Datasheet

Crowder c01.tex V3 - 05/26/2008 7:16pm Page 6
Part I Laying the Foundation
FIGURE 1-2
The violaWWW browser was used by CERN before the arrival of Mosaic.
Perhaps it was limited by only running on Unix X-Windows when the world was
facing a looming showdown of Mac versus PC, or perhaps it was just too advanced
for its time. Regardless of the reason, in this same time period, there was a mad rush to cash in on
the Berners-Lee open source Web browser, WorldWideWeb, and commercialize it.
The Mosaic browser, shown in Figure 1-3, may be considered the first great commercial and
popular success. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina of the University of Illinois’ National Center for
Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) created and then heavily promoted this new commercially
available portable browser. Mosaic improved upon the open source code of the noncommercial
Web browser in a number of significant ways:
■ It was user-focused, being relatively easy to install and use.
■ It was cross-platform compatible with Unix and Apple (Macintosh).
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