The Birth of a Web Browser
This article is part of Designing the New Web Browser publication, the previous post was Part 1: Building a new Web Browsing experience, where I talked about concept and background of this publication.
Before diving into developing new web browsing experience, one has to research first. What already was done in the field of web browser development? So let's name a few remarkable breakpoints in the short history of browsing the web. I will try to jump from generally known facts to perks I've found, well, on the web.
The purpose of this article is not to repeat what was written on the Wikipedia or W3C. Here are links which were my sources, I will then write a brief reflection.
History in a blink of an eye
World Wide Web was found in 1990, but it didn't appear from nowhere. Firstly, WWW is just one of the services of the internet and internet was here since 50s. Domain Name System, which I would expect to appear after the Web, was here before. Secondly, the functionality of hyperlinks and full-text search, which were always key concepts of a web browsing experience, were already present in Silversmith or TransText. But these were all sophisticated tools for professional capacity. Even WorldWideWeb, the first web browser, which was also working as a web server and WYSIWYG editor for web pages (pretty cool in my opinion), was discontinued one year after it was released.
Mosaic broke the ice with inline images and user-friendly installation. It seems that traffic boom started here, when the Windows users could open their favourite articles with a few clicks — no terminal commands required. The ease of use won over complexity. Opportunity to consume content easily won after possibility to create content conveniently. I am not even elaborating on text-based browsers. It was clear that the masses wanted colours, images and preferred visual navigation system.
From Mosaic two web browser giants were born. Team of Mosaic shifted efforts into building Netscape Navigator and Mosaic was licensed by Microsoft and used for building Internet Explorer. Since then, there doesn't seem to be only one right was how to access the Web. Although Internet Explorer was clearly dominating the market in late 90s, early 00s and killed Netscape, browsers like Opera, Safari and Firefox (based on Netscape) were slowly cutting off IE's market share. Then came Google Chrome and since 2012, it has been the most common way how to access Web, although it has been topic of discussion, whether that's right.
UI trends 1991 to 1999
In the early days of the Web, many browsers extended the limits of web browsing. You probably won’t succeed in running any of the historical browsers of the 90’s on your machine, but I've found this amazing tool by Rhizome that gives you opportunity to try some of the oldest.
Just for its pure beauty, take a look on rare UI screenshots of some of the first web browsers.
WorldWideWeb
Note that in contrast with its successors, the URL bar is located in separated area. It also has rich interface for editing the site contents.
Note: WorldWideWeb was recently re-built, check it out here: https://worldwideweb.cern.ch
Erwise
Erwise is often overlooked, because it never made it big. Although it was the first graphical browser and appreciated by Tim Berners-Lee himself, developed by Finnish students it didn't get proper funding and was soon discontinued.
NSCA Mosaic
Mosaic introduced UI which practically defined IE's and Netscape Navigator's look.
Netscape Navigator 1.22
Internet Explorer 1
Links
Links is my another personal favourite, mainly because it was developed in Czech republic at Charles University in Prague. Started in 1999, it had both text and graphical mode. Unfortunately it haven't made it to JavaScript or CSS support.
Conclusion
Please note I am awfully skipping through all the web browsers in between and the thousands of hours people spent developing them. See them here:
In the next article I will focus on what followed next in the history of Web browsers. If you are ready to undergo the journey all the way from the birth of the Web technologies, through the depression of the current Web till up to the infinite where the Web is heading now, finally ending with a design and hopefully a working new web browser, hit the follow button.
This article is part of Designing the New Web Browser publication, you can continue to the following post: Part 3: The rebels and misfits of web browsing.
