Erwise was a pioneering web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

, and the first commonly available with a graphical user interface

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

.

Released in April 1992, the browser was written for Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 computers running X

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

 and used the W3 common access library

Libwww

libwww is a highly-modular client-side web API for Unix and Windows, and is also the name of the reference implementation of this API....

. Erwise was the combined master's project of four Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 students at the Helsinki University of Technology

Helsinki University of Technology

Aalto University School of Science and Technology , was the temporary name for Helsinki University of Technology during the process of forming the Aalto University...

: Kim Nyberg, Teemu Rantanen, Kati Suominen and Kari Sydänmaanlakka. The group decided to create a web browser at the suggestion of Robert Cailliau

Robert Cailliau

Robert Cailliau , born 26 January 1947, is a Belgian informatics engineer and computer scientist who, together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, developed the World Wide Web.-Biography:...

, who was visiting the university, and were supervised by Ari Lemmke

Ari Lemmke

Ari Lemmke in Finland is the person who gave the Linux kernel its name.Linus Torvalds had planned to have it named Freax . Ari encouraged him to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded...

.

The development of Erwise halted after the students graduated and went on to other projects. Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...

, the creator of the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

, travelled to Finland to encourage the group to continue with the project. However, none of the project members could afford to continue with the project without proper funding.

The name Erwise originates from otherwise and the name of the project group, OHT, which is short for ohjelmatyöryhmä (program working group).

Characteristics

The following are significant characteristics of the browser:

• It used a multifont text.
• The links of Erwise browser were underlined. To visit the links you had to double click on the links.
• Erwise could execute multiple window operation, though the optional single window mode was also available.
• Erwise could open local files.
• Erwise had little English documentation.
• Some of the buttons were for features that were not implemented.
• Tim Berners-Lee would have continued with the works of Erwise. He could not do so because Erwise was documented in the Finnish language.

Criticism

Erwise crashed on some Unices, which Berners-Lee attributed to poor Motif implementations.

External links

• [ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/networking/services/www/erwisE/ The source code] at FUNET
  FUNET
  FUNET is the Finnish University and Research Network, a backbone network providing Internet connections for Finnish universities and polytechnics as well as other research facilities. It is governed by the state-owned CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd. The FUNET project started in December 1983 and...
  
  FTP archives