First Web Browser

During the last lecture, a line of inquiry was put to the class should anyone be interested: Who invented the first web browser and what was it like?

Without further ado, here's what I discovered.

The web browser was actually invented by the same person who invented the World Wide Web! Sir Tim Berners-Lee. And, he called his browser the WorldWideWeb. "Most creative" was my first thought. Snarky comments aside, the browser was first invented in the late 1990s for the NeXTStep operating system, which I know is all Greek to most of us. Anyway, below is a screenshot of the browser:


The above image was taken from here where one can get more in-depth bio of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. It's main page is also linked to W3C site which provides tons of information such as articles, interviews etc about the Internet. Incidentally, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the director of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) which oversees how the Internet develops.

Moving on, the article from which I got the info from moved on to describe how the first browser did not display images at first, then Mosaic became popular, followed by Netscape, Mozilla and also the birth of the Internet Explorer and other browsers like Opera. With each browser, the functions that came with it grew and improvements and updates follow each browser. The article also provided a link where one can peruse the timeline of the browser evolution to some extent.

Personally, I'm thankful for the current existing web browsers available on the Internet. I'm a user of Mozilla and prefer it over IE any day. More importantly, I'm thankful for the browser for allowing me to be able to do so many things, now considered an essential part of life, like checking my mails and keeping in touch with friends near and far. It didn't hurt that there's so many, less-serious stuff to do online like Facebook and Youtube.

That's it for this week's discovery!