| Line Mode Browser | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Line Mode Browser displaying theGerman Wikipedia | |
| Original authors | |
| Developer | W3C /CERN |
| Initial release | 0.7, 14 May 1991 (1991-05-14)[1] |
| Stable release | |
| Written in | C[3] |
| Operating system | Cross-platform, same asLibwww |
| Type | Web browser |
| License | W3C Software Notice and License |
| Website | www |
TheLine Mode Browser (also known asLMB,[4]WWWLib, or justwww[5]) is the secondweb browser ever created.[6]The browser was the first demonstrated to beportable to several differentoperating systems.[7][8]Operated from a simplecommand-line interface, it could be widely used on many computers andcomputer terminals throughout theInternet.The browser was developed starting in 1990, and then supported by theWorld Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as an example andtest application for thelibwwwlibrary.[9]
One of the fundamental concepts of the "World Wide Web" projects atCERN was "universal readership".[10] In 1990,Tim Berners-Lee had already written the first browser,WorldWideWeb (later renamed toNexus), but that program only worked on the proprietary software ofNeXT computers, which were in limited use.[7] Berners-Lee and his team could not port the WorldWideWeb application with its features—including the graphicalWYSIWYG editor— to the more widely deployedX Window System, since they had no experience in programming it.[11] The team recruitedNicola 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 asTeletype 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 theC programming language. The official standardANSI C was not yet available on all platforms.[11]The Line Mode Browser was released to a limited audience onVAX,RS/6000 andSun-4 computers in March 1991.[16] Before the release of the first publicly available version, it was integrated into theCERN Program Library (CERNLIB), used mostly by theHigh-Energy Physics-community.[8][17] The firstbeta of the browser was released on 8 April 1991.[18] Berners-Lee announced the browser's availability in August 1991 in thealt.hypertext newsgroup ofUsenet.[19][20]Users could use the browser from anywhere in theInternet through thetelnet protocol to theinfo.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 asDESY inGermany, 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 thecommon code library (later calledlibwww).[1] The main developer, Pellow, started working on theMacWWW project, and both browsers began to share somesource code.[24] In theMay 1993 World Wide Web Newsletter Berners-Lee announced that the browser was released into thepublic 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]
TheAgora 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 thatMosaic had quickly changed the web browser landscape and only 2% of allWorld Wide Web users browsed by Line Mode Browser.[28] The new niche of text-only web browser was filled byLynx, 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.
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. Theuser interface had to be as simple as possible. The user began with a command-line interface specifying aUniform Resource Locator (URL). The requested web page was then printed line by line on the screen, like ateleprinter. Websites were displayed using thefirst versions ofHTML. 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 apointing device such as amouse orarrow 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 pagescrolled 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://..." (forgo 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 byRobert 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]
The Line Mode Browser was designed to be able to beplatform independent. There are official ports toApollo/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 tomacOS.[36] The browser supports many protocols likeFile Transfer Protocol (FTP),Gopher,Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP),Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), andWide area information server (WAIS).[1][17][37]
Other features includedrlogin[17] andtelnet[17]hyperlinks,Cyrillic support (added on 25 November 1994 in version 2.15),[1] and ability to be set up as aproxy client.[38] The browser could run as abackground process and download files.[29] The Line Mode Browser has had problems recognizingcharacter entities, properly collapsingwhitespace, and supporting tables andframes.[39]
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.
[...] we needed help.Ben Segal [...] spotted a young intern named Nicola Pellow.
Technical Student Nicola Pellow (CN) joins and starts work on the line-mode browser.
We have a prototype hypertext editor for the NeXT, and a browser for line mode terminals which runs on almost anything.