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Timeline of Web Browsers - from Mosaic to IE, Firefox, Opera...

upload.wikimedia.org — Title says all.

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  • dragonlink2, on 10/11/2007, -9/+76Maybe there is something I am missing, but why did Opera start at version 2?
  • tnatharik, on 10/11/2007, -8/+34Is it just me or my stupid laptop doesn't support .svg?
    • Sarawanan, on 10/11/2007, -2/+30May be your browser (ironically). Try using FireFox if you already are using something else.
    • capecodcarl, on 10/11/2007, -8/+15Safari doesn't support SVG at all and Firefox has problems displaying it, at least on Macs. I can see the lines, but when I scroll down the text washes away. Why do people use these oddball formats instead of JPEG?
      • cbfreder, on 10/11/2007, -11/+1What the ***** are you talking about? My safari has no problems.
      • resplence, on 10/11/2007, -0/+18"Why do people use these oddball formats instead of JPEG?"

        Yeah, why do people use these oddball screwdrivers instead of hammers? Perhaps because they serve different purposes.

        If there's anything I learned about posting a question or rant on the internet is: you gotta do a little research first. With Wikipedia, you don't even have to search so hard:

        "Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML markup language for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and animated, and either declarative or scripted. Images can contain hyperlinks using outbound simple XLinks."

        ...nahh I think I'll stick to JPEG at all cases.
        • ignorantcow, on 10/11/2007, -10/+2Anything that isn't widely adopted is still oddball. Hammers and screwdrivers are widely used. SVG isn't. Therefore, you fail. :D
        • Spr0k3t, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Would you rather EPS or Windows Meta format?
          • Optimaximal, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Is there even a plugin for Microsoft Publisher?
    • informality, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9I tried viewing this on my MacBook:

      Safari 3 Beta (my current default browser) messes it up almost completely
      Firefox 2.0.0.4 has a disappearing text problem
      Camino 1.5, as might be expected, has the same problem as Firefox
      Opera 9 renders it beautifully.

      Weird.
      • HesNikke, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6my Safari 3 beta running the latest nightly of showed the svg just fine. scrolling was weird though... i had to hold the option to get a hand tool and be able to drag it around.
      • tensvb, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Not weird at all. Opera has the best SVG support of all browsers.
        http://www.codedread.com/svg-support.php
      • allywilson, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4@informality

        Exact same setup as you - exact same result. Well done to opera!
    • Complexium, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Opera has indeed the best SVG support - no doubt.
    • rpgmaker, on 10/11/2007, -8/+1You are a stupid using a laptop.
    • Xenogis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2im on a macbook using firefox. it is fine
      people use svg instead of say jpg because it can scale to (almost) any size without losing any quality
    • DOGPARTY, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1SVG? ***** Vector Graphics
  • rhabd0mancer, on 10/11/2007, -4/+20Ah, good ol' NCSA Mosaic.

    Before that came along, I used a gopher client to surf the internets.
    • Xeth, on 10/11/2007, -15/+2gopher =/= the internets, its a wholly different protocol than http
      • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10The internets == everything from IP down.
        Gopher therefore is ON the Internet.

        Now, if you would have said "The Web" or "HTTP"...
      • miguelandres, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0It's amazing how people comment having no idea what they0're talking about
    • TokenUser, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6I was going to say someting similar. Using gopher to access the WAIS. In conjunction with FTP, Usenet, and Pine ... it was plenty for a 1200 baud modem to handle (I still have some porn sitting on 5.25" floppy discs obtained this way back in 1990? 91??). Then came Lynx ... and that was the beginning of the end.
      • br0ther, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Come on! Put the files on the tubes now, we needs them!
    • DaveMode, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6I remember using Lynx as a freshman in college. When Mosaic came out I couldn't believe my eyes :) Then someone told me Netscape was beter, and so on, etc.
      • Pardus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Ahh..Lynx. I remember it fondly. Actually I used it almost up to 2004 for testing.
    • Haplo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3"gopher =/= the internets, its a wholly different protocol than http" - still gopher works over the Internet. Different protocol in this case means a different port.
      • br0ther, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Time for bed for you mister, too many errors in one digg comment.
  • Sarawanan, on 10/11/2007, -3/+12If anyone is interested in checking out Mosaic you can get it here: ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/
  • Xeth, on 10/11/2007, -3/+81No Lynx? This is an outrage!
    • MasteRR, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6If they included command line browsers and other-non major browsers this list would be larger than the unix timeline.
      • robdiggity, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8*****. Lynx is a major browser. A hell of a lot more major than half of those mozilla variants. There should be a line anchored at 1992 extending through today that says LYNX.

        Oh, and Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
        • MasteRR, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1Show me someone besides a hardcore command line-only person or someone that is trying to debug their X config that uses lynx (over (e)links even) and I'll let you call it a major browser.
          • Darkhacker, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2The Rock Chalk Jayhawk comment confused me until I looked it up and sure enough Lynx started out at the University of Kansas. That is so awesome. And here I thought that KU wasn't known for anything in the computer world. My brother is going to KU and I'll be transferring to KU after I get my associate from the local community college.
          • Tippis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I use it to test for graceful degradation of my websites...
            Of course, given how good Lynx is (it handles standards-compliant pages better than IE6 and below), it's probably not the best way to do things ;)
      • twigboy, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4THIS IS MADNESS!

        *edit* replied to wrong thread, stupid new commenting system
    • ioannusdeverani, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Lynx saved my life one time. My X Server died, and I need to get to the internet to find out how to fix it. Boy was I glad I had lynx on hand!
      • antdude, on 11/13/2007, -0/+2Or use eLinks or Links. :) Even better.
    • toast1226, on 10/11/2007, -1/+15@ joannusdeverani You sound like a linux infomercial.
  • kiantech, on 10/11/2007, -25/+55too bad no one cares about safari

    everytime I get dugg down another flower blooms in my garden =)
    • stalefries, on 10/11/2007, -0/+20Does your positive digg count mean more weeds for you, then? :D
      • cbfreder, on 10/11/2007, -5/+2just because I bury the parent, doesn't mean I don't want to read you stalefries
    • Xenogis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1wtf does anyone caring about safari have to do with this timeline?
      • Atomic1fire, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1its a browser
        this timeline is about browsers
        case closed
  • classicalcomp, on 10/11/2007, -3/+25Thanks, now I have 20 more browsers to check my HTML in. Anyone know where I can get a version of omniweb 1?
    • speaker219, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7What the hell is the point? anyways:
      ftp://69.59.192.18/pub/next-ftp/next/apps/internet/www/OmniWeb/OmniWeb.1.0
      I don't know how to install that, so don't ask. It's old as dirt.
    • seitanguy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I'm pretty sure it's for NeXT only. I think they had a windows version at one point, but it doesn't look like it was version 1.
    • Kyderdog, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Macintosh Version 5.5.4:
      http://www.omnigroup.com/download/latest/OmniWebEnglish.dmg

      anyone say the new comment thing suck in this thread yet?
    • Niten, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2For what it's worth, recent versions of OmniWeb have eschewed its old proprietary rendering engine and use Apple's WebKit instead; if your site works fine in Safari, it will work fine in OmniWeb as well.
    • classicalcomp, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9sorry I forgot the
      /sarcasm
  • moojj, on 10/11/2007, -6/+5Would have been better if the thickness of the line represented the popularity of the browser. Skip forward to 2007 and theres plenty of browsers that I have never heard of before.
  • TomPlansMedia, on 10/11/2007, -17/+4wow, that's boring
  • arcooke, on 10/11/2007, -2/+14Didn't Prodigy and Compuserv have their own proprietary browsers? It's been a while, I can't remember.

    Wow.. just gave myself a major flashback. Anyone else remember the old happypuppy.com site back when it was like the one and only website for cheat codes? Ya know, the site with the newspaper background image with pee stains on it.. Oh the memories.
    • Steyr47, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Yea, where the hell is Prodigy?
      • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4CompuServ and Prodigy both shipped branded Mosaic browsers IIRC until Netscape came around (which pretty much killed Mosaic).
    • Xeth, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2So did *gasp* AOL.
      • lev606, on 10/11/2007, -2/+0AOL didn't have Web access until '94 or '95. Neither did Prodigy or Compuserv.
        • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1AOL would have had web access since they started providing the Internet; remember, all the World Wide Web does is implement a protocol over the Internet, and Prodigy, CompuServ and AOL were just Internet Service Providers. AOL provided BBS access for about 5 years before the WWW even existed. CompuServ was even older than that (and is probably where Microsoft got the M$ name; CompuServe was called C$ because of how damned expensive it was to get X.25 access with them, something like $30-35 an /hour/).
    • neuropsychguy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I actually went to happypuppy.com last week just wondering whatever happened to them. I was shocked to discover no site.
  • lev606, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Lynx, a non-graphical web browser, was released at least a year prior to Mosaic. From wikipedia, "Lynx is a product of the Distributed Computing Group within Academic Computing Services of the University of Kansas, and was initially developed in 1992".
    • ahsteele, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2True, but Mosiac was really teh frist modern browser. What w/ it's GUI and all.
  • woojoo, on 10/11/2007, -6/+16It won't render properly on Safari, Firefox, nor Camino on a Mac :'(
    • theratster, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1strange because it renders fine on firefox for windows... although the svg doesn't display on IE7.
    • informality, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1Copied from my comment in an above thread:

      I tried viewing this on my MacBook:

      Safari 3 Beta (my current default browser) messes it up almost completely
      Firefox 2.0.0.4 has a disappearing text problem
      Camino 1.5, as might be expected, has the same problem as Firefox
      Opera 9 renders it beautifully.

      Weird.
    • Tippis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3...that's what happens when you don't use a standards-compliant browser ;-)
      (This jab was brought to you by one of those annoying Opera users...)
    • alexweej, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Works fine on Epiphany on Ubuntu Feisty. Didn't even notice the file format. It just works. :)
    • hsteckylf, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Works great in Fx on both Linux and Windows... hmmm... =)
    • Oldfart2, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I have Firefox 2.0.0.4 for Windows XP Pro - no problem displaying it at all - including text.
    • Xenogis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1works fine for me on my macbook with firefox
  • valdez, on 10/11/2007, -3/+2what about Gopher? Pre-lynx
    • lev606, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Gopher was out before Lynx, but it wasn't a web browser.
    • martalli, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I agree. Gopher is not the world wide web - it uses a different protocol, on port 70. Nonetheless, some web browsers will support the gopher protocol.
  • Lukinator, on 10/11/2007, -13/+1Firefox = Win.
  • TheSmiddy, on 10/11/2007, -14/+7Nice to see Opera at the top

    finally it's getting just a little bit of the recognition it deserves
  • TheSmiddy, on 10/11/2007, -14/+4nice to see Opera at the top

    finally it's getting a little bit of the recognition it deserves
  • speaker219, on 10/11/2007, -2/+23Some people are complaining about not being able to view Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg) images, so heres a png
    http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?srv=img29&img=/8/6/24/f_svg2rasterm_c1ca036.png
  • shupp, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5No Cyberdog?
  • FyberOptic, on 10/11/2007, -14/+12And yet only Opera can display the SVG properly without any plugins. How's about them apples.
    • nairanvac, on 10/11/2007, -6/+9Nope. Firefox displays it perfectly for me.
      • FyberOptic, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Look at it in both and you'll see that it doesn't.
        • FyberOptic, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2You fail at life if you can't see the difference. Enjoy your bug-ridden bloated browser, which you likely have no idea why you're using other than being told it's "best".
    • br0ther, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Konqueror does it without any extras.
  • PixelEater, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1lol where's avant
    • carstereos, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1I have used Avant for over 3 years. www.avantbrowser.com
    • aaronm67, on 10/23/2007, -0/+6Under "Internet Explorer" where it belongs. Avant is just a shell for IE.
    • Xenogis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I thought maxthon was too?
  • MikeonTV, on 10/11/2007, -12/+2Firefox wins

    edit: swear I never read Lukinators comment (I never read comments)
  • dimplemonkey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3sea monkey? hmm... I'll try it...
  • NerveBand, on 10/11/2007, -5/+36I didn't even realize it was SVG until it was pointed out. Opera FTW ^_^
    • judofyr, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3I didn't even realize it was SVG until it was pointed out. Firefox FTW ^_^
      • thegreatanti, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0There must be a lot of Opera fanboys around here, such a crap statement getting digged that high.
    • martalli, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1...epiphany FTW
  • Purin, on 10/11/2007, -4/+9No wonder why Safari is a good browser: it was based off of a better one, Konqueror. o-0
    I still prefer Firefox, though.
    • tb0n3r, on 10/11/2007, -6/+3Safari? A good browser?
      You just made milk come out of my nose.
    • martalli, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1IE = bad browser, Safari = good browser, firefox = my (great) browser
  • psykiv, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4No Neoplanet, IBM Web Explorer, or AOL Browser. Almost buried as inaccurate.
    • CyberInferno, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0I suppose you think Maxthon should appear on there too? Tweaked versions of the IE engine do not count as their own separate web browsers. Though Neoplanet used to be pretty awesome.
      • Spr0k3t, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Buried for neoplanet == awesome. It sucked.
  • gumpy5, on 10/11/2007, -1/+18So IE is like Firefox's great uncle?
    • Jotaro, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11Firefox's aging, senile uncle
    • martalli, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I almost posted a comment about firefox's old, STD-ridden uncle, but decided not to.
  • OneAndOnlySnob, on 10/11/2007, -11/+2Buried for "Title says all"
    • tensvb, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Buried for «Buried for "Title says all"»
      • OneAndOnlySnob, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Go ahead. I don't give half a *****. I'm sick of seeing these non-descriptions hit the front page. I'm going to keep burying them and saying why, even if they're buried to -100000000 every time. Honestly, I don't give a ***** how my posts are modded. I don't even give zero *****.

        If the title truly says all, the article must not have any content. I want to know if I'm actually interested in something before I waste time loading the page. I want people to spend a little more time on the articles they post.
    • martalli, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Was the svg somehow hiddeon in the text, some sort of reverse steganography?
  • brettmjohnson, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10NCSA Mosaic was not the first web browser. This is a commonly held misconception.

    The very first web browser was WorldWideWeb, written by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb

    Oh, and OmniWeb v1.0 was officially released 17 March 2005, but had been in beta form for almost a year (IIRC)
    • SirG3, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I think you mean 1995 for OmniWeb v1.0.
    • martalli, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2There are certainly many smaller projects that a small graqph does not have time for, but WorldWideWeb certainly should be included. As opposed to an exhaustive lineage of browsers, this only seems to include the ones that I have used...with the exception of lynx/links...
  • muchenik, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Looks nice using Epiphany.
  • lostotaku, on 10/11/2007, -0/+31I like how Opera is just a straight line across the board, all by itself.
    • boran, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Like most stuff ad blocking is built into opera. Just right click an empty part of page and select block content. then click the ads.
  • franksands, on 10/11/2007, -7/+6The title NEVER says all.
  • skyshock1, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0Never heard of OmniWeb! Interesting....
  • rockmanac, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Not HotJava browser? (Does anyone even remember that?)

    Btw.. It seems that the Firefox problem is an isolated one... FF 2.0.0.4 on Ubuntu 7.04 renders it just fine.

    -A
  • aznwild0, on 10/11/2007, -8/+2Buried. The guy is clearly an Opera fanboy. He uses SVG which only Opera supports without problems, and Opera's at the top of the list.
    • Spr0k3t, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Works perfect in Firefox... also reluctantly running Windows here.
    • br0ther, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Iceweasel does it, though not accurate.
      Konqueror on the other hand renders it just as nice as one could hope.
    • Chandon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1SVG is in no way specific to Opera. In fact, SVG is probably the only way to get non-fugly web graphics as we get higher resolution displays.
    • person, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1SVG is a W3C standard. I wouldn't call it an Opera-only format. It's a format worth researching a bit before calling it crap. You wish the Firefox devs had better support for SVG?
    • OperaWeb, on 03/08/2008, -0/+0Well, Opera is the best webbrowser ...
  • GutterMoo, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2This has to be old. They don't even bother to list Swiftfox version of Firefox or IceWeasel.
    • person, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Because Swiftfox is essentially the same thing as Firefox, same with IceWeasel, and use the same versioning system, and have exactly the same features, apart from slightly different branding or speed, it would be a waste of screen real estate to make the SVG image larger to include those forks. This list would be a mile tall if it included all of the Firefox forks.

      Furthermore, this list really focuses on changes in rendering engines and the underlying browser technology and the evolution of the web. I wouldn't say Swiftfox is any evoultion in the web, or any change to technology. You can also check the date on Wikipedia, or at least notice that the list includes Firefox 2. How old can that be? Not very.
  • AnonymousFan9, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9Umm, for all the people saying only opera supports SVG, I must be missing something because it's working fine in Firefox 2.0.0.3 in Ubuntu for me
    • Tippis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1It's not that other browsers don't support it -- IE and FF most certainly do -- it's just that they're not as good at it as Opera.
      Also, iirc, most Linux desktops these days come with pretty decent SVG libraries (heck, my KDE uses SVG icons) so it's easy for the browsers to hook into those.
  • jmpeagle, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3ummmm...AOL's browser? They dominated the market for awhile but they aren't even mentioned
  • Alkivar, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4once again wikipedia shows things incompletely... graph is missing WorldWideWeb, Cello, MidasWWW, ViolaWWW, Lynx, w3m, and several others.
    • tensvb, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5Then go and fix it. It's Wikipedia.
    • rclay, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Thanks. Cello was my first GUI browser. You never forget the first time.
  • ortucis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+23Opera is straight.
  • AnimZero, on 10/11/2007, -3/+2Buried as inacurate... no WorldWideWeb or Lynx.
  • b33b3s, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3Poor Opera, so lonely up there at the top.
    • harusp3x, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5I wonder if it ever gets lonely up there on its pedestal.
  • TexanPsycho, on 10/11/2007, -5/+2Comment says it all.
  • boran, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1Blah, comment system is busted, I replied to another item earlier on, ignore this.
  • Nuak, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3They forgot the reincarnations of Firefox before it was named Firefox: Mozilla Phoenix, Mozilla Firebird...
  • 5HTP, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7It's missing that web browser I coded at college last year. Dugg down as inaccurate.
  • tize, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Opera is the best browser around. I don't know why it doesn't have more of the market. I also didn't know that it was so old, almost as old as IE
  • jackieokennedy, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6proud to have been a Mosaic user when i was 10 years old, in 1993;

    and i'm a proud user of OPERA. the ONLY lonely line (excpt. icab)

    OPERA is Internet
  • coder316, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Look at the long gap between Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7... no wonder alternatives (such as Firefox) took off...
  • TruXter, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1Question is, if mozilla is based on netscape, how did netscape suddenly start becoming based off of mozilla, while it still had it's own in production?
    That logic is practicly fanboy conspiracy crap.
    • Chandon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Mozilla was a rewrite of Netscape, and Netscape 6 was the first version of the Netscape-branded browser to be based on the rewritten Mozilla codebase.
  • APErebus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Interesting how Opera is the only one that has its own line without any offshoots... Don't know if it means anything, but interesting all the same.
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