What was the first widely-used web browser?

Mosaic was a groundbreaking web browser developed in 1993 by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It played a pivotal role in popularizing the World Wide Web and is often considered the first widely-used web browser.

By January 1993, an early build for Unix was posted on NCSA’s servers for free, attracting thousands of downloads a month. The Mosaic project was led by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, and its release marked a significant milestone in the early days of the internet. Mosaic’s user-friendly graphical interface allowed users to easily navigate the web, making it more accessible to non-technical users. This was a significant advancement compared to earlier text-based browsers, which required knowledge of specific commands and addresses.

Within months, Andreesen and others ported the browser to Windows and Mac, and by October 1993 a version was available for the Commodore Amiga – all before Mosaic reached official 1.0 status in November.

Mosaic introduced several key features that are now standard in web browsers, such as inline multimedia support, which allowed images and text to be displayed together on the same page. This was a major innovation at the time, as it greatly enhanced the visual appeal and interactivity of the web.

The success of Mosaic laid the groundwork for the subsequent development of other web browsers. Andreessen soon departed NCSA to form Mosaic Communications (later Netscape) in April 1994 alongside Jim Clark of Silicon Graphics.

The company’s first product, Mosaic Netscape 0.9, shipped in October 1994 and took three-quarters of the browser market within four months. Mosaic’s influence can still be seen in the basic design and functionality of modern web browsers today.