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by Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
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April
29, 2002
Errors
in Time: Browser history
Last week, I pointed to a Time
story by Lev Grossman headlined The
Browser That Roared, about the nearly-released Mozilla
browser. It troubled me that the lead sentences contained errors,
but I needed time to gather links for an accurate chronology. (I'm not
Grossman's editor, so I'm a little uncomfortable about correcting his
work, but I can't let this hang out there. I was there, and it didn't
go down that way. Tomorrow, I'll correct an error of my own in as much
detail.)
Here's the
problem: Grossman wrote, "In the beginning there was one Web browser.
It was called Mosaic, and if you didn't like it you could go back to watching
Murphy Brown, or whatever it was we did before we had the Web. Then Microsoft
started giving away Internet Explorer, Mosaic turned into Netscape, and
suddenly life was complicated."
This wasn't
the way it happened at all. Here's
some early history:
- From
A
Short History of Web Browsers
by Selena
Sol at Web Developer's
Virtual Library: "In
terms of the use of a web browser by the mass public, the history of
web browsers begins with LYNX. LYNX is a simple text-based web browser
primarily accessed via UNIX shell accounts (i.e. Lynx resides on
the server) that displays formatted HTML text (but not images)...
LYNX's text-based interface is actually quite clumsy (unless you are
a blind user, in which case LYNX rocks for its speed and text-based
simplicity where other browsers tend to be useless). In fact, soon after
the development of LYNX, as the concept of web browsing took off, web
browsers would quickly evolve into the graphical web browser species
beginning with Mosaic, Mozilla, and finally browsers such as Navigator
and Explorer..."
- A
short history of web browsers, dated May 8, 1995, part
of a project at the University of California, San Diego: "While
the WWW was useful with simple browsers which simply loaded and displayed
documents, the great explosion in the use of the WWW was a result of
the development of attractive graphical interface browsers such as Mosaic,
the browser developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA) at the University of Illinois. Mosaic was developed to run on
Unix X11 workstations, Macintoshes and Microsoft Windows personal computers.
Web pages had essentially the same appearance on all computers, and
the browser operated in very much the same way on all computers. This
meant that WWW applications became independent of the computing platform
used. Another thing which contributed to the popularity of Mosaic was
that anyone could download it from the NCSA server at no cost.
The programmers who created Mosaic were undergraduates at the University
of Illinois. They graduated and formed their own companies where browser
development continued. Meanwhile, new undergraduates continued to develop
the NCSA free version of Mosaic. This has kept competition fierce and
prices low. The most successful of the commercial ventures was Netscape;
they are particularly popular in the education market because they do
not charge for their browser if you do not require support."
- From
Index
DOT Html: In mid-1994, Silicon Graphics founder Jim
Clark collaborated with Marc
Andreessen to found Mosaic Communications (later renamed to Netscape
Communications.) Andreessen had just graduated from the University of
Illinois, where he had been the leader of a certain software project
known as "Mosaic". ...With the launch of Windows 95 and a web browser
of its own (Internet Explorer) in August 1995, Microsoft began an effort
to challenge Netscape. ..In January 1998, Netscape made an announcement
that their browser would thereafter be free, and also that the development
of the browser would move to an open-source process. (That's Mozilla)
- From
LivingInternet.com
(About:
"The mission of this web site is to make comprehensive, in-depth
information about the Internet available around the world."), comes
"Browser
History: A chronological listing of early web browsers ... each
of which influenced subsequent browsers and advanced the state of the
art."
- Also:
Hobbes'
Internet Timeline v5.6 by Robert
H'obbes' Zakon, Internet Evangelist
- Newest
Browser: Mozilla
at a glance. Mozilla.org speaks for itself.
May
1, 2002
Browsers
revisited: personal recollections: Robert
Maxwell Case writes,
"Enjoyed
your 'browser history' ... you're mostly 'on the money.' The only fine
tuning I might offer is this:
"I was a Mosaic user prior to Netscape's debut in November 1994.
Marc Andreesen had 'shopped' his next-generation Mosaic during the prior
18 months to all the big PC players including Apple & Microsoft, but
nobody would bite save Jim Clark (Silicon Graphics) who responded
to an email.
"By Netscape's debut, Mosaic had become a runaway success and Bill
Gates belatedly wanted in. The programmers left behind by Andreesen also
kept working and NCSA licensed the technology to a Chicago company called
Spyglass. Microsoft sublicensed the technology from Spyglass and hired
a number of the programmers left from the inital development team.
"But Netscape had the jump with a superior product. They charged
$39 for 'stable' versions but allowed 'betas' to be downloaded free. I
never paid for a version of Netscape, but I could see a clear business
model and fully expected to pay eventually.
"Then, one day in late 1997 Microsoft announced that their version
of Mosaic, Internet Explorer, would henceforth be free and, in fact, be
bundled with Windows 98. I was angry because this move neglected the reimbursement
of the sizeable development costs Microsoft had incurred and completely
demolished Netscape's business model. Netscape had no choice but to offer
their clearly superior product for free, too.
"The subsequent sale of Netscape to AOL has really yet to play out
... Mozilla is really a return to the 'open source' model that NCSA's
Mosaic was a part of. While IE now may be the superior product, Mozilla/Netscape
is close enough so that AOL's forecasted dropping of IE could change the
internet landscape."
Here's my
own recollection of that time, originally sent as an email to Mr. Case:
I pretty
much had the same experience you had -- I remember downloading everything
that came along back in those days. I was using the net on a local Free-Net,
via Lynx, running a computer bulletin board as a Fidonet
sysop, and freely distributing the Fidonet mail and file feed off a
dish on my roof to any other BBS that would also agree to pass it along
for free.
Every new
browser came on the filebone, and I tried them all. I also never paid
for Netscape -- it was a joke that the browser was free but the box
was $39. Because everybody was using slow modems, software was a lot
smaller, then, too!
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by Sheila Lennon
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