The document discusses six web browsers that significantly impacted the way users access the internet. It covers the evolution from the first browser, Worldwideweb, developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, through to modern browsers like Google Chrome launched in 2008. Each browser contributed to shaping the web experience, demonstrating shifts in functionality and user preferences over time.

1. Six browsers that changed the
world (wide web)
The web browser has become our window into the World Wide Web. Here are five
web browsers that change the way we access the information superhighway.
By Jeff Jedras
Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

2. WorldWideWeb (Nexus)
Later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion, WorldWideWeb was the first web
browser and editor. It was written by Internet pioneer Tim Breners-Lee at CERN in
1990. Other proposed names? The Mine of Information and The Information
Mesh.

3. Mosaic
Developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in 1993,
Mosaic brought the web out of university labs to the wider nerdy masses. The first
truly graphical browser, it ran on Windows, as well as Unix, Amiga and Macintosh.

4. Netscape Navigator
Launched in 1994, Netscape was the dominant web browser of the mid to late-
1990s. While Microsoft would muscle it out of the market with Internet Explorer
using its Windows dominance, its codebase helped to birth Mozilla Firefox.

5. Microsoft Internet Explorer
While Microsoft first launched Internet Explorer in 1995, it was IE 3.0 in 1996 that
arguably cemented the browser’s dominance, adding support for CSS, ActiveX,
Java applets and inline media. At its peak in 2003, IE had 95 per cent of the
browsing market.

6. Mozilla Firefox
For those using IE only out of necessity after the death of Netscape, the launch of
Firefox by Mozilla in 2002 was a revelation. It was more lightweight, had cool
features like integrated search and tabbed browsing, and wasn’t foisted on us by
Redmond.

7. Google Chrome
And when Firefox became too bloated and clunky for some, in 2008 Google gave us
Chrome. It’s minimalist, it’s smooth, and we can take our bookmarks with us from
computer to computer. They really should have called it Platinum.