Development of the net
ftp
gopherNetscape is a browser that runs on many platforms
Internet Explorer
Opera
iCab
Lynx is a text browser
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The Internet began with electronic mail (email) communication between researchers. Email is all text. The researchers soon began to be interested in sending whole programs and pictures over the net. This lead to the creation of the File Transfer Protocol (ftp). This standardized the transmission of files over the net and soon 'ftp sites' were available for anyone to download programs, pictures, etc.
The net soon became a victim of its own success. There were many good ftp sites and lots of free programs available, but not many people knew how to find them! This lead to the development of programs such as gopher. Gopher is a program developed at the University of Minnesota (The "Golden Gophers" are their mascots). It is menu-driven and designed to be easy to use. This further lead to automated search tools such as Archie, Veronica, and Jughead.
Netscape is a browser program that runs on many computer platforms. This means it has been written to run on Macintosh, Windows and UNIX computers (Mosaic was also written to run on these computers). This is one reason for its popularity. It takes text that is sent to it and reformats it to make it look the best on whatever computer it is running on.
A completely different type of browser is Lynx. Lynx is a totally text-based browser. It cannot display graphics at all. But many people do not have complete IP Internet access and are thus restricted to using Lynx. Because Lynx does not transfer the graphics, it is one of the fastest ways to browse the net. But you lose a lot without the pictures.
In 1995, Microsoft began developing and distributing its browser, Internet Explorer. They released it for free (Netscape was charging businesses $39 a copy). By bundling Internet Explorer with the Windows 95 operating system (and making it so that it was very difficult to remove its icon from the Windows desktop), the use of Internet Explorer soared to about 90% of the browsers in use. Prior to Internet Explorer, Netscape had enjoyed 70-80% market share. This switch is part of the antitrust suit of the Justice Department against Microsoft charging monopolistic activities.
Opera is a browser being developed by people promising to purchase it when it's done. Check out http://www.opera.com/ to see if your platform is available yet.
iCab is a browser being developed in Germany for the Macintosh. http://www.icab.de/index.html
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