha 5Jun 24, 1994Can now enter URLs directly into the address bar and press return to load them; Colorized toolbar icons; XBM images decode 100 times faster
2.0 alpha 6Jul 27, 1994"Document Title:" bar removed (document title moved to window Title Bar), "Document URL:" caption shortened to just "URL:" for address bar; Smaller Throbber; Links are now underlined; Kiosk Mode; Speed improvements; Memory issue fixes
2.0 alpha 7Sep 7, 1994Throbber changes size relative to how many toolbars are shown; Mouse-over tooltips added
2.0 alpha 8Dec 20, 1994Support for tables; Support for <U>, <S>/<STRIKE>, <SUP>/<SUPER>, <SUB>; Support for transparent GIFs; No longer crashes when encountering bad HTML; Refined Throbber graphics (wires)
2.0 alpha 9Jan 25, 1995Cancel and Check buttons added next to address bar; Presentation mode; Right-click menu options; Support for mailto: links
2.0.0 beta 1Mar 13, 1995Inline JPEGs; Support for ALT information in IMG tags; Can now tab from one form field to another; Hotlist Manager; Splash screen; +/- keys to change font sizes;
2.0.0 beta 2Mar 23, 1995Support for multiple mailto:
2.0.0 beta 3Mar 28, 1995256 character URL limit fixed
2.0.0 beta 4Apr 6, 1995Global History; New HTML 3.0 tag attributes; URL bar is now also a list box
2.0.0 final betaJul 12, 1995Speed and printing improvements
2.0.0Oct 11, 1995Discrete Stop Button in toolbar; Collaborative Sessions; Advanced Hotlist Manager; Internal support for .wav sound files; Internal .au support removed; Printing improvements
2.1.0Mar 14, 1996Support for client-side image maps; Support for Kodak Photo CD (.pcd) image format
2.1.1Mar 25, 1996Fixed inline JPEGs not working with inline Kodak Photo CD images
3.x
3.0Jan 7, 1997Final Release

NCSA Mosaic for Macintosh

SeriesVersionRelease dateNotes & Features
1.x
1.0Nov 10, 1993Background color is white by default (differing from X and Windows versions)
1.0.1Nov 29, 1993
1.0.2Dec 17, 1993
1.0.3Jan 27, 1994Fixed serious crashes; Improved speed
2.x
2.0 alpha 1Jun 10, 1994Support for forms and tables; Users can now enter URLs directly into the address bar and press return to load them (URL bar is hidden by default); Background color is now gray by default (like X and Windows versions); Support for <S>, <SUP>, <SUB>; Reload button; New Hotlist interface
2.0 alpha 2Jun 21, 1994
2.0 alpha 3Jul 12, 1994
2.0 alpha 6Jul 26, 1994
2.0 alpha 8Sep 16, 1994
2.0 alpha 17Nov 14, 1994
2.0 beta 1Mar 6, 1995Inline JPEGs; Support for mailto: links
2.0 beta 2
2.0 beta 3Mar 15, 1995
2.0 beta 4
2.0 beta 5Apr 6, 1995
2.0 beta 6HTML Parser is much faster; Throbber globe wires now display moving arrows and yellow ball proportional to percent of page loaded; Support for <CENTER>, <BIG>, <SMALL>, and IMG tag ALIGN=LEFT/RIGHT attributes
2.0 beta 7Apr 27, 1995
2.0 beta 8Support for <P ALIGN>; Image alignment improvements
2.0 beta 9May 5, 1995
2.0 beta 10
2.0 beta 11
2.0 beta 12Jun 1, 1995
2.0 beta 13Support for background images
2.0 beta 14
2.0.0
2.0.1Sep 28, 1995Fixed some table rendering bugs
3.x
3.0.0 beta 1Apr 15, 1996
3.0.0 beta 2Apr 25, 1996
3.0.0 beta 3Jul 30, 1996
3.0.0 beta 4Sep 12, 1996
3.0Jan 7, 1997Final Release - Nested tables; Removed frames support that was present in 3.0.0 betas

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Netscape (web browser)</span> Family of web browsers

The Netscape web browser is the general name for a series of web browsers formerly produced by Netscape Communications Corporation, which eventually became a subsidiary of AOL. The original browser was once the dominant browser in terms of usage share, but as a result of the first browser war, it lost virtually all of its share to Internet Explorer due to Microsoft's anti-competitive bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.

A web desktop or webtop is a desktop environment embedded in a web browser or similar client application. A webtop integrates web applications, web services, client–server applications, application servers, and applications on the local client into a desktop environment using the desktop metaphor. Web desktops provide an environment similar to that of Windows, Mac, or a graphical user interface on Unix and Linux systems. It is a virtual desktop running in a web browser. In a webtop the applications, data, files, configuration, settings, and access privileges reside remotely over the network. Much of the computing takes place remotely. The browser is primarily used for display and input purposes.

Jon E. Mittelhauser is a software executive who co-wrote the Windows version of NCSA Mosaic and was a founder of Netscape.

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It further provides for the capture or input of information which may be returned to the presenting system, then stored or processed as necessary. The method of accessing a particular page or content is achieved by entering its address, known as a Uniform Resource Identifier or URI. This may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.

References

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Further reading