Web Browsers

The runaway success of the WWW and browsers like Mosaic and Netscape is attributable to many interwoven factors, such as the essential simplicity of the "hypertext transfer protocol" (HTML), the client-server paradigm, and the supporting infrastrucure of the Internet.

But the most obvious reason for this success is that these browsers introduced many innovations that hid the arcana of the UNIX-flavored Internet under intuitive and attractive point-and- click graphical user interfaces. The rich resources distributed around the Internet became instantly available to all, computer geek or not, at the click of a mouse button.

The basic paradigm exploited is "hypermedia" - multimedia capabilities such as graphics, sound, and movies, linked in a World Wide Web of hypertext. The text can be formatted in various fonts, styles, colors and sizes.

Pages can contain pictures, sounds, and movies (multimedia). The technology has been developing at a breath-taking pace, and enables server-side programming with CGI, or client-side programming with Java, and browser plugins, for Shockwave, etc.

World Wide Web pages were previously limited to text and static graphics. Small sound and video files had to be downloaded and played with "helper" applications.

Helper applications are those programs called upon by the browser to display those content types that it cannot handle internally. When the server informs the browser of the MIME content type of the following object, the browser consults its internal tables to see if the MIME type is known to it. If so, it either displays the object inside the browser window, or it invokes the helper application to handle the object.

Essentially, a plug-in is a helper application that runs within the browser. Netscape plug-ins work in the same way as helper applications, but are much more tightly integrated into the browser software itself. Instead of say, invoking the Microsoft audio-visual player to handle .avi movie files, the browser could call a plug-in internally to play the movie directly within the browser window. The plug-ins themselves are software modules that can directly control the browser, but will not run as stand-alone applications.

Amaya
Amaya is a Web client that acts both as a browser and as an authoring tool. It has been designed with the primary purpose of being a testbed for experimenting and demonstrating new specifications and extensions of Web protocols and standards. Its main features include WYSIWYG editing for HTML documents including MathML elements, access to remote documents and publishing on HTTP servers, support and editing for Cascading Style Sheets (CCS).

Emacs World Wide Web Browser
Emacs/W3 is a full-featured web browser, written entirely in Emacs-Lisp, that supports all the bells and whistles you will find in use on the web today, including frames, tables, stylesheets, and much more. Emacs/W3 runs on most major operating systems, including almost any flavor of Unix, Windows NT/95, AmigaDOS, OS/2, and VMS.

Enigma
The Enigma Browser is a small, efficient, alternative browser for the Internet community. The software philosophy behind the Enigma Project was to adhere to tight efficient code, that would allow for a maximum of user customization.

Galeon
Galeon is a GNOME Web browser based on gecko (the mozilla rendering engine). It's fast, it has a light interface, and it is fully standards-compliant.

HotJava
HotJava Browser provides a highly-customizable modular solution for creating and deploying Web-enabled applications across a wide array of environments and devices. It is a perfect fit for enterprises looking to deploy network computers such as the JavaStation. HotJava Browser is also a "modern" browser for the Java platform that offers HTML capabilities comparable with Netscape Navigator 3.0. Where Navigator is perfect for viewing all content types from simple text to rich interactive media from anywhere on the Web, HotJava Browser is more suited for portal providers who are looking at a single client for supporting multiple platforms.

Konqueror
Konqueror is the successor of kfm, the file manager and Web browser in KDE 1.x. After undergoing major rewrites and improvements, it is now much more advanced than kfm, and it represents already a solid competitor to other existing Web browsers on Unix systems.

Lynx
Lynx is a fully-featured World Wide Web browser for users on Unix, VMS, and other platforms running cursor-addressable, character-cell terminals or emulators. That includes VT100 terminals, other character-cell displays, and VT100 emulators such as Kermit or Procomm running on PCs or Macs.

Microsoft Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer is built on innovative, standards-based technologies such as Dynamic HTML and the Channel Definition Format (CDF), making it the premier platform for creating fast, engaging, and interactive Web content for your customers.

mozilla.org
Mozilla is an open-source Web browser, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability. The development and testing of the browser is coordinated by providing discussion forums, software engineering tools, releases and bug tracking.

NCSA Mosaic Home Page
NCSA Mosaic is an Internet information browser and World Wide Web client. It was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. It was the catalyst for the explosive growth of the World Wide Web. It is no longer being developed, but is still available for general use.

Netscape
Netscape is one of the original Web browsers. This is what Microsoft designed Internet Explorer to compete against. Netscape and IE comprise the major portion of the browser market. Listed here are several versions - some fully loaded.

Opera
Opera is smaller and faster than most other browsers, yet it is full- featured. Fast, user-friendly, with keyboard interface, multiple windows, zoom functions, and more. Java and non Java-enabled versions available. Ideal for newcomers to the Internet, school children, handicap and as a front-end for CD-Rom and kiosks.

The Library: Browsers
Many more references to browsers.