Web Browsers

Old School Topics

There would be no old school web without old school web browsers. Mosaic offered the first graphical web browsing experience in 1993. Mosaic was quickly followed by Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer which led to what became popularized as the browser wars - which continue to this day. Early web browsers offered users the ability to explore the web, and some, like Netscape Composer, even allowed users to author their own web content by offering basic WYSIWYG HTML authoring.

Screen shots of Mosaic 3, Netscape Navigator 4.7 and Internet Explorer 4.01 rendering modern day excite.com:

Using just these browsers as examples, lets take a look at some old school web technologies:

• Internet Explorer 4 Channels - this feature allowed users to view dynamic "channels" which were constantly updating news feeds with dynamic content. This made use of the Channel Definition Format and had some integration with Microsoft's Active Desktop.
• Netscape had the idea to integrate a suite of web software which would help users handle everything they needed: a web browser, an email and news client, a chat client and an html authoring environment. This idea of a complete Web Suite of software lives on today at the Sea Monkey project.
• Mosaic featured support for NNTP, FTP, and Gopher. Gopher was later replaced by modern day search engines.

One interesting aspect when considering older web browsers and web software suites, was their support for specialized Internet protocols enabling services like Usenet, Gopher, Chat, etc. As the browsers became more capable of handling web content over time, the need for specialized client support for things like Usenet and Email diminished - everything started to be ported to a web interface. Of course, many people today still prefer to use a real email client for email; however, most people preferred only having to learn how to use the web browser - which via the web could be used for things like email, usenet, searching, games, etc. The web browser became the ubiquitous interface that it is today allowing people to access most Internet related services.

Add your comment

Please use the form below to add your comment.
HTML is not permitted

Comments:

Screen Name:

Your Name:

Your Email:

Verify your submission by typing these characters

(case insensitive)

---