History of the web browser

 

History of the web browser

In 1950, computers took up whole rooms and were dumber than today’s pocket calculators. But progress was swift, and by 1960, they were able to run complex programs. Governments and universities across the globe thought it would be great if the machines could talk, nurturing collaboration and scientific breakthroughs.

ARPANET was the first successful networking project, and in 1969, the first message was sent from the computer science lab at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), also in California.

British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server and graphical web browser in 1990 while working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland. WorldWideWeb was the name he gave to his new internet browser. The NeXT computer provided a simple graphical user interface. The World Wide Web was the first public network on which text content could be linked together.

A year later, Berners-Lee hired Nicola Pellow, a math student at CERN, to develop the Line Mode Browser, software for low-end computer terminals.

The Web really took off in 1993. Universities, governments, and private businesses all saw the potential of the Internet’s wide availability. The new software was required for all computers to have access. In that year, computer scientist Marc Andreessen developed Mosaic at the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). It came before Mozilla Firefox, the most popular web browser today, and was the first to become very popular.

NCSA Mosaic was an easy-to-use program that allowed anybody with a Windows computer to see the first versions of websites, participate in online chats, and view picture libraries. Andreessen created Netscape in 1994 and gave the world the first version of Netscape Navigator that same year. It was the first browser available to the general public, and it was an instant hit. It was also the first salvo in a fresh fight between online communities.

The Browser Wars

By 1995, there were alternatives to Netscape Navigator. Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, licensed the source code for Mosaic and used it to create Internet Explorer, its own web browser. The leak caused a conflict to break out. Netscape and Microsoft were both working hard to make new versions of their software. Each company was trying to beat the other in terms of speed and features.

Netscape created JavaScript and made it available to the public, giving websites powerful computational capabilities that weren't previously possible. (They’re also responsible for the <blink> tag’s creation.) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) from Microsoft eventually took over HTML as the best way to design websites.

When Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 4.0 in 1997, things began to spiral out of control. The group constructed a massive letter “e” and secretly placed it on the front lawn of Netscape’s offices. The Netscape team didn’t waste any time knocking over the big “e” and replacing it with the dinosaur mascot of the Mozilla team.

Microsoft eventually started including Internet Explorer with their Windows OS installation discs. In only 4 years, it captured 75% of the market, and by 1999, it held 99%. In the face of antitrust prosecution, Netscape released Firefox in 2002 after making the decision to open-source its code and founding the non-profit Mozilla. Since a browser monopoly would be bad for users and the web as a whole, Mozilla developed Firefox to provide people with other options. Internet Explorer’s market share dropped to 50% by 2010 as a result of competition from Mozilla Firefox and other browsers.

Opera, Safari, and Google Chrome are just a few of the rivals that arose in the late 1990s and early 2000s. With the release of Windows 10 in 2015, Microsoft Edge took the place of Internet Explorer.

Browsing the Web Today

There are now just a select few methods to connect to the web. The most popular alternatives to each other are Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Opera. Over the past ten years, mobile devices have become the most popular way to get online, surpassing desktop computers. Most people who use the internet nowadays do so exclusively via their mobile devices and their browsers or apps. The most popular desktop browsers have mobile counterparts for both iOS and Android. While these applications are great for their intended purposes, they do not provide full web functionality.

The World Wide Web has developed into a vast ocean of user-generated content since its hypertextual beginnings. Since at least the introduction of Lawnmower Man in 1992 and the Nintendo Virtual Boy in 1995, virtual reality has been on the horizon, but the internet may finally deliver it to the public. With Firefox’s new WebVR and A-Frame support, creating VR-ready websites is a breeze. The majority of today’s mobile devices support WebVR, and inexpensive cardboard enclosures turn them into useful headgear. Similar to the one that science fiction author Neal Stephenson imagined, a 3D virtual reality web might soon materialize. If that happens, the browser itself may become superfluous, and the user’s device of choice will be their window into the virtual world.

No matter what the future of the web brings, Mozilla and Firefox will be there to provide users with robust tools to take full advantage of it. The Internet is a public resource, and everyone has the right to decide how they use it. That’s why Firefox includes privacy-enhancing features, and we’ll never share your information with third parties.

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