NCSA Mosaic

This article is about the browser produced by NCSA. For the browser that was later renamed, seeNetscape Navigator.

NCSA Mosaic

NCSA Mosaic 1.2 for Unix
Original author(s)	Marc Andreessen Eric Bina
Developer(s)	NCSA
Initial release	0.5 / January 23, 1993(1993-01-23)
Final release	3.0 / 7 January 1997(7 January 1997)
Written in	C
Platform	AmigaOS Classic Mac OS Unix OpenVMS OS/2 Microsoft Windows
Available in	English
Type	Web browser
License	Proprietary
Website	www.ncsa.illinois.edu/enabling/mosaic

NCSA Mosaicwas among the first widely availableweb browsers,instrumental in popularizing theWorld Wide Weband the generalInternetby integratingmultimediasuch as text and graphics.Mosaic was the first browser to display images inline with text (instead of a separate window).

Named for supporting multipleInternet protocols,includingHypertext Transfer Protocol,File Transfer Protocol,Network News Transfer Protocol,andGopher,its intuitive interface, reliability, personal computer support, and simple installation all contributed to Mosaic's initial popularity.Mistakenly described as the first graphical web browser, it was preceded byWorldWideWeb,the lesser-knownErwise,andViolaWWW.

Mosaic was developed at theNational Center for Supercomputing Applications(NCSA)at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaignbeginning in late 1992, released in January 1993,with official development and support until January 1997.Mosaic lost market share toNetscape Navigatorin late 1994,and had only a tiny fraction of users left by 1997, when the project was discontinued. Microsoft licensed one of the derivative commercial products, Spyglass Mosaic, to createInternet Explorerin 1995.

History

Mosaic 1.0 running underSystem 7.1, displaying the Mosaic Communications Corporation (laterNetscape) website

In December 1991, theHigh Performance Computing Act of 1991was passed, which provided funding for new projects at the NCSA, where after tryingViolaWWW,David Thompson demonstrated it to the NCSA software design group.This inspiredMarc AndreessenandEric Bina– two programmers working at NCSA – to create Mosaic. Andreessen and Bina began developing Mosaic in December 1992 for Unix'sX Window System,calling itxmosaic.Marc Andreessen announced the project's first release, the "Alpha /beta version 0.5," on January 23, 1993.Version 1.0 was released on April 21, 1993.Ports to Microsoft Windows andMacintoshwere released in September.Aport of Mosaicto theAmigawas available by October 1993. NCSA Mosaic for Unix (X Window System) version 2.0 was released on November 10, 1993and was notable for adding support forforms,thus enabling the creation of the firstdynamic web pages.From 1994 to 1997, theNational Science Foundationsupported the further development of Mosaic.

Marc Andreessen, the leader of the team that developed Mosaic, left NCSA and, withJames H. Clark,one of the founders ofSilicon Graphics, Inc.(SGI), and four other former students and staff of theUniversity of Illinois,started Mosaic Communications Corporation. Mosaic Communications eventually becameNetscape Communications Corporation,producingNetscape Navigator.Mosaic's popularity as a separate browser began to decrease after the 1994 release ofNetscape Navigator,the relevance of which was noted inThe HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML:"Netscape Communications has designed an all-new WWW browser Netscape, that has significant enhancements over the original Mosaic program."

In 1994,SCOreleased Global Access, a modified version ofSCO's Open Desktop Unix,which became the first commercial product to incorporate Mosaic.However, by 1998, the Mosaic user base had almost completely evaporated as users moved to other web browsers.

Licensing

The licensing terms for NCSA Mosaic were generous for a proprietary software program. In general, non-commercial use was free of charge for all versions (with certain limitations). Additionally, the X Window System/Unix version publicly providedsource code(source code for the other versions was available after agreements were signed). Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, however, Mosaic was never released asopen source softwareduring its brief reign as a major browser; there were always constraints on permissible uses without payment.

As of 1993,license holders included these:

• Amdahl Corporation
• Fujitsu Limited (Product: Infomosaic, a Japanese version of Mosaic. Price: Yen5,000 (approx US$50)
• InfoseekCorporation (Product: No commercial Mosaic. May use Mosaic as part of a commercial database effort)
• Quadralay Corporation (Consumer version of Mosaic. Also using Mosaic in its online help and information product, GWHIS. Price: US$249)
• Quarterdeck Office SystemsInc.
• The Santa Cruz OperationInc. (Product: Incorporating Mosaic into "SCO Global Access", a communications package for Unix machines that works with SCO's Open Server. Runs a graphical e-mail service and accesses newsgroups.)
• SPRY Inc. (Products: A communication suite: Air Mail, Air News, Air Mosaic, etc. Also producing Internet In a Box with O'Reilly & Associates. Price: US$149–$399 for Air Series.)
• Spyglass, Inc.(Product: Spyglass Mosaic, essentially licensing the Mosaic name, as it was written from scratch not using NCSA's Mosaic code.Relicensing to other vendors. Signed deal with Digital Equipment Corp. to ship Mosaic with all its machines. Signed a deal with Microsoft to license Spyglass' code to develop Internet Explorer)

Features

Robert Reid notes that Andreessen's team hoped:

... to rectify many of the shortcomings of the very primitive prototypes then floating around the Internet. Most significantly, their work transformed the appeal of the Web from niche uses in the technical area to mass-market appeal. In particular, these University of Illinois students made two key changes to the Web browser, which hyper-boosted its appeal: they added graphics to what was otherwise boring text-based software, and, most importantly, they ported the software from so-calledUnixcomputers that are popular only in technical and academic circles, to the [Microsoft] Windows operating system, which is used on more than 80 percent of the computers in the world, especially personal and commercial computers.

Mosaic is based on thelibwwwlibraryand thus supported a wide variety ofInternet protocolsincluded in the library:Archie,FTP,gopher,HTTP,NNTP,telnet,WAIS.

Mosaic is not the first web browser for Microsoft Windows; this isThomas R. Bruce's little-knownCello.The Unix version of Mosaic was already famous before the Microsoft Windows, Amiga, and Mac versions were released. Other than displaying images embedded in the text (rather than in a separate window), Mosaic's original feature set is similar to the browsers on which it was modeled, such as ViolaWWW.But Mosaic was the first browser written and supported by a team of full-time programmers, was reliable and easy enough for novices to install, and the inline graphics proved immensely appealing. Mosaic is said to have made the Internet accessible to the ordinary person.

Mosaic was the first browser to explore the concept ofcollaborative annotationin 1993but never passed the test state.

Mosaic was the first browser that could submitformsto a server.

Impact

Mosaic led to theInternet boomof the 1990s.Other browsers existed during this period, such asErwise,ViolaWWW,MidasWWW,andtkWWW,but did not have the same effect as Mosaic on public use of the Internet.

In the October 1994 issue ofWiredmagazine, Gary Wolfe notes in the article titled "The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don't look now, butProdigy,AOL,andCompuServeare all suddenly obsolete – and Mosaic is well on its way to becoming the world's standard interface ":

When it comes to smashing a paradigm, pleasure is not the most important thing. It is the only thing. If this sounds wrong, consider Mosaic. Mosaic is the celebrated graphical "browser" that allows users to travel through the world of electronic information using a point-and-click interface. Mosaic's charming appearance encourages users to load their own documents onto the Net, including color photos, sound bites, video clips, and hypertext "links" to other documents. By following the links – click, and the linked document appears – you can travel through the online world along paths of whim and intuition. Mosaic is not the most direct way to find online information. Nor is it the most powerful. It is merely the most pleasurable way, and in the 18 months since it was released, Mosaic has incited a rush of excitement and commercial energy unprecedented in the history of the Net.

Reid also refers to Matthew K. Gray's website,Internet Statistics: Growth and Usage of the Web and the Internet,which indicates a dramatic leap in web use around the time of Mosaic's introduction.

David Hudson concurs with Reid:

Marc Andreessen's realization of Mosaic, based on the work ofBerners-Leeand the hypertext theorists before him, is generally recognized as the beginning of the web as it is now known. Mosaic, the first web browser to win over the Net masses, was released in 1993 and made freely accessible to the public. The adjective phenomenal, so often overused in this industry, is genuinely applicable to the... 'explosion' in the growth of the web after Mosaic appeared on the scene. Starting with next to nothing, the rates of the web growth (quoted in the press) hovering around tens of thousands of percent over ridiculously short periods of time were no real surprise.

Ultimately, web browsers such as Mosaic became thekiller applicationsof the 1990s. Web browsers were the first to bring a graphical interface to search tools the Internet's burgeoning wealth of distributed information services. A mid-1994 guide lists Mosaic alongside the traditional, text-oriented information search tools of the time,ArchieandVeronica,Gopher,andWAISbut Mosaic quickly subsumed and displaced them all. Joseph Hardin, the director of the NCSA group within which Mosaic was developed, said downloads were up to 50,000 a month in mid-1994.

In November 1992, there were twenty-six websites in the worldand each one attracted attention. In its release year of 1993, Mosaic had a What's New page, and about one new link was being added per day. This was a time when access to the Internet was expanding rapidly outside its previous domain of academia and large industrial research institutions. Yet it was the availability of Mosaic and Mosaic-derived graphical browsers themselves that drove the explosive growth of the Web to over 10,000 sites by August 1995 and millions by 1998.Metcalfe expressed the pivotal role of Mosaic this way:

In the Web's first generation, Tim Berners-Lee launched the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and HTML standards with prototype Unix-based servers and browsers. A few people noticed that the Web might be better than Gopher.

In the second generation, Marc Andreessen andEric Binadeveloped NCSA Mosaic at the University of Illinois. Several million then suddenly noticed that the Web might be better than sex.

In the third generation, Andreessen and Bina left NCSA to found Netscape...

— Bob Metcalfe

Legacy

Netscape Navigatorwas later developed byNetscape,which employed many of the original Mosaic authors; however, it intentionally shared no code with Mosaic. Netscape Navigator's code descendant isMozilla Firefox.

Spyglass, Inc.licensed the technology and trademarks from NCSA for producing its own web browser but never used any of the NCSA Mosaic source code.Microsoftlicensed Spyglass Mosaic in 1995 forUS$2 million, modified it, and renamed itInternet Explorer.After a later auditing dispute, Microsoft paid Spyglass $8 million.The 1995 user guideThe HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML,specifically states, in a section calledComing Attractions,that Internet Explorer "will be based on the Mosaic program".Versions of Internet Explorer beforeversion 7stated "Based on NCSA Mosaic" in the About box. Internet Explorer 7 was audited by Microsoft to ensure that it contained no Spyglass Mosaic code,and thus no longer credits Spyglass or Mosaic.

After NCSA stopped work on Mosaic, development of the NCSA Mosaic for the X Window System source code was continued by several independent groups. These independent development efforts include mMosaic (multicast Mosaic)which ceased development in early 2004, and Mosaic-CK and VMS Mosaic.

VMS Mosaic,a version specifically targetingOpenVMSoperating system, is one of the longest-lived efforts to maintain Mosaic. Using the VMS support already built-in in original version (Bjorn S. Nilsson ported Mosaic 1.2 to VMS in the summer of 1993),developers incorporated a substantial part of the HTML engine from mMosaic, another defunct flavor of the browser.As of the most recent version (4.2), released in 2007, VMS Mosaic supportedHTML4.0,OpenSSL,cookies,and various image formats includingGIF,JPEG,PNG,BMP,TGA,TIFFandJPEG 2000image formats.The browser works onVAX,Alpha,andItaniumplatforms.

Another long-lived version,Mosaic-CK,developed by Cameron Kaiser, was last released (version 2.7ck9) on July 11, 2010; a maintenance release with minor compatibility fixes (version 2.7ck10) was released on January 9, 2015, followed by another one (2.7ck11) in October 2015.The stated goal of the project is "Lynxwith graphics "and runs on Mac OS X, PowerMachTen,Linuxand other compatible Unix-likeOSs.

Release history

The X, Windows, and Mac versions of Mosaic all had separate development teams and code bases.

Key:

Internal Build

Pre-release

Stable release

NCSA Mosaic for X

Series	Version	Release date	Notes & Features	Supported Platforms
0.x	0.1	Dec, 1992	Browse plaintext and HTML documents, Gopher servers, anonymous FTP servers, and local files; HTTP/0.9
	0.2		Fixed fatal bug in 0.1
	0.3		Support for NCSA's DTM (broadcasts documents to real-time networked workgroup collaboration sessions)
	0.4
	0.5	Jan 23, 1993	Initial public release (asNCSA X Mosaic). Save/mail/print; History list; On-the-fly font selection; Hotlist	SGI (IRIX4.0.2) IBM (AIX3.2) Sun 4(SunOS4.1.2)
	0.6	Jan 31, 1993	Different colors for visited links; Specify a start page
	0.7	Feb 11, 1993	Links are now underlined; Able to mouse-select each character of text on a web page; Annotations; Program logo in top-right corner (predecessor tothrobber)	All Above + DECUltrix
	0.8	Feb 14, 1993
	0.9	Mar 4, 1993	Audio annotations (SGI only); Product name changed toNCSA Mosaic for the X Window System
	0.10	Mar 14, 1993	Introduced<IMG>tag: inlined images (GIF &XBM) in HTML documents; Find in page
	0.11	Mar 17, 1993
	0.12	Apr 5, 1993	Support for<OL>,<TT>,<B>,<I>,<EM>,<STRONG>,<CODE>,<SAMP>,<KBD>,<VAR>	All Above + SCO Open Desktop HarrisNighthawk
	0.13	Apr 12, 1993
1.x	1.0	Apr 21, 1993		All Above + Solaris2.x DEC Alpha(OSF/1) DellSVR4 HP/UX7.x, 8.x, 9.x NeXT BSD
	1.1-pre1	May 31, 1993
	1.1-pre2	Jun 2, 1993
	1.1	Jun 4, 1993	Image mapsupport; Print/save toPostScript;Support for<CITE>and<BLOCKQUOTE>;Support for group annotation servers
	1.2	Jun 30, 1993	Support for file://localhost/ scheme for accessing local files; Many bug fixes and under-hood improvements
2.x	2.0-pre0	Jul 21, 1993	Displays the URL when mouse hovers over a link; "Search Keyword" area removed from bottom (moved to menu dialog box)
	2.0-pre1	Aug 2, 1993
	2.0-pre2	Aug 10, 1993	Reload button now also reloads images
	2.0-pre3	Sep 5, 1993	Support forforms;Support for<BR>,<HR>,<STRIKE>;HTTP/1.0 compliant
	2.0-pre4	Sep 29, 1993	Can stop page loading;<IMG ALIGN>attribute support
	2.0-pre5	Oct 10, 1993	FormINPUTtypes ofRADIO,PASSWORD,OPTIONadded; Program logo becomes a throbber (now animates during page loads)
	2.0-pre6	Oct 20, 1993
	2.0-pre7	Nov 2, 1993
	2.0-pre8	Nov 7, 1993	New colorful spinning globe throbber
	2.0	Nov 10, 1993		SunOS 4.1.3 Solaris 2.3 AIX 3.2.4 with X11R5 IRIX 4.x DEC Alpha (OSF/1) DEC Ultrix HP/UX 9.x (700 Series)
	2.1	Dec 11, 1993
	2.2	Feb 9, 1994		All from 2.1 + IRIX 5.1.x
	2.3	Apr 8, 1994
	2.4	Apr 11, 1994	Fixes a major bug with forms introduced in 2.3; Last widely used release ofNCSA Mosaic for X
	2.5 Alpha 1	Sep 22, 1994	Limited support for tables; Kiosk Mode; Nested Hotlists; Common Client Interface (CCI) API	SunOS 4.1.3 Solaris 2.3 AIX 3.2.4 IRIX 4.0.x and 5.x DEC Alpha (OSF/1 1.3 and 3.0) DEC Ultrix 4.x HP/UX 7.x, 8.x, 9.x Linux 1.1.94
	2.5 beta 1		Support for<SUP>and<SUB>
	2.5 beta 2	Oct 11, 1994	Removed the word "Document" from the Title and URL fields
	2.5 beta 3	Dec 22, 1994	Support for<U>(underline)
	2.5 beta 4
	2.5 beta 5	Mar 4, 1995
	2.5	Mar 12, 1995
	2.6 Alpha 1		Inline JPEGs; Can now enter URLs directly into theaddress barand press return to load them; Support formailto:links	All from 2.5 + Solaris 2.4
	2.6 Alpha 2
	2.6 beta 1	Apr 6, 1995
	2.6 beta 2	May 20, 1995
	2.6 beta 3
	2.6	Jul 6, 1995	Official "final" release
	2.7 beta 1	Jul 27, 1995	Inline PNGs; Support forSSL(MD5&Kerberos4/5); Security Icon in lower-left corner of window;Keepaliveconnections	SunOS 4.1.3 Solaris 2.3 and 2.4 AIX 4.4 IRIX 4.0.x and 5.x DEC Alpha (OSF/1 1.3 and 3.0) DEC Ultrix 4.x HP/UX 7.x, 8.x, 9.x Linux 1.2.13 BSD/OS 2.1
	2.7 beta 2	Oct 19, 1995	Document title moved to window Title Bar; Load progress bar in lower-right corner of window
	2.7 beta 3	Feb 26, 1996	Background colors; Can enter URLs without http:// prefix; Detachable Toolbar; Contextual right-click menus; Support forborderattribute for linked images;action=mailtosupport in forms;Splash screen;Customizable Throbber; New application icons
	2.7 beta 4	Mar 30, 1996	Background Images; Cleaned up and colorized toolbar icons; User Agent spoofing
	2.7 beta 5	Jul 18, 1996	Printing in Kiosk Mode	All from 2.7b4 + SCO System V 3.2
	2.8 Alpha 1	Aug 20, 1996	A complete re-write code named "Project: Hyperion": Supports HTML 3.2; Options for loose or strict HTML parsing; Style sheets
	2.8 Alpha 2	Sep 10, 1996
	2.8 Alpha 3	Nov 14, 1996

NCSA Mosaic for Windows

Series	Version	Release date	Notes & Features
0.x	0.1a	Jun, 1993	Support for inline GIFs; Support for.au sound files;Optional status bar to display hyperlink destinations; Customizable font selection
	0.2a		Local file support; User-configurable Hotlist
	0.3a		Support for inline XBMs; Option to set a start page; Support forAIFFsound files
	0.4a		Support for<BR>,<B>,and<I>
	0.5a	Sep 16, 1993	Find in page; Image caching; Much faster scrolling; Hyperlinks to anchors within a document; Standard file dialog to open files on local disk; Drag and Drop local files into browser
	0.6b	Sep 28, 1993	Image map support; Support for<HR>;Scrolling via keys
	0.7b	Oct 17,1993	Document caching; HTTP/1.0 compliant
1.x	1.0	Nov 11, 1993	Can stop page loading; Images can now be aligned middle, top, or bottom; Better looking horizontal rules
2.x	2.0 Alpha 1	Jan 31, 1994	Support for forms; Inlined image caching across pages
	2.0 Alpha 2	Feb 28, 1994	New Hotlist/Menu UI; DNS caching; Faster GIF decoding; Support for formINPUTtypeHIDDEN
	2.0 Alpha 3	Apr 6, 1994	Application is now 32-bit; Can now print documents; Viewing and saving document source; Support for<EM>and<STRONG>;Horizontal scrollbars for documents wider than the screen
	2.0 Alpha 4	Apr 14, 1994
	2.0 Alpha 5	Jun 24, 1994	Can now enter URLs directly into the address bar and press return to load them; Colorized toolbar icons; XBM images decode 100 times faster
	2.0 Alpha 6	Jul 27, 1994	"Document Title:" bar removed (document title moved to window Title Bar), "Document URL:" caption shortened to just "URL:" for address bar; Smaller Throbber; Links are now underlined; Kiosk Mode; Speed improvements; Memory issue fixes
	2.0 Alpha 7	Sep 7, 1994	Throbber changes size relative to how many toolbars are shown; Mouse-over tooltips added
	2.0 Alpha 8	Dec 20, 1994	Support for tables; Support for<U>,<S>/<STRIKE>,<SUP>/<SUPER>,<SUB>;Support for transparent GIFs; No longer crashes when encountering bad HTML; Refined Throbber graphics (wires)
	2.0 Alpha 9	Jan 25, 1995	Cancel and Check buttons added next to address bar; Presentation mode; Right-click menu options; Support formailto:links
	2.0.0 beta 1	Mar 13, 1995	Inline JPEGs; Support forALTinformation inIMGtags; Can now tab from one form field to another; Hotlist Manager; Splash screen; +/- keys to change font sizes;
	2.0.0 beta 2	Mar 23, 1995	Support for multiplemailto:
	2.0.0 beta 3	Mar 28, 1995	256 character URL limit fixed
	2.0.0 beta 4	Apr 6, 1995	Global History; New HTML 3.0 tag attributes; URL bar is now also a list box
	2.0.0 final beta	Jul 12, 1995	Speed and printing improvements
	2.0.0	Oct 11, 1995	Discrete Stop Button in toolbar; Collaborative Sessions; Advanced Hotlist Manager; Internal support for.wavsound files; Internal.au support removed; Printing improvements
	2.1.0	Mar 14, 1996	Support for client-side image maps; Support for KodakPhoto CD(.pcd) image format
	2.1.1	Mar 25, 1996	Fixed inline JPEGs not working with inline Kodak Photo CD images
3.x	3.0	Jan 7, 1997	Final Release

NCSA Mosaic for Macintosh

Series	Version	Release date	Notes & Features
1.x	1.0	Nov 10, 1993	Background color is white by default (differing from X and Windows versions)
	1.0.1	Nov 29, 1993
	1.0.2	Dec 17, 1993
	1.0.3	Jan 27, 1994	Fixed serious crashes; Improved speed
2.x	2.0 Alpha 1	Jun 10, 1994	Support for forms and tables; Users can now enter URLs directly into the address bar and press return to load them (URL bar is hidden by default); Background color is now gray by default (like X and Windows versions); Support for<S>,<SUP>,<SUB>;Reload button; New Hotlist interface
	2.0 Alpha 2	Jun 21, 1994
	2.0 Alpha 3	Jul 12, 1994
	2.0 Alpha 6	Jul 26, 1994
	2.0 Alpha 8	Sep 16, 1994
	2.0 Alpha 17	Nov 14, 1994
	2.0 beta 1	Mar 6, 1995	Inline JPEGs; Support formailto:links
	2.0 beta 2
	2.0 beta 3	Mar 15, 1995
	2.0 beta 4
	2.0 beta 5	Apr 6, 1995
	2.0 beta 6		HTML Parser is much faster; Throbber globe wires now display moving arrows and yellow ball proportional to percent of page loaded; Support for<CENTER>,<BIG>,<SMALL>,andIMGtagALIGN=LEFT/RIGHTattributes
	2.0 beta 7	Apr 27, 1995
	2.0 beta 8		Support for<P ALIGN>;Image alignment improvements
	2.0 beta 9	May 5, 1995
	2.0 beta 10
	2.0 beta 11
	2.0 beta 12	Jun 1, 1995
	2.0 beta 13		Support for background images
	2.0 beta 14
	2.0.0
	2.0.1	Sep 28, 1995	Fixed some table rendering bugs
3.x	3.0.0 beta 1	Apr 15, 1996
	3.0.0 beta 2	Apr 25, 1996
	3.0.0 beta 3	Jul 30, 1996
	3.0.0 beta 4	Sep 12, 1996
	3.0	Jan 7, 1997	Final Release - Nested tables; Removed frames support that was present in 3.0.0 betas

See also

• History of the World Wide Web
• History of the web browser
• Comparison of web browsers
• List of web browsers
• Usage share of web browsers

Further reading

• Tikka, Juha-Pekka (March 3, 2009)."The Greatest Internet Pioneers You Never Heard Of: The Story of Erwise and Four Finns Who Showed the Way to the Web Browser".Xconomy.

External links

• Official website
• Goldberg, Ken (1994).Beyond the web: Excavating the real world via mosaic.Second International WWW Conference.CiteSeerX10.1.1.299.6262.
• Kaiser, Cameron (2015-10-24)."Mosaic-CK: An Updated, Unsupported Port of NCSA Mosaic".
• "Mosaic archive at browsers.evolt.org".browsers.evolt.org.Retrieved2019-09-29.