"Nexus (browser)" redirects here. For the first web browser ever created, see
WorldWideWeb
.
Command-line web browser
The
Line Mode Browser
(also known as
LMB
,
[4]
WWWLib
, or just
www
[5]
) is the second
web browser
ever created.
[6]
The browser was the first demonstrated to be
portable
to several different
operating systems
.
[7]
[8]
Operated from a simple
command-line interface
, it could be widely used on many computers and
computer terminals
throughout the
Internet
.
The browser was developed starting in 1990, and then supported by the
World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) as an example and
test application
for the
libwww
library
.
[9]
History
[
edit
]
One of the fundamental concepts of the "
World Wide Web
" projects at
CERN
was "
universal readership
".
[10]
In 1990,
Tim Berners-Lee
had already written the first browser,
WorldWideWeb
(later renamed to
Nexus
), but that program only worked on the proprietary software of
NeXT
computers, which were in limited use.
[7]
Berners-Lee and his team could not port the WorldWideWeb application with its features?including the graphical
WYSIWYG
editor? to the more widely deployed
X Window System
, since they had no experience in programming it.
[11]
The team recruited
Nicola Pellow
, a math student intern working at CERN,
[12]
to write a "passive browser" so basic that it could run on most computers of that time.
[7]
The name "Line Mode Browser" refers to the fact that, to ensure compatibility with the earliest computer terminals such as
Teletype machines
, the program only displayed text, (no images) and had only line-by-line text input (no cursor positioning).
[11]
[13]
Development started in November 1990 and the browser was demonstrated in December 1990.
[14]
The development environment used resources from the PRIAM project, a French language acronym for "PRojet Interdivisionnaire d'Assistance aux Microprocesseurs", a project to standardise microprocessor development across CERN.
[15]
The short development time produced software in a simplified dialect of the
C programming language
. The official standard
ANSI C
was not yet available on all platforms.
[11]
The Line Mode Browser was released to a limited audience on
VAX
,
RS/6000
and
Sun-4
computers in March 1991.
[16]
Before the release of the first publicly available version, it was integrated into the
CERN Program Library
(CERNLIB), used mostly by the
High-Energy Physics
-community.
[8]
[17]
The first
beta
of the browser was released on 8 April 1991.
[18]
Berners-Lee announced the browser's availability in August 1991 in the
alt.hypertext
newsgroup of
Usenet
.
[19]
[20]
Users could use the browser from anywhere in the
Internet
through the
telnet
protocol to the
info.cern.ch
machine (which was also the first web server).
The spreading news of the World Wide Web in 1991 increased interest in the project at CERN and other laboratories such as
DESY
in
Germany
, and elsewhere throughout the world.
[7]
[21]
[22]
The first stable version, 1.1, was released in January 1992.
[16]
[23]
Since version 1.2l, released in October 1992, the browser has used the
common code library
(later called
libwww
).
[1]
The main developer, Pellow, started working on the
MacWWW
project, and both browsers began to share some
source code
.
[24]
In the
May 1993 World Wide Web Newsletter
Berners-Lee announced that the browser was released into the
public domain
to reduce the work on new clients.
[25]
On 21 March 1995, with the release of version 3.0, CERN put the full responsibility for maintaining the Line Mode Browser on the W3C.
[1]
The Line Mode Browser and the libwww library are closely tied together?the last independent release of a separate browser component was in 1995, and the browser became part of libwww.
[26]
The
Agora
World Wide Web email browser was based on the Line Mode Browser.
[27]
The Line Mode Browser was very popular in the beginning of the web, since it was the only web browser available for all operating systems. Statistics from January 1994 show that
Mosaic
had quickly changed the web browser landscape and only 2% of all
World Wide Web
users browsed by Line Mode Browser.
[28]
The new niche of text-only web browser was filled by
Lynx
, which made the Line Mode Browser largely irrelevant as a browser. One reason was that Lynx is much more flexible than the Line Mode Browser.
[29]
It then became a test application for the libwww.
Operating mode
[
edit
]
The simplicity of the Line Mode Browser had several limitations.
The Line Mode Browser was designed to work on any operating system using what were called "dumb" terminals. The
user interface
had to be as simple as possible. The user began with a command-line interface specifying a
Uniform Resource Locator
(URL). The requested web page was then printed line by line on the screen, like a
teleprinter
. Websites were displayed using the
first versions
of
HTML
. Formatting was achieved with capitalization, indentation, and new lines. Header elements were capitalized, centered and separated from the normal text by empty lines.
[30]
Navigation was not controlled by a
pointing device
such as a
mouse
or
arrow keys
, but by text commands typed into the program.
[31]
Numbers in brackets are displayed for each link; links are opened by typing the corresponding number into the program.
This led one journalist of the time to write: "The Web is a way of finding information by typing numbers."
[6]
The page
scrolled
down when an empty command (
carriage return
) was entered, and scrolled up with the command "
u
". The command "
b
" navigated backwards in history, and new pages were navigated with "
g http://...
" (for
go to
) and the URL.
[32]
The browser had no authoring functions, so pages could only be read and not edited. This was considered to be unfortunate by
Robert Cailliau
, one of the developers:
"I think in retrospect the biggest mistake made in the whole project was the public release of the Line-Mode Browser. It gave the Internet hackers immediate access, but only from the point of view of the passive browser?no editing capabilities"
[11]
Features
[
edit
]
The Line Mode Browser was designed to be able to be
platform independent
. There are official ports to
Apollo/Domain
,
[33]
IBM RS6000
,
[33]
DECStation/ultrix,
[33]
VAX/VMS,
[33]
VAX/Ultrix,
[33]
MS-DOS
,
[13]
Unix
,
[13]
[34]
Windows
,
[34]
Classic Mac OS
,
[34]
Linux
,
[34]
MVS
,
[35]
VM/CMS
,
[35]
FreeBSD
,
[36]
Solaris
,
[36]
and to
macOS
.
[36]
The browser supports many protocols like
File Transfer Protocol
(FTP),
Gopher
,
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP),
Network News Transfer Protocol
(NNTP), and
Wide area information server
(WAIS).
[1]
[17]
[37]
Other features included
rlogin
[17]
and
telnet
[17]
hyperlinks
,
Cyrillic
support (added on 25 November 1994 in version 2.15),
[1]
and ability to be set up as a
proxy
client.
[38]
The browser could run as a
background process
and download files.
[29]
The Line Mode Browser has had problems recognizing
character entities
, properly collapsing
whitespace
, and supporting tables and
frames
.
[39]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Berners-Lee, Tim
(23 April 1998).
"Change History of Line Mode Browser"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
2 June
2010
.
- ^
"Getting the W3C libwww Source"
.
www.w3.org
. Retrieved
20 September
2022
.
- ^
Pellow, Nicola
(February 1991).
"LM_Availability ? /Talk_Feb-91"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
10 August
2010
.
- ^
Nielsen, Henrik Frystyk
(April 1995).
"How can I download a Document?"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Archived from
the original
on 12 January 2012
. Retrieved
10 August
2010
.
- ^
Bolso, Erik Inge (8 March 2005).
"2005 Text Mode Browser Roundup"
.
Linux Journal
. Retrieved
5 August
2010
.
- ^
a
b
Berners-Lee, Tim
.
"Frequently asked questions ? What were the first browsers?"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
26 July
2011
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
"Ten Years Public Domain for the Original Web Software"
.
CERN
. 30 April 2003. Archived from
the original
on 29 June 2017
. Retrieved
21 July
2005
.
- ^
a
b
"How the web began"
.
CERN
. 2008
. Retrieved
25 July
2010
.
- ^
Nielsen, Henrik Frystyk
(4 May 1998).
"WWW ? The Libwww Line Mode Browser"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
9 June
2010
.
- ^
Berners-Lee, Tim
.
"W3 Concepts"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
20 July
2005
.
The W3 principle of universal readership is that once information is available, it should be accessible from any type of computer, in any country, and an (authorized) person should only have to use one simple program to access it.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Petrie, Charles;
Cailliau, Robert
(November 1997).
"Interview Robert Cailliau on the WWW Proposal: "How It Really Happened."
"
.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
. Archived from
the original
on 6 January 2011
. Retrieved
18 August
2010
.
- ^
Berners-Lee, Tim
; Fischetti, Mark (1999).
Weaving the Web
. HarperSanFrancisco. p.
29
.
ISBN
9780062515865
.
[...] we needed help.
Ben Segal
[...] spotted a young intern named Nicola Pellow.
- ^
a
b
c
Stewart, Bill.
"Web Browser History"
. Living Internet
. Retrieved
2 June
2010
.
- ^
Cailliau, Robert
(1995).
"A Little History of the World Wide Web"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
7 August
2010
.
Technical Student Nicola Pellow (CN) joins and starts work on the line-mode browser.
- ^
Eck, C. (December 1985).
"PRIAM and VMEbus at CERN"
(PDF)
.
VMEbus in Physics Conference
. Retrieved
26 July
2011
.
- ^
a
b
Cremel, Nicole (5 April 2001).
"A Little History of the World Wide Web"
.
CERN
. Archived from
the original
on 19 December 2007
. Retrieved
2 June
2010
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Berners-Lee, Tim
(January 1992).
"What's new in '92"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
25 July
2010
.
- ^
Gillies, James;
Cailliau, Robert
(2000).
How the Web Was Born
. Oxford University Press. pp.
345
.
ISBN
0-19-286207-3
.
- ^
Stewart, Bill.
"Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, and the World Wide Web"
. Living Internet
. Retrieved
26 July
2010
.
- ^
Berners-Lee, Tim
(6 August 1991).
"Re: Qualifiers on Hypertext links..."
Retrieved
28 July
2010
.
We have a prototype hypertext editor for the NeXT, and a browser for line mode terminals which runs on almost anything.
- ^
Gillies, James;
Cailliau, Robert
(2000).
How the Web Was Born
. Oxford University Press. p.
205
.
ISBN
0-19-286207-3
.
- ^
Berners-Lee, Tim (7 May 1993).
"Public Domain CERN WWW Software"
. Retrieved
11 October
2010
.
- ^
The
PC-NFS
version (dated 92.01.16) for MS-DOS:
wwwpcnfs.zip
(
NOTE:
Firefox browsers may refuse to download the file, claiming that "file contains a virus or malware".
VirusTotal
results
.).
- ^
Berners-Lee, Tim
(3 November 1992).
"Macintosh Browser"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
2 June
2010
.
- ^
Berners-Lee, Tim
(May 1993).
"May World-Wide Web News"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
7 June
2010
.
- ^
Kreutzmann, Dr. Helge (6 January 2010).
"WWW-Browsers for Linux"
. Retrieved
3 June
2010
.
- ^
Sendall, Mike (29 March 1995).
"World Wide Web Clients"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
10 August
2010
.
- ^
"History of the Web"
.
Oxford Brookes University
. 2002. Archived from
the original
on 25 September 2010
. Retrieved
20 November
2010
.
- ^
a
b
Graham, Ian S. (1995).
The HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML
.
John Wiley & Sons
. pp.
323
.
ISBN
0-471-11849-4
.
- ^
"Line Mode Browser"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. 3 November 1992
. Retrieved
21 July
2010
.
- ^
Pellow, Nicola
(February 1991).
"Features_of_LM ? /Talk_Feb-91"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
10 August
2010
.
- ^
Berners-Lee, Tim
(3 November 1992).
"Commands"
.
CERN
/
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
24 July
2010
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Berners-Le, Tim.
"Installation"
. Archived from
the original
on 11 January 2012
. Retrieved
16 November
2010
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Nielsen, Henrik Frystyk
(1 April 1999).
"List of Platforms for libwww"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
9 June
2010
.
- ^
a
b
"WWW people"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
15 June
2010
.
- ^
a
b
c
"W3C libwww libraries"
.
PhysioNet
. Cambridge, MA:
University of Sao Paulo
. 19 March 2008. Archived from
the original
on 18 May 2015
. Retrieved
30 May
2010
.
- ^
Berners-Lee, Tim
;
Nielsen, Henrik Frystyk
(9 December 1996).
"Defining a News Server"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
28 June
2010
.
- ^
Nielsen, Henrik Frystyk
(9 August 1997).
"Libwww ? the W3C Sample Code Library README"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
11 August
2010
.
- ^
Tobias, Daniel R. (4 April 2010).
"
"Brand-X" Browsers ? Alphabetical List: A-G"
. Retrieved
5 July
2010
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
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