The First Web Browser

By Debojyoti Pal

The first thing we need to use the internet is the Browser. The term “browser” has been coined as the internet is essentially a collection of variety of web pages which we browse. And the first browser ever was “Nexus“.

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Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 . Tim Berners-Lee was the one who made the first browser and it was actually called “WorldWideWeb” and was later renamed by Tim as “Nexus”. At that time “Nexus” was capable to browse the following protocols: http: file: news: ftp:. “Nexus was coded in Objective-C on s NeXT machine.

It was the best browser of that time, well as it was the only one! Those who have used it would know that it bore some resemblance to Microsoft Internet Explorer which came out later.

If we look at the features we would see that the menu bar looked like a primitive version of Windows desktop and clicking it provided information like that of present day windows. The navigation menu had 3 buttons “back”, “next” and “previous”. Using the style menu, you could load style sheets (not CSS) to render the HTML in the format you liked.

The link menu had options like “Mark all” to remember the URL’s. One issue was that you never saw the URL. No there was no tabbed browsing but you could open new windows with a shortcut like [Command] + L. So, you can see it was still quite impressive for a first. Sadly, it is not available online for even test drive and given that so many pages use javascript and css, I doubt “Nexus” could be of any use in the present day.

Anyway, what’s the point of this article in this present time of Firefox, Chrome and Opera Right? Well, I guess it’s always great to know the roots from which today’s sophisticated browsers evolved from. Tim Berners-Lee’s “Nexus” was a phenomenon which has proven to be one of the biggest turning points in this short history of “WWW”. And its always nice to be a little nostalgic!

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About The Author

Debojyoti Pal Debojyoti Pal is the owner of an SEO Optimization site which provides latest news and tips and tricks about the online world.

2 Comments so far

John Hunter July 13, 2009 12:56 am

Here is a funny video where a Google intern asks 50 people in times square what a browser is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
.-= John Hunter´s last blog ..Peter Scholtes =-.

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printing uk July 13, 2009 2:26 pm

What is the name of the first graphical web browser?please tell me..
.-= printing uk´s last blog ..Elite graphic designing services =-.

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