Photo courtesy of PCWorld.com
Some of you may have heard that the modern web browser we all use every day is turning 15. This is exciting news as most of us can remember life before the internet, we communicated by sending letters written on paper, and mailed through the postal service, made phone calls to talk to one another. The modern web browser is a staple of our current daily lives that has quickly become the way we live. In the most of the most modern uses of the web browser it is being used to run application programs, and modern methods we are currently studying are teaching us how to use the web browser more efficiently.
A look back at the browsers history: October 13, 1994 ” Mosaic Communications Corp. – later renamed Netscape Communications Corp. – releases the beta version of its Web browser, called Mosaic Netscape 0.9.” This browser was based on the mosaic code developed by the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), and co-author for mosaic code Marc Andreessen was also one of the co-founders of Netscape. The Netscape browser reigned supreme until 1997 when the two year old Microsoft Internet Explorer browser took over the number #1 browser spot. Microsoft first released their Internet Explorer browser in 1995 as part of the Windows 95 Plus! Pack. The Microsoft browser was built upon the software they licensed from Spyglass, and off-shoot from the NCSA.
Next to join the fray was Opera, from Internet Opera Software based out of Norway. They released Opera for the Windows market on January 1, 1997, targeting the mobile device market. February 1998 Netscape creates the open-source project Mozilla. In July 2003 Mozilla Organization morphed into the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and in 2005 turned into the for-profit Mozilla Corp., maker of the popular Firefox browser, which made its debut on February 9th, 2004.
January 7, 2003 Apples joins the market with its Safari browser, which became their default browser for Mac’s. And the most recent browser to enter the market has been Google’s Chrome, first released on September 2, 2008 for the Windows market. With so many options it is important that we as developers are familiar with these major browsers and that we create software that works with all of them.
Thanks for the lil history recap James. Happy birthday to one of our best friends aka web browser.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting.. it doesn't seem that long ago. I have a copy of netscape verson 1.1 around here somewhere. I miss the good old days of gopher.... HA!
ReplyDeleteexcellent post James, I remember when you had to actually pay for Netscape Navigator, and now all the browsers are free. I used to use netscape alot and then converted over to IE.
ReplyDeleteNice post! I remember my parents purchasing AOL back in '96 and try to search the internet on the 'built-in browser' it had. What a piece of junk! I've been using chrome a lot lately and man is that thing fast! It would be interesting to see the performance differences between the two on paper . . . lol!
ReplyDeleteJames,
ReplyDeleteI must live in a cave because I wasn't aware of this. It seems like just yesterday I first accessed the internet. There use to be a cost so they controlled who could access it a work. Now I can't imagine my job without with corporate intranets and other resources pertinent to my job. Thanks for the news!