A Bevvy of Browsers

When the Web first came out, the clients browser would run only on Unix systems. It was also entirely text-based. The user would see a menu of choices, which could be linked to other text pages. But it wasn't very simple to use, and it didn't have any hypermedia capability. It used a command-line interface.

That was fine for the basic needs of researchers but what about graphics, sound, and ease-of-use by non-technical people?

The answer was to develop a hypermedia browser that anyone could use. The job was given to the National Centre for Super Computing Applications (NCSA), a consortium of three major American universities, and the result was NCSA Mosaic for Windows and Macintosh and Unix. These quickly became the killer applications of the Internet and the main single reason for the explosive growth of the World Wide Web.

Why has NCSA Mosaic been received so enthusiastically? First, because you don't have to know anything about computers or the Internet, to use it. If you know how to use a mouse, clicking on any link will activate it. Second, Mosaic can display interesting screens of text and colorful graphics. Third, it is available for all major computing systems, and is easy to set up and run. And finally, it's free!

Since releasing Mosaic, NCSA has licensed its core code and technology to Spyglass Inc. a spin-off company from the University of Chicagos Urbana Champaign campus, which developed Mosaic. As the sidebar shows, the first commercial Mosaics are now becoming available. Generally, they feature slicker, bug-free interfaces and security for passwords and credit card information.

There is one more twist to the Mosaic tale: almost every member of the original development team was lured away from academia by the Netscape Communications Corporation (originally, the Mosaic Communications Corporation, but NCSA didn't like the Mosaic name being stolen along with its talent). Using the experience they had gained from writing Mosaic, the team has developed a new Web browser that outperforms Mosaic. Increased performance and the fact that it allows a user to scroll through a page of text even while the graphics are being downloaded, has resulted in Netscape becoming the browser-of-choice for over 70% of Web users.