|
| Platforms |
Macintosh: 68K, Power Mac
PC: Win95, 3.X, NT [Intel, Mips, PPC, Alpha]
Unix: AIX, Alpha, HP-UX, IRIX, MIPS, SunOS |
About the
Browser |
Mosaic is the oldest of the three
reviewed browsers. It is THE popular pioneer in the GUI browser
market and one of the main ingredients in the initial overwhelming success
of the World Wide Web. It is also the basis for many other popular browsers.
It is produced by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA),
which licenses its code under the name of Spyglass. The releases of Mosaic
have been characterized by multiple pre-releases over extended periods
of time. The 2.0 version time span occurred over almost 2 years; a time
span which saw the greatest changes in the browser market thus far. |
Version
Discrepancies |
There are occasional extreme differences
in both timeline and HTML capability between platforms for identical Mosaic
release versions. The early Unix versions of Mosaic, for example, were
developed well before most of the other platforms, and Unix/VMS version
numbers have differed significantly from other platform counterparts. Early
work on Mosaic 3.0 was completed only on the Macintosh platform, which
added features such as frames. Many of these features did not make it into
the later final release of the 3.0 version. |
No More
Mosaic |
NCSA announced in January, 1997 that
it was halting development of the Mosaic browser in order to concentrate
on other activities. Coverage of what the historical Mosaic versions supported
will remain on these pages, as it provides an important benchmark against
which other browsers developed. The final Mosaic release is 3.0 |
|
| Version |
Released |
Features |
|
|
|
| 1.0 |
Nov. 1993 |
This was the first official release of Mosaic. The HTML
2.0 specification did not exist at this point, and many capabilities found
in that specification are noticeably absent in this version of the browser. |
|
| 2.0A1 |
Jan. 1994 |
The first Alpha Release of Mosaic 2.0 was the first major
browser to support HTML Forms. |
| 2.0A2 |
Feb. 1994 |
Alpha 2 of Mosaic 2.0. This release added correct usage
of the TEXTAREA element. |
| 2.0A3 |
Apr. 1994 |
Alpha 3 of Mosaic 2.0 added support for the STRONG and EM
elements. |
| 2.0A8 |
Dec. 1994 |
The Alpha 8 release heralded the first major browser to
support HTML 3 tables and several HTML 3 Character style elements. |
| 2.0B1 |
Mar. 1995 |
The first Beta release of Mosaic 2 added support for custom
form submission buttons as well as the XMP element. |
| 2.0B4 |
Apr. 1995 |
The Beta 4 release added alignment attributes to the Heading
and P elements. |
| 2.0FB |
Jul. 1995 |
The last Beta Release of Mosaic 2 added support for many
of the Netscape 1.1 extensions to BODY, HR, and CENTER. |
| 2.0 |
Oct. 1995 |
The final release of Mosaic 2.0 added some belated support
for several standard HTML 2.0 elements including many of the virtual character
styles, the BASE element and the Image ALT attribute. It also added a new
media element called SOUND as well as support for Internet Explorer's BGSound
element. |
| 2.1 |
Jan. 1996 |
An update release to add support for Client-Side Image Maps |
|
| 3.0B2 |
Apr. 1996 |
Currently only available for the Macintosh platform, this
was meant to be a preview of features that would be appearing in the 3.0
releases for all platforms. |
| 3.0B4 |
Sep. 1996 |
Still Macintosh only, this version and Beta 3 add no new
HTML functionality, just bug fixes. |
| 3.0 |
Jan. 1997 |
Now available for most platforms, this release backs away
from the features found in the earlier Macintosh 3.0 betas. The previous
rudimentary frames capability and other improvements are lost in this,
the FINAL release of Mosaic from NCSA. The only significant
HTML change in this release over 2.0 versions is improvement of table functionality
(finally allowing for nested tables.) |
|