Datasheet
Crowder c01.tex V3 - 05/26/2008 7:16pm Page 8
Part I Laying the Foundation
Other browsers were also being rapidly developed by other academic or government institutions,
using different operating systems and using different ways of developing and executing what was
evolving as the standard core of browser features:
■ Fetching
■ Decoding
■ Faithfully rendering Web pages, history, and bookmarks
■ Cross-platform compatibilities
■ Scripts
■ Embedded objects
■ Interactive forms
For more in-depth information on various browsers, see the support tables at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison of web browsers.
These days, the search for the best (the fastest, most secure, and most feature-rich) browser con-
tinues, and some of the newer players (upon close inspection) seem eerily familiar. For example,
Firefox (2004) from Mozilla (see Figure 1-4) is actually a direct descendant of open source
Netscape (2002) — known an even earlier time as Mosaic.
FIGURE 1-4
The Mozilla browser is a descendant of Netscape.
8