6.2 Early web browsers

At this point in time, two types of browsers were available to the early users of the WWW. The original browser developed by Berners-Lee had more sophisticated features but could only run on NeXT machines. The line-mode browser, on the other hand, could run on any platform but had fewer features and limited usability. After Berners-Lee’s call to action for developers to join, individuals across the world started writing browsers, in particular for the X Window System[44].

In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois released the first version of its web browser called Mosaic, which was developed by Marc Andreessen and his colleagues [40]. Mosaic ran on the X Window System and provided web users a user-friendly graphical interface with the same sort of point-and-click graphical manipulations they were used to on their personal computers (see Figure 6.2). Shortly afterward, NCSA released Mosaic...