Before Netscape: Web browsers of the early 1990s (2011)

Looking at the second screenshot in this article (the one titled &quot;An early CERN Web browser, circa 1990&quot;), I feel this is what I&#x27;d like the modern web to be: crisp, clean, high density information, using colors only where it is relevant.<p>Modern web pages have become a seizure-inducing cacophony of colors, fonts, animations, ads, videos and intrusive modals (&quot;please sign up&quot;, &quot;subscribe to our newsletter&quot;, &quot;do you accept cookies?&quot;, &quot;please disable ad-block&quot;, &quot;people in &lt;your town&gt; are excited about this new weight loss product!&quot;) etc.

I remember the first time I saw Mosaic - a friend of mine was reading a digital graphic novel. I was absolutely gobsmacked at how incredible that was: not only did someone create something in a country far from mine, I was able to look at it in my home—perhaps minutes after its creation. So quickly, we become accustomed to the amazing.

I first used SPRY Mosaic as provided by CompuServe (my first ISP). I had written an article for a late 1995 special edition of Doctor Dobbs Journal which still has my screen image captures of the SPRY Mosaic browser:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.drdobbs.com&#x2F;web-development&#x2F;clientserver-development-and-the-world-w&#x2F;184409740" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.drdobbs.com&#x2F;web-development&#x2F;clientserver-developm...</a>

How about the forget tradition of Netscape developers dunking their heads in toilets?<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;totic.org&#x2F;nscp&#x2F;swirl&#x2F;swirl.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;totic.org&#x2F;nscp&#x2F;swirl&#x2F;swirl.html</a>

Anyone here ever used the web-browser that comes with GeoWorks&#x2F;New Deal? Pretty amazing software. In the late 90&#x27;s I was studying in Poland. In the computer lab of my dorm there were two Windows PCs and half a dozen text terminals. People were always waiting to use the more modern machines. The terminals were only good for e-mail (via telnet). They were XT-class machines with Hercules graphics. One day I decided to put a copy of GeoWorks on one of them. From then on I could always surf the web whenever I want. People were quite amazed to see a full GUI on a 12&quot; monochrome screen.

I recently built xmosaic on macOS with very little extra installed&#x2F;modified. It was quite fun.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;radiofreejohn&#x2F;status&#x2F;1132137894158618624" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;radiofreejohn&#x2F;status&#x2F;1132137894158618624</a>

Lynx is still in use these days, and has been around since 1993.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lynx_(web_browser)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lynx_(web_browser)</a>

Back then I used lynx on the text terminals at university and shortly after upgraded my PC at home (running Linux) from 4 MB to 8 MB of RAM (which did cost about an arm and a leg) so that I could run Mosaic with its statically linked Motif libs on it... When I think back the thing that amazes me most is the fact that I ran a Unix system along with X11 and a Motif application in all of 8 MB of RAM.<p>I still use lynx now and then even today. Haven&#x27;t seen any Motif app for a long while, though.

somehow, seeing Mosaic in 1993 or so was not a big deal.. Gopher was in use and the various FTP clients to transfer files, and Mosaic seemed like a small step from those, just unified into a page. Composable HTML was not a thing yet. The GUI was so primitive compared to daily desktop software, that it wasnt very compelling. Public access to a unified Internet was also not a thing yet, networks were restricted and siloed by governance and protocols. Usenet news already had some binaries if you really wanted to distribute or look for something, but the content was limited. basically, not a fan on first looks

There were so many more of these, many will remember HotJava but what about Oracle&#x27;s entry: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Oracle_PowerBrowser" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Oracle_PowerBrowser</a>

If anyone is wondering what was Netscape’s first big feature differentiator was, it was inline JPEGs. Mosaic could just display GIFs inline. JPEGs would require an external handler, typically LView on Windows, or xv on Linux.

I think in those days all the well-known graphical browsers (Mosaic, Netscape) were proprietary, although free for personal use.<p>I think I used a browser in Emacs for quite a while. There was also the Chimera browser mentioned elsewhere.

Did anyone else ever use Arachne?

I used MacWeb [1] on my PowerBook 145b in the early 90s. Lovely solid machine, 25 MHz Motorola CPU, 4 MB RAM, and a massive 80 MB hard disk. And yes, it was possible to surf the web with that, with information dense content, mostly text (the &quot;T&quot; in HTML and HTTP!).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;MacWeb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;MacWeb</a>

Let&#x27;s all remember that the first client-side scripting language was Tcl (inside ViolaWWW).<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.viola.org&#x2F;viola&#x2F;vw&#x2F;brief.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.viola.org&#x2F;viola&#x2F;vw&#x2F;brief.html</a><p>&gt; (If this were rendering on ViolaWWW, the button could actually be live on this document page!)<p>Loss of functionality well before JavaScript. ;)

<i>rolls out 300bps acoustic coupler to slowly watch lynx update on a remote system....</i><p>Ok, so I really used 2400bps and later 14k4 all the way up to 56k (speed!) for IP based traffic. It didn&#x27;t take long using 300bps to demonstrate the wisdom of upgrading.

Interesting to see Viola mentioned so prominantly here, and to see its impact on Andreesen, Mosaic, and Netscape. Whilst I&#x27;d never used it myself, I ran across it a year or so back when looking at how the n=modrn browser mechanics were estabished: navigation, history, bookmarks, scropting. Viola extended many of these concepts, and explored ground that&#x27;s since been lost; Applets, scripting (Tcl), stylesheets, frames, forms, equations editor, columnar layouts, sidebar as integral element, and more.<p>Its descriptive pages are well worth revisiting.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.viola.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.viola.org</a>

I remember running WebExplorer on OS&#x2F;2 in the mid 90s. Was pretty good!

There was also tkwww in 1992. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;TkWWW" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;TkWWW</a>

I used the Atari browser CAB [1]. It had auto reload capabilities, you could have the browser open in a window in the background and it would reload the page while I was editing the html in the foreground window. Very handy for developing. Not sure about timeframe though, 98?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;atari.clauss-net.de&#x2F;cab.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;atari.clauss-net.de&#x2F;cab.html</a>

Cello was the first graphical browser I used after Lynx for a short while. Though I appreciated the graphics in Cello, I did initially find the Web (graphics or just text) to be messy compared to the much more orderly Gopher. Once I started dabbling with HTML and made a crude site for my employer, I quickly went from office clerk to webmaster. At that point Gopher was pretty much forgotten.

I&#x27;ve been playing with browsh (brow.sh) on terminal. I&#x27;ve fallen in love with &#x27;the modern text-based browser&#x27;

Mosaic, gopher and text based one. Use the text to play go (WeiQi) and lost as refreshed under 19.2k modem is too slow.

Lynx was widely used at my university when I started there in 1993. I remember vaguely not liking Mosaic and other early inline graphic browsers, not because they weren&#x27;t revolutionary, but because they were too slow on our relatively slow networks and phone connections.

This maybe a little off topic but... wait what? CERN had their own OS? What was its name?

Having been involved in the BBS scene from the very early 80s and being involved with all things computer related since then, I have experience with all the browsers listed, and could name a few others.

I clearly remember using the web browser bundled with early NYC ISP The Pipeline in like 94. Netscape eventually came and blew it away, but it wasn’t bad for what (I think) was the work of basically one guy.

I had Mosaic as well as Spry. I always thought it funny that my wife had an old antique jar in the kitchen (still have it) for flour that was for a brand of lard called &quot;Spry&quot;

My first graphical web browser was Slipknot. From what I remember you would telnet into a shell account and it essentially acted as a graphical front end for Lynx.

Install mosaic to really get into the mood.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;snapcraft.io&#x2F;mosaic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;snapcraft.io&#x2F;mosaic</a>

Ahh, I am young. I started with Netscape 2. But I do remember some older machines with Mosaic... by 1996 Mosaic was already useless.

I quite liked Arena and Chimera (the Xaw one, not the predecessor of Camino) in my early Linux days. Although Netscape 2&#x2F;3 quickly took over.

sadly, missing one of my favorites: NCD&#x27;s mariner (yeah, the x11 terminal company).

Just imagine how many little bits of diarrhea and pubes they ingested