Research Report: NCSA Mosaic

NCSA Mosaic was the first graphical web browser in history. It was created back in 1992 by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Mosaic's graphical nature and numerous innovations helped lay the foundation for future browsers, while also greatly enhancing the popularity of the Internet.

The NCSA is a research institute at the University of Illinois. In 1992, Mosaic was written by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, two students from the NCSA after they saw Tim Berners-Lee's creation via the ViolaWWW browser. Andreessen and Bina wanted to create a web browser that used a graphical user interface (GUI). With the funding and resources available at the NCSA, Andreessen said that creating a graphical Web client "would be an interesting thing to do,[and] we were in an environment where we were able to go do that." They created the first version for X-Windows on Unix computers in February 1993. A few months later, a version was made for the Macintosh. This made it the first browser to go cross platform as well. In 1994, NCSA gave the rights to Mosaic to Spyglass, Inc. It was then licensed by Spyglass to other companies, including Microsoft for later use in Internet Explorer. Development for Mosaic continued until 1997, when NCSA officially halted the development, announcing that they were going to move on to other projects.

This was the first graphical browser, and with each upgrade, it would gain many of the abilities we see in web browsers and html today, such as form support, bookmarks, history, sound, and nested tables. With these innovations, its user-friendly GUI, and its cross-platform availability, Mosaic became extremely popular and laid the foundation for future browsers. The creation of Mosaic also helped increase the popularity of the Internet as a whole.

Clearly, it is important to know the history of the modern browser. Mosaic is the foundation of these modern browsers. We directly see the effects of Mosaic's creation. Bookmarks, history, sound, text areas, forms, and of course, a user friendly GUI in browsers today all have their foundation in Mosaic. It is good to know the context of modern day software by looking at its origins, in order to fully appreciate how far things have developed. Without the graphical aspects of the internet, this class would be vastly different (if it would even exist.)

To be honest, I never even heard of Mosaic before researching it. I knew about the origins of the Internet and Arpanet, but that was the extent of my knowledge of Internet history. Reading about Mosaic makes me realize that browsers and the whole entire Internet experience would be completely different without graphical elements. It would definitely not be as revolutionary as it has been without the support of millions of people attracted to the net, thanks to graphical browsers like Mosaic.

"Mosaic Web Browser History - NCSA, Marc Andreessen, Eric Bina." Living Internet. http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_mosaic.htm (accressed January 31, 2006).

"Mosaic (web browser)." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_web_browser (accessed January 31, 2006).

NCSA. http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ (accessed January 31, 2006).

NCSA Mosaic Logo Sightings. http://magliery.com/MosaicLogo (accessed January 31, 2006)

Stark, Thom. "The Marc Andreessen Interview Page." The Thom Stark Pages. http://users.rcn.com/thomst/marca.html (accessed January 31, 2006).

Wilson, Brian."Browser History: Mosaic." Index DOT Html: THE Advanced HTML Reference. http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/mosaic.htm (accessed January 31, 2006).