The First Web Browser

When Tim Berners-Lee was consulting for CERN in the second half of 1980, he wrote a program named "ENQUIRE", which allows links to be made between arbitrary nodes. Each node had a title, a type, and a list of bidirectional typed links. This was the beginning of the World Wide Web.

Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web server as well as the first web browser - or browser-editor, rather - and called it the "WorldWideWeb" as it was, at the time when it was written in 1990, the only way to see the web. Much later it was renamed "Nexus" in order to avoid confusion between the program and the abstract information space (which is now spelled "World Wide Web", with spaces).

In 1993 with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, another browser named "Mosaic for X" was developed by Marc Andreessen. A year later, he and some of his colleagues left NCSA to form a company named "Mosaic Communications Corp" (later Netscape). Netscape defunct on the 15^th July 2003.

Since then, the World Wide Web has becomes more and more popular. The possibilities to link information worldwide are irresistible and exciting, and it's these possibilities that gave birth to the browser market. At the present moment, there are a quite a few contenders jumping on the bandwagon to get their market shares. On the left are a list of their websites.

Many thanks to the Internet, Vincent Cerf and Bob Khan for the TCP/IP protocol, Tim Berners-Lee for the HTTP protocol and the World Wide Web Consortium. It is now possible for you and me, as well as big companies to reach a huge audience.

The Other Side of the Coin

Well, we certainly came a long way since the 90s. The World's information is just one click away and companies built on the Internet are thriving.

Sadly, we are not living in a perfect world and the Internet also reflects this. Now all kinds of nasties are invading your computer through the Internet in the form of worms, viruses, spams, ad-wares, spy-wares, key-loggers, phishing, scams, pop-ups, etc.

There is no cure for these epidemics; every computer that is connected to the Internet has to protect and secure itself. This is a task not even completed upon the installation and use of virus scanners and firewalls, etc. You also need to update your computer's operating system(s), as well as all the software that protects your computer, frequently.