How Did Web Browsers Change or Affect the Internet?
Web browsers helped popularize and make the World Wide Web more accessible in the 1990s, offering consumers an easy-to-use, more attractive interface through which they could interact with Web pages on a desktop computer. Early Web browsers such as Mosaic, Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, offered multimedia capabilities that made the Web more compelling and interesting for mainstream consumers who, until then, had either not been aware of the Internet or only thought of it as a tool for researchers.
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Background
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In the early 1990s, the public Internet was still a highly technical network for sharing information between university researchers, though public interest was growing. Web pages could only be viewed as simple text. An early Web browser developed in 1992, Lynx, was developed by a team of students at the University of Kansas. Lynx worked with a command line, and could not download images or support any graphics. It is still used as of 2011 as a simple Web browser for accessing websites on computers that have low bandwidth.
Mosaic
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In 1993, students and staff at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois developed the first Web browser that could support both graphics and text. It was called Mosaic. With Mosaic’s graphical interface, programmers could add images, sound, video and multi-font text to hypertext system used in creating Web pages, according to the National Science Foundation website. Within 18 months of its development, Mosaic was the browser of choice for more than 1 million Internet users, and further sparked an increase in the number of Web servers globally. According to the book “Internet Technology for Schools,” written by Catherine Mambretti, a major advantage of the Mosaic browser was that users didn’t have to know complex Unix commands or computer language.
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Other Browsers
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As the 1990s progressed, other competing Web browsers were developed as the commercial possibilities of the Internet became clear. Mosaic was later changed to Netscape Navigator, and became one of the most popular Web browsers of the 1990s. Microsoft Corp. licensed the Mosaic technology and developed its own browser, Internet Explorer. In 1996, Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 3.0, designed to work with its own computer operating system, Windows 95. IE 3.0 added new functionality to Web browsing, such as the ability to stream audio files and display JPG image files. In addition, America Online, an early Internet service provider and pioneer, helped further popularize the Internet by offering low-cost Internet access, with its own Web browser, to homes, businesses and schools. Another popular early Web browser was Opera, introduced in 1996, at first for desktop computers and later for Internet-enabled mobile devices.
Advantages
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Web browsers have evolved over the years to become more powerful. Rather than displaying static Web pages, developers are able to take advantage of the technology available with Web browsers, such as Java, Flash and Dynamic HTML (DHTML), along with specific software applications that work with Web browsers, to create more immersive and interactive experiences with animation.
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