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Twenty years ago today (13 October 1994), Mosaic Communications Corporation released the Mosaic Navigator, the first commercial browser for the World Wide Web. This was just six months after the company was founded by ex-Silicon Graphics CEO Jim Clark, and Marc Andreesen, a recent computer science graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Andreesen had co-developed the Mosaic Web browser while working for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), on UIUC's campus; Clark, who had been losing a power struggle at Silicon Graphics, the company he'd founded, was restless and looking for an adventure and revenge. Andreesen quickly convinced the band of programmers from UIUC he'd worked with on Mosaic and web server development, to relocate to Silicon Valley.
Both the company and the browser were re-branded 'Netscape' a month after the product was released, settling a lawsuit by the UIUC, who regarded Mosaic as intellectual property belonging to the university.
Andreessen and Netscape moved fast, even by the standards of the personal computing business at the time. After Microsoft entered the game (they jump started development by buying rights to a web browser created by Spyglass), Netscape pumped out Navigator 2.0 a little more than a year later, unveiling JavaScript, frames, cookies, plug-ins, SSL (2.0, the first released version), and integrated mail and news readers. Oh, and client-side integration with a mysterious new language called Java.
Bill Gates broadcast his famous "Internet Tidal Wave" memo to the troops at Microsoft in May 1995. Internet Explorer 1.0 was released in August 1995; future versions of IE were bundled with Windows 95, as Microsoft tried (rather successfully) to "cut off Netscape's air supply", as Microsoft Vice President Paul Maritz is alleged to have ranted at the time. Microsoft's actions against Netscape and numerous other competitors in the software industry became the subject of an antitrust suit brought by the US Department of Justice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday October 14 2014, @01:33PM
The blink tag could simply be ignored, in any and all cases, with no loss.
Javascript has enabled the building of entire so-called websites that in reality consist of nothing more or less than a program that must be downloaded new each time (giving the server endless opportunity for mischief - passed a line-by-line security audit last week? so what, we changed the code between then and now muahahahah.) This defeats the purpose of the web from the start - it's almost as if we never built a web in the first place, and we still stuck in the pre-web phase passing around programs - except most of the people involved cannot even cursorily examine the code before giving it control of their computer, and the technology is built to actively discourage doing that.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 14 2014, @01:57PM
*applause*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 14 2014, @02:48PM
One of the great advances in web design since the 90's is the inclusion of better typography so that one can use fonts that are not only attractive, but are easy to read and thus encourage the transfer of information. Before then, we were stuck with horrible looking sans-serif monospace fonts, which though they aid in writing computer code, are horrible fonts to use when you want someone to read your text. Fortunately, there is no longer a need for someone to use such a conversational impediment these days.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday October 14 2014, @05:08PM
I trust the irony of having to be different even if it's just annoying is not lost on you.
Like JavaScript, the tt tag has a purpose, but should only be used where there's good reason.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Tuesday October 14 2014, @09:38PM
I have half a mind to put a javascript bitcoin miner in the sites that I manage. I mean, if you're gonna let me do what I want when you don't need to, why shouldn't I?