Surfing Since 1991: The Evolution of Web Browsers
Posted 08/19/09 at 11:30:00 AM by Paul Lilly
In order to surf the web, you need a web browser, and today there are several different ones to choose from. If you're looking for a lean, no-nonsense browser, Chrome is the one for you. Internet Explorer still stands as the odds on favorite when you want to make sure pages load correctly (not because of superior standards support, but because its majority market share have driven developers to code their webpages to look best on IE). Firefox has found more than a niche market by giving users near endless customization, and Apple's Safari purports to run circles around everyone else (it doesn't). And then there's the cornucopia of alternative browsers and browser shells, like Flock (Firefox-based) and Avant (IE-based).
No matter which browser you choose to surf the web with, the features you take for granted today are the result of nearly two decades of browser design. On the following pages, we'll take you through a visual tour, in chronological order, of every major PC-based (read: not Mac) web browser that ever was, starting with the very first one: WorldWideWeb. We'll tell you what made each one unique and, when applicable, what it contributed to modern browser development.
WorldWideWeb
First Released: 1991
By most accounts, WorldWideWeb is regarded as the first web browser. The groundwork that would eventually lead to WorldWideWeb began in the late 1980s, the same decade MTV was launched and the Commodore 64 was still going strong. Officially introduced in 1991, WorldWideWeb could display basic style sheets and was the only way to see the web. The navigation menu contained "back," "next," and "previous" buttons, but the browser also served as an editor. WorldWideWeb would later be renamed to Nexus "in order to save confusion between the program and the abstract information space," writes Tim Berners-Lee, the browser's developer.
Image Credit: Tim Berners-Lee (w3.org)
Erwise
First Released: 1992
Some online literature regards Mosaic as the world's first graphical point-and-click browser, but that distinction actually belongs to Erwise. Developed by four Finnish students at the Helsinki University of Technology, Erwise was designed for Unix computers running the X Windows System.
Advanced for its time, Erwise had the ability to search for words on webpages. If it didn't find the word it was looking for, it would scour the internet, up to 12 pages at a time, to try to find it. Erwise could also load multiple pages at the same time, but despite all the innovation and promise, it was never commercialized, the result of a "horrible recession" in Finland at the time.
Image Credit: xconomy.com
ViolaWWW
First Released: 1992
Before the Web entered into the mainstream, a limited audience would see the introduction of the ViolaWWW browser. One of the earliest browsers, ViolaWWW was launched in May 1992. It was written by Pei-Yuan Wei, a University of California student, and like Erwise, was built for Unix and the X Windowing System. This gave the browser a limited audience.
Image Credit: xcf.berkley.edu
Notable features include the ability to use multifont text, functioning within a single windows operation and the ability to clone a copy of a document in other windows, inclusion of a History window, "Home", "Back", and "Forward" buttons, online help buttons, and even bookmarks.
MidasWWW
First Released: 1992
Another X browser, MidasWWW was released in November of 1992. It was developed by Tony Johnson at SLAC, who named it Midas for 'Motif Interactive Data Analysis Shell.'
A popular browser among fellow physicists, Johnson had little interest in further developing MidasWWW. However, a colleague would translate it to run on VAX computers, making MidasWWW the first of only a small number of dedicated browsers for VAXes.
One of the few innovations of MidasWWW was that hyperlinks changed color after you clicked on them. It was also the first browser to make use of plug-ins.
Lynx
First Released: 1992
Although Erwise had already broken ground with a graphical interface, Lynx, also released in 1992, was a text-only browser originally developed by the University of Kansas to distribute campus information. It would later find an audience with the visually impaired because of its text-to-speech interface.
In 1993, a student named Lou Montulli added an Internet interface to the application and released it as Lynx 2.0. This became popular for character mode terminals that didn't rely on graphics, although Lynx does possess the ability to launch external applications to handle images and videos.
You can still use Lynx today - above is a screenie we grabbed while running Lynx 2.8.5rel.1 on top of Vista 64-bit (download).
Cool!
Submitted by cjbriare on Sat, 08/29/2009 - 3:22pm
its cool that the first WWW browser was developed for NeXT Computers! I think he used a NeXT Cube to develop it.
Submitted by Spider-Mom on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 3:46am
where is AOL? :(
Submitted by terabytes on Fri, 08/21/2009 - 11:08pm
I used Netscape during the Windows 3.1 days and it was pretty good as there were not many options those days. Shifted to IE from Windows 98 and again it was equal to Netscape, but than Netscape was screwed big time or was it a well thought out stragtegy to push in IE. In between tried Opera & a few others but moved back to IE. Than came along Firefox and that changed everything. A highly lite and flexible browser and also free. With it was if you buy windows than only you get IE (whether you want it or not. ). The add-ons are also too good and so is the interface. Tabbed Browsing was introduced way before Microsoft introduced it. Than you had the new Opera and the Safari both are good & now comes Chrome which to is excellent, but still I believe nothing can beat a Firefox, Ok adding the Add ons is a bit troublesome after reinstallation but it is worth the trouble.
My ratings as of now would be as below
1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Google Chrome
3. Safari
4. Opera
5. Internet Explorer. ( use it only if you have to. )
I have installed all 5 on my pc but I use Firefox.
Submitted by markr405 on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 2:09pm
WOW THATS SICK!!!
MARKR405
Submitted by I Jedi on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 12:01pm
Would these older browsers be a lot safer to run on now-a-days? Especially the text-chat based ones only?
Submitted by yourfriendlane on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 12:24pm
Anything that can't run JavaScript is probably safer than any modern browser, despite whatever other security holes it might have.
Submitted by D.E. on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 10:20pm
Chrome is quite unappreciated. It is so easy to set up an ideal and customized browser without much fiddling and while it does not have extensions, it does not suffer from the negatives of giving it more to update. One thing I did not enjoy about Firefox was that once I found the extensions/customized it how I wanted it, I had to maintain it from time to time. Chrome takes me all of 3min to set up from installation, to setting it to the default browser, to importing/adding bookmarks, and then customizing the search bar and download locations and presto! I have my custom tailored browser ready to go.
But one thing I really appreciate with Chrome is that I use it to teach people who are computer illiterate how to surf the web. "Uh huh, so click this button twice and now this is your browser. You can type anything into this box here and it will bring it up. Soo Auntie, if you want "soup" recipes, just go on and type it in and hit enter. And you can bookmark this recipe with this button like this. Easy right?"
I dunno, it just goes a long way for me. :)
Submitted by 1337Goose on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 10:45am
I have to agree with you on that one, Chrome is really easy to setup. I used Chrome for almost 6 months before (once again) coming back to opera. The cool thing about Opera is that every time you reinstall it, you can just grab all your settings back from Opera's web sync, it's faster than importing your bookmarks back into chrome.
But again, I still love Chrome's fast rendering times, speedy javascript, and overall minimalist yet intuitive interface.
Submitted by SuperiorBeing on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 9:55pm
Unfortunately, even with the plethora of new, advanced, standards-compliant browsers, there isn't a single browser that has every feature I want. I used Opera for a while (9.6 and 10.0), but there isn't any real effective way to add on to the browser like in Firefox, which I eventually switched to. Then I had to install half a dozen addons just to match the convenience of Opera, and some features I still don't have (like minimizing to the system tray).
Maybe Rockmelt will change all of that, but I doubt it.
Submitted by roland1680 on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 4:56pm
Minimize any program to system tray with this little known freeware program ( called TrayIt! ). It's a must for any hardcore user. Between this and launchy, I don't have any icons on my desktop and hardly any program windows that sit in the taskbar.
http://trayit.en.softonic.com/
Submitted by SpaceBison on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 9:26pm
Go Opera, still the best!
Submitted by DBsantos77 on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 9:12pm
K, maybe I'll stop bitching about all the browser problems and be glad that we're better off now then 10+ years ago :)
Submitted by SilverWings on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 8:40pm
That sure brought back lot's of memorys. Most of them good, all of them interesting. Some now lost to old age as the mist of time slowly fade's into a dense comforting fog.
Netscape for my first graphical bowser. I was on Prodgy in the begining.
Now I use IE8 and Flock.
Submitted by The Relic on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 8:25pm
Heh...the first true web browser I used was Netscape back in 1997 with Win 3.1 (before that, I used the Greater Columbus Freenet, so I was using Telix 3.2.1 to access it (starting with the Commodore 64, from a floppy disc, then DOS with my giant 10MB hard drive ^_^). After Apple screwed Netscape up, I kept using Netscape 4.7 for a couple of years, until I got XP, then used IE for a little while, then I tried Firefox, and never felt the temptation to return...
Submitted by d47 on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 8:07pm
Where's Epiphany? =)
T'was a great read.
Tim Berners Lee
Submitted by zippzom on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 7:04pm
Tim Berners-Lee's kid goes to my school. He uses a mac.
Submitted by 1337Goose on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 10:30pm
That comment made me very sad... The using a Mac part.
Submitted by pellier on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 6:13pm
a 1mb browser would be very nice.
Submitted by nerdman978 on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 5:28pm
now I really want to install lynx. sweet
Submitted by winmaster on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 5:09pm
This is awsome. I can't believe that it still works! Hopefully it won't be too broken.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Submitted by yourfriendlane on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 11:44am
Yep, Lynx is still alive and well and incredibly useful at times: for example, if you want to write a script that grabs your Twitter feed, you could either bother with the Twitter API and parse the XML using another utility, or just have Lynx load the page and use grep to trim out the unimportant parts.
I also use Lynx a lot on my netbook, which is running Crunchbang, when I just want to look something up very quickly, especially on a slow connection (like when I tether it to my phone). If I don't need to see the pictures, Lynx can spit something out ten times as fast as Firefox could.
Submitted by blackbelt_jones on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 7:44am
Love the article, but "you still use lynx today" doesn't begin to express how ALIVE AND KICKING this old warhorse is and remains... but this does: the latest Lynx version, v2.8.7, was released July 5, 2009 less than a month a half ago at this writing!
I'm not a person who always uses text browsers, but today I'm trying to fix a problem with the xserver in an ongoing slackware install, and I am stuck in the console for a while. I originally attempted to post this message with Lynx, but I hit the wrong key a few times and wound up back in Google's privacy policy! Since then, I've finished compiling elinks, a text browser that seems a little more geared toward people who are used to firefox and opera
Submitted by blackbelt_jones on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 7:42am
Love the article, but "you still use lynx today" doesn't begin to express how ALIVE AND KICKING this old warhorse is and remains... but this does: the latest Lynx version, v2.8.7, was released July 5, 2009 less than a month a half ago at this writing!
I'm not a person who always uses text browsers, but today I'm trying to fix a problem with the xserver in an ongoing slackware install, and I am stuck in the console for a while. I originally attempted to post this message with Lynx, but I hit the wrong key a few times and wound up back in Google's privacy policy! Since then, I've finished compiling elinks, a text browser that seems a little more geared toward people who are used to firefox and opera
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