NCSA Mosaic 1.0

On April 22, 1993, students Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina from the University of Illinois programmed one of the first web browsers with a graphical interface.

Mosaic 1.0 (full name NCSA Mosaic) worked on multiple platforms including Windows and was available for free, thanks to which it gained worldwide popularity among the general public shortly after being launched. Its development officially ended on January 7, 1997.

Release Date

• November 11, 1993

System Requirements

Windows

• Windows 3.1 or later (32-bit)
• Windows NT
• 386SX computer with at least 4 MB of RAM (486 with 8 MB of RAM recommended)

Macintosh

• System 7.0
• Mac OS 8

Unix

• X Window System

Cross-platform

• 3 MB of disk space
• 14,400 bps or faster modem (28,800 bps recommended)

Technical Specifications

• Native support for accessing documents and data using World Wide Web, gopher, Anonymous FTP, and NNTP (Usenet News) protocols. Support for archie, finger, whois, and Veronica (as well as others) through gateways
• Full HTML display
• Support for inlined GIF images in HTML hypertext documents
• Internal sound support for Sun/NeXT/DEC .AU audio files
• Support for GIF, JPEG, MPEG, QuickTime for Windows, Microsoft Video for Windows, Postcript and other documents via forking to appropriate viewers (user configurable)
• Full hypertext support, including using inlined images as anchors
• Optional toolbar with shortcut buttons
• Optional status bar to display hyperlink destinations
• Local History
• Fully customizable font selection
• Savable preferences, including window size and position
• Minimal Hotlist
• Scrolling for large documents
• Status of loading/decoding shown in status bar

Price

• Free for personal use

Resources

• The Internet via Mosaic and World-Wide Web
• The Mosaic Handbook for the Macintosh
• The Mosaic handbook for the X Window System
• Finding it on the Internet