Hackers resurrect NCSA Mosaic
The NCSA Mosaic browser was the first graphical web browser ever released - and now you can take a trip back in time.
The source code for NCSA Mosaic 2.7 - Marc Andreessen's browser which became the basis for Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, and would eventually become Mozilla Firefox - has been uploaded to source-code sharing site GitHub by user Alan Dipert.
Linux users capable of compiling programs from source are free to download the package and learn just what the early days of the web looked like circa 1993.
According to Webmonkey, the package runs surprisingly well on modern Linux systems, and the few niggles that exist - such as poor support for PNG format graphics - are busily being patched out by GitHub community members.
The Mosaic browser is the precursor to most modern graphical web browsers, and a piece of history. While being able to run it on your modern system might not have any practical purpose, it's an exercise in digital archeology for anyone interested in the birth of the web as we know it today.
Just don't try doing your Internet banking on it.
Are you impressed by the efforts made to port the Mosaic brower, or could the coders behind the project have found something better to do with their time? What browser did you use when you first got on to the web? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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32 Comments
Discuss in the forums Replybut i remember seeing this being used by teachers and "older" ppl.
Bah! Real users used Lynx :p
Its called firefox;)
Basically netscape founded mozilla, open sourced rendering engine and few other bits and bobs, and firefox was born, with seamonkey being closest to what navigator used to be
more detailed explanation.. http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009698.html
This would have been around the time that the internet was charged by the minute, right: Oh God. The phone bills!
My first PC browser was Netscape. I used to love the little icon when it was searching :)
Good memories.
Yeah those porn pictures just took forever to fully download and they were just stills. Thank god the porn industry got of it's bare ass and enhanced our porn to the high standard it is today. The internet has nothing to do with Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft. It was the porn industry that drove the quality to such a high standard more than any of the big companies claiming ownership of the internet today.
Why would anyone want to download and run this dinosaur?
No pop ups.
You could reliably search for something, and actually find it quickly. there weren't 10 billion pages to search thru...;)
antivirus's didn't exist. Virii hadn't really been written yet....
Oh the old days....
good thing i was introduced to computers on the xp era
got introduced to torrents a year later
good times :)
Obviously you weren't looking in the right places because there was loads of it.
+1
+2
im 19 :|
ive seen the horror of win95 but the n64 saved me and gave me hope for the future
yup indeed young whippersnapper.
Isn't it a crying shame when three little words slice you like a hammer!