Historia Del Internet

Browser’s History
Documento Editado por Mauricio Dabdoub para ser utilizado en clases de E-Business This page contains a short history of browsers from 1991 to the present day. History before 1998 is rather sketchy since I didn't live through it myself. I got my own first browser, Netscape 3, in 1997, and only from that time on I started following the browser market and its fluctuations. FirstEra: The early browsers (1991-1994) The WWW was invented in 1991 and at first was rather geeky. The first browsers, invented simultaneously, was text-only. Then Mosaic 1 (Nov '93) hit the market, and it supported images. This was such a huge step forward that it quickly took over the (rather small) browser market of its day. Since I didn't live through this Era I can't really tell the story.Microsoft hadn't been seriously interested in Second Era: Netscape dominance (19941997) After Mosaic came Netscape 1 (Dec. '94). Netscape took over the (still rather small) browser market at one stroke. It was a much improved version of Mosaic, supporting multiple TCP/IP connections, cookies and the tag. Its mother company, Netscape Communications Corporation, asked money Microsoft, too, needed abrowser. It started out with another Mosaic version and produced Internet Explorer. It's best to draw a merciful veil over Explorer 1 and 2 (Aug. and Nov. '95), but with Explorer 3 (Aug. '96) Microsoft produced its first decent browser. It wasn't quite up to Netscape 3 standards (mouseovers, especially, were lacking), but to the Internet up until this time. The beginning Internet boom showed it theerror of its ways and it made up for lost time quite fast. Microsoft And then the Internet went BOOM. Netscape 1 was succeeded by Netscape 2 (March '96), which supported frames and JavaScript. Then came Netscape 3 (Aug. '96), which supported mouseovers and a few other features. These browsers all were market leaders in their heydays. Netscape 3, in particular, became a touchstone of excellency. Anyother browser had to at least support everything Netscape 3 supported to be taken seriously. for the use of its browser but gave it away for free to carefully selected target audiences, like students and teachers. This helped immeasurably to spread the word and to ensure Netscape dominance.

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makeup for it Explorer 3 was the very first browser to support CSS, until then an almost unknown technique. Having a browser of its own meant nothing without marketing, though. Microsoft's first move was to make Explorer freely available to anyone, unlike Netscape, which still charged a modest sum for the use of its browser. Explorer's market share grew, but it didn't even come closes to Netscape's.The main reason was that the Internet was still moderately geeky at that point. The average user knew a little bit about browsers, and had often heard the name Netscape. Added to its technical superiority, this ensured continuing Netscape dominance for the moment. Third Era: The Browser Wars (1997-1999) It was clear that Netscape and Microsoft were heading for a clash, and they needed newtechnologies to support their marketing efforts and give their browser a decisive advantage over the other. At the very tail end of the Second Era W3C, then largely an unknown factor, had published its CSS 1 specification, in which it laid the groundwork for separating content from presentation. This was interesting.

that it should be possible to change the CSS of a Web page in the browser itself. Henceboth browsers incorporated DHTML, the changing of CSS by means of JavaScript. Back then, the de facto JavaScript standard was Netscape 3's implementation. DHTML, however, called for an extension of the browsers' Document Object Model. Not surprisingly, both vendors decided to extend JavaScript on their own and paid no attention to each other's efforts. The contenders In general Microsoft made...