Gopher (protocol)The Gopher protocol (ˈɡoʊfər) is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to the World Wide Web in its early stages, but ultimately fell into disfavor, yielding to HTTP. The Gopher ecosystem is often regarded as the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web. The Gopher protocol was invented by a team led by Mark P.
Lynx (web browser)Lynx is a customizable text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals. , it is the oldest web browser still being maintained, having started in 1992. Lynx was a product of the Distributed Computing Group within Academic Computing Services of the University of Kansas, and was initially developed in 1992 by a team of students and staff at the university (Lou Montulli, Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac) as a hypertext browser used solely to distribute campus information as part of a Campus-Wide Information Server and for browsing the Gopher space.
FirefoxMozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. In November 2017, Firefox began incorporating new technology under the code name "Quantum" to promote parallelism and a more intuitive user interface. Firefox is available for Windows 7 or later versions, macOS, and Linux.
MozillaMozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions. The community is supported institutionally by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.
Browser warsA browser war is a competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war," (1995-2001) pitted Microsoft's Internet Explorer against Netscape's Navigator. Browser wars continued with the decline of Internet Explorer's market share and the popularity of other browsers including Firefox, Google Chrome (and other Chromium-based browsers), Safari, Microsoft Edge and Opera.
User-Agent headerIn computing, the User-Agent header is an HTTP header intended to identify the user agent responsible for making a given HTTP request. Whereas the character sequence User-Agent comprises the name of the header itself, the header value that a given user agent uses to identify itself is colloquially known as its user agent string. The user agent for the operator of a computer used to access the Web has encoded within the rules that govern its behavior the knowledge of how to negotiate its half of a request-response transaction; the user agent thus plays the role of the client in a client–server system.
Comparison of web browsersThis is a comparison of both historical and current web browsers based on developer, engine, platform(s), releases, license, and cost. Basic general information about the browsers. Browsers listed on a light purple background are discontinued. Platforms with a yellow background have limited support. Browsers are compiled to run on certain operating systems, without emulation. This list is not exhaustive, but rather reflects the most common OSes today (e.g.
LibwwwLibwww is an early World Wide Web software library providing core functions for web browsers, implementing HTML, HTTP, and other technologies. Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), released libwww (then also called the Common Library) in late 1992, comprising reusable code from the first browsers (WorldWideWeb and Line Mode Browser). Libwww was relied upon by the then popular browser Mosaic. By 1997, interest in libwww declined, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which took over from CERN, reduced its commitment to the project.
HyperlinkIn computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided to by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. The text that is linked from is known as anchor text. A software system that is used for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext system, and to create a hyperlink is to hyperlink (or simply to link). A user following hyperlinks is said to navigate or browse the hypertext.
CompuServeCompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS or later CSi) was an American online service, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the others are Prodigy and America Online)." It dominated the industry during the 1980s and remained a major influence through the mid-1990s. At its maximum during the early 1990s, CIS was known for its online chat system, message forums for a variety of topics, extensive software libraries for most personal computers, and a series of popular online games, notably MegaWars III and Island of Kesmai.
World Wide WebThe World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling information to be shared over the Internet through simplified ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists, as well as documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet according to specific rules, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web servers and can be accessed by programs such as web browsers.
History of the World Wide WebThe World Wide Web ("WWW", "W3" or simply "the Web") is a global information medium which users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and Usenet do. The history of the Internet and the history of hypertext date back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN in 1989.
Line Mode BrowserThe Line Mode Browser (also known as LMB, WWWLib, or just www) is the second web browser ever created. The browser was the first demonstrated to be portable to several different operating systems. Operated from a simple command-line interface, it could be widely used on many computers and computer terminals throughout the Internet. The browser was developed starting in 1990, and then supported by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as an example and test application for the libwww library.
Netscape NavigatorNetscape Navigator is a discontinued web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in the 1990s, but by around 2003 its user base had all but disappeared. This was partly because the Netscape Corporation (later purchased by AOL) did not sustain Netscape Navigator's technical innovation in the late 1990s.
Web serverA web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiates communication by making a request for a web page or other resource using HTTP, and the server responds with the content of that resource or an error message. A web server can also accept and store resources sent from the user agent if configured to do so.
NetscapeNetscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the so-called first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than one percent in 2006.
GIFThe Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; ɡɪf or dʒɪf , see pronunciation) is a bitmap that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on June 15, 1987. It is in widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability between applications and operating systems. The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, allowing a single image to reference its own palette of up to 256 different colors chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space.
PNGPortable Network Graphics (PNG, officially pronounced pɪŋ , colloquially pronounced ˌpiːɛnˈdʒiː ) is a raster-graphics file that supports lossless data compression. PNG was developed as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)—unofficially, the initials PNG stood for the recursive acronym "PNG's not GIF". PNG supports palette-based images (with palettes of 24-bit RGB or 32-bit RGBA colors), grayscale images (with or without an alpha channel for transparency), and full-color non-palette-based RGB or RGBA images.
Dynamic web pageA dynamic web page is a web page constructed at runtime (during software execution), as opposed to a static web page, delivered as it is stored. A server-side dynamic web page is a web page whose construction is controlled by an application server processing server-side scripts. In server-side scripting, parameters determine how the assembly of every new web page proceeds, and including the setting up of more client-side processing. A client-side dynamic web page processes the web page using JavaScript running in the browser as it loads.
History of the web browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It further provides for the capture or input of information which may be returned to the presenting system, then stored or processed as necessary. The method of accessing a particular page or content is achieved by entering its address, known as a Uniform Resource Identifier or URI. This may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content.
