Web Browsers
Around 1991 a program called gopher appeared. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first software to manage information on the Internet and named it the World Wide Web. Soon after, people began to design graphical browsers. Marc Andreessen, a student at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) wrote Mosaic, which could manage most aspects of the Web as well as to deliver a graphical interface. This was the precursor to the Netscape Browser, which was an improved commercial version of Mosaic. In June, 1993 Digital Equipment Corporation opened the first commercial website.
In April 1994 a company called Mosaic Communications Corporation was founded. It was called Mosaic Netscape, and among the incredible new features were layout controls and the ability to open multiple concurrent TCP connections, greatly reducing download time. The Mosaic Netscape browser was freely distributed to students, teachers and researchers all over the world making it enormously popular.
In April 1994 a company called Mosaic Communications Corporation was founded with private money, and it immediately produced a greatly improved version of Mosaic. It was called Mosaic Netscape, and among the incredible new features were layout controls and the ability to open multiple concurrent TCP connections, greatly reducing download time. The Mosaic Netscape browser was freely distributed to students, teachers and researchers all over the world making it enormously popular.
Microsoft released Windows 95 along with the Microsoft Network (MSN). They did not understand the significance of the Internet, but thought that there would be several parallel online worlds. People protested against MSN because when you used it for the first time, the software sent vital information about your computer system to Microsoft.
Netscape's second generation browser arrived in the fall of 1995. The difference from previous versions of Navigator was remarkable. Not only did it feature HTML 3.0 proposed enhancements such as frames and client side imagemaps. It included the first versions of what is still the main attributes of a web browser: Java support, LiveScript (today known as JavaScript), a plug-in API, and encryption technology (SSL) enabling secure transactions over the Internet.
Netscape Navigator 2.0 also bundled a Newsreader, a so-called WYSIWYG HTML editor (Navigator Gold), and an email program. This did not sit well with Mr. Gates and Microsoft. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 2.0 wasn't really a serious browser, but Microsoft developed Internet Explorer 3.0 which rivaled Netscape and their browser superiority. The browser war was underway.
Internet Explorer 3.0 was the first major browser which supported style sheets, that could be used independently to control the way a web page looked and behaved. It could also handle the PICS system for content metadata. Both browsers supported Java, but Microsoft also launched ActiveX, which became a way of putting Windows applications on web pages. Both browsers supported JavaScript, but Microsoft called their implementation JScript and included functions that would only work on a Windows machine. JScript was actually reverse engineered from JavaScript so that Microsoft would not have to pay royalty fees.
Scenes from Monmouth County, New Jersey
