Line-mode browser
Encyclopedia
The Line Mode Browser is the second web browser
ever created.
The browser was the first demonstrated to be portable
to several different operating system
s.
Operated from a simple command-line interface
, it could be widely used on many computers and computer terminal
s throughout the Internet
.
The browser was developed starting in 1990, and then supported by the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) as an example and test application
for the libwww
library.
" projects at CERN
was "universal readership
". In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee
had already written the first browser, WorldWideWeb
(later renamed to Nexus), but that program only worked on the proprietary software of NeXT
computers, which were in limited use. Berners-Lee and his team could not port the WorldWideWeb application with its features—including the graphical WYSIWYG
editor— to the more widely-deployed X Window System
, since they had no experience in programming it. The team recruited Nicola Pellow
, a math student intern working at CERN, to write a "passive browser" so basic that it could run on most computers of that time.
The name "Line Mode Browser" refers to the fact that, to ensure compatibility with the earliest computer terminals such as teletype machines
, the program only displayed text, (no images) and had only text input.
Development started in November 1990 and the browser was demonstrated in December 1990.
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.
The short development time produced software in a simplified dialect of the C programming language
. The official standard ANSI C
was not yet available on all platforms.
The Line Mode Browser was released to a limited audience on VAX
, RS/6000
and Sun-4
computers in March 1991. Before the release of the first publicly-available version, it was integrated into the CERN Program Library
(CERNLIB), used mostly by the High-Energy Physics
-community. The first beta of the browser was released on 8 April 1991. Berners-Lee announced the browser's availability in June 1991 in the alt.hypertext newsgroup of Usenet
.
Users could use the browser from anywhere in the Internet
through the telnet
protocol to the info.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 as DESY
in Germany
, and elsewhere throughout the world.
The first stable version, 1.1, was released in January 1992. Since version 1.2l, released in October 1992, the browser has used the common code library (later called libwww
). The main developer, Pellow, started working on the MacWWW
project, and both browsers began to share some source code
. In the May 1993 World Wide Web Newsletter Berners-Lee announced that the browser was released into the public domain
to reduce the work on new clients. 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. 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.
The Agora
World Wide Web email browser was based on the Line Mode Browser. 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 that Mosaic
had quickly changed the web browser landscape and only 2% of all World Wide Web
users browsed by Line Mode Browser. The new niche of text-only web browser was filled by Lynx
, which made the Line Mode Browser largely irrelevant as a browser. One reason was that Lynx is much more flexible as the Line Mode Browser. It then became a test application for the libwww.
The Line Mode Browser was designed to work on any operating system using what were called "dumb" terminals. The user interface
had to be as simple as possible. The user began with a command-line interface specifying a Uniform Resource Locator
(URL). The requested web page was then printed line by line on the screen, like a teleprinter
. Websites were displayed using the first versions of HTML
. Formatting was achieved with capitalization, indentation, and new lines. Header elements were capitalized, centered and separated from the normal text by empty lines.
Navigation was not controlled by a pointing device
such as a mouse
or arrow keys
, but by text commands typed into the program.
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."
The page scrolled
down when an empty command (carriage return
) was entered, and scrolled up with the command "
The browser had no authoring functions, so pages could only be read and not edited. This was considered to be unfortunate by Robert Cailliau
, one of the developers:
, IBM RS6000, DECStation/ultrix, VAX/VMS, VAX/Ultrix, MS-DOS
, Unix
, Windows
, Mac OS
, Linux
, MVS
, VM/CMS
, FreeBSD
, Solaris, and to Mac OS X
. The browser supports many protocols like File Transfer Protocol
(FTP), Gopher, Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP), Network News Transfer Protocol
(NNTP), and Wide area information server
(WAIS).
Other features included rlogin
and telnet
hyperlink
s, Cyrillic
support (added at 25 November 1994 in version 2.15), and ability to be set up as a proxy
client. The browser could run as a background process and download files. The Line Mode Browser has had problems recognizing character entities
, properly collapsing whitespace, and supporting tables and frames
.
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...
ever created.
The browser was the first demonstrated to be portable
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
to several different operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s.
Operated from a simple command-line interface
Command-line interface
A command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...
, it could be widely used on many computers and computer terminal
Computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...
s throughout the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
The browser was developed starting in 1990, and then supported by the World Wide Web Consortium
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
(W3C) as an example and test application
Testbed
A testbed is a platform for experimentation of large development projects. Testbeds allow for rigorous, transparent, and replicable testing of scientific theories, computational tools, and new technologies.The term is used across many disciplines to describe a development environment that is...
for the libwww
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....
library.
History
One of the fundamental concepts of the "World Wide WebWorld Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
" projects at CERN
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
was "universal readership
Cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...
". In 1990, 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...
had already written the first browser, WorldWideWeb
WorldWideWeb
WorldWideWeb, later renamed to Nexus to avoid confusion between the software and the World Wide Web, was the first web browser and editor. When it was written, WorldWideWeb was the only way to view the Web....
(later renamed to Nexus), but that program only worked on the proprietary software of NeXT
NeXT
Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
computers, which were in limited use. Berners-Lee and his team could not port the WorldWideWeb application with its features—including the graphical WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
editor— to the more widely-deployed X Window System
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...
, since they had no experience in programming it. The team recruited Nicola Pellow
Nicola Pellow
Nicola Pellow was a member of the WWW Project at CERN, working with Tim Berners-Lee. She joined the project in November 1990, while an undergraduate maths student at Leicester Polytechnic ....
, a math student intern working at CERN, to write a "passive browser" so basic that it could run on most computers of that time.
The name "Line Mode Browser" refers to the fact that, to ensure compatibility with the earliest computer terminals such as teletype machines
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
, the program only displayed text, (no images) and had only text input.
Development started in November 1990 and the browser was demonstrated in December 1990.
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.
The short development time produced software in a simplified dialect of the C programming language
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
. The official standard ANSI C
ANSI C
ANSI C refers to the family of successive standards published by the American National Standards Institute for the C programming language. Software developers writing in C are encouraged to conform to the standards, as doing so aids portability between compilers.-History and outlook:The first...
was not yet available on all platforms.
The Line Mode Browser was released to a limited audience on VAX
VAX
VAX was an instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid-1970s. A 32-bit complex instruction set computer ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC's various Programmed Data Processor ISAs...
, RS/6000
RS/6000
RISC System/6000, or RS/6000 for short, is a family of RISC and UNIX based servers, workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT computer platform in February 1990 and was the first computer line to see the use of IBM's POWER and PowerPC based...
and Sun-4
Sun-4
Sun-4 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RISC architecture in place of the 68k family...
computers in March 1991. Before the release of the first publicly-available version, it was integrated into the CERN Program Library
CERN Program Library
The CERN Program Library or CERNLIB is a collection of FORTRAN77 libraries and modules, maintained "as is" by CERN. Its content ranges from more specialized data analysis of high energy physics to general purpose numerical analysis...
(CERNLIB), used mostly by the High-Energy Physics
Particle physics
Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the existence and interactions of particles that are the constituents of what is usually referred to as matter or radiation. In current understanding, particles are excitations of quantum fields and interact following their dynamics...
-community. The first beta of the browser was released on 8 April 1991. Berners-Lee announced the browser's availability in June 1991 in the alt.hypertext newsgroup of Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
.
Users could use the browser from anywhere in the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
through the telnet
TELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
protocol to the info.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 as DESY
DESY
The DESY is the biggest German research center for particle physics, with sites in Hamburg and Zeuthen....
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, and elsewhere throughout the world.
The first stable version, 1.1, was released in January 1992. Since version 1.2l, released in October 1992, the browser has used the common code library (later called libwww
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....
). The main developer, Pellow, started working on the MacWWW
MacWWW
MacWWW, also known as Samba, is an early minimalist web browser from 1992 meant to run on Macintosh computers. It was the first web browser for the Mac OS platform, and the first for any non-Unix operating system. MacWWW tries to emulate the design of WorldWideWeb. Unlike modern browsers it opens...
project, and both browsers began to share some source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
. In the May 1993 World Wide Web Newsletter Berners-Lee announced that the browser was released into the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
to reduce the work on new clients. 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. 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.
The Agora
Agora (web browser)
Agora was a World Wide Web email browser and was a proof of concept to help people to use the full internet. Agora was an email-based web browser designed for non-graphic terminals and to help people without full access to the internet such as in developing countries or without a permanent internet...
World Wide Web email browser was based on the Line Mode Browser. 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 that Mosaic
Mosaic (web browser)
Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...
had quickly changed the web browser landscape and only 2% of all World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
users browsed by Line Mode Browser. The new niche of text-only web browser was filled by Lynx
Lynx (web browser)
Lynx is a text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals and is very configurable.-Usage:Browsing in Lynx consists of highlighting the chosen link using cursor keys, or having all links on a page numbered and entering the chosen link's number. Current versions support...
, which made the Line Mode Browser largely irrelevant as a browser. One reason was that Lynx is much more flexible as the Line Mode Browser. It then became a test application for the libwww.
Operating mode
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. The user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
had to be as simple as possible. The user began with a command-line interface specifying a Uniform Resource Locator
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
(URL). The requested web page was then printed line by line on the screen, like a teleprinter
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
. Websites were displayed using the first versions of HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
. Formatting was achieved with capitalization, indentation, and new lines. Header elements were capitalized, centered and separated from the normal text by empty lines.
Navigation was not controlled by a pointing device
Pointing device
A pointing device is an input interface that allows a user to input spatial data to a computer...
such as a mouse
Mouse (computing)
In computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
or arrow keys
Arrow keys
Cursor movement keys or arrow keys are buttons on a computer keyboard that are either programmed or designated to move the cursor in a specified direction....
, but by text commands typed into the program.
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."
The page scrolled
Scrolling
In computer graphics, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display. "Scrolling", as such, does not change the layout of the text or pictures, or but incrementally moves the user's view across what is...
down when an empty command (carriage return
Carriage return
Carriage return, often shortened to return, refers to a control character or mechanism used to start a new line of text.Originally, the term "carriage return" referred to a mechanism or lever on a typewriter...
) was entered, and scrolled up with the command "
u". The command "b" navigated backwards in history, and new pages were navigated with "g http://..." (for go to) and the URL.The browser had no authoring functions, so pages could only be read and not edited. This was considered to be unfortunate by 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:...
, 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"
Features
The Line Mode Browser was designed to be able to be platform independent. There are official ports to Apollo/DomainApollo/Domain
Apollo/Domain was a range of workstations developed and produced by Apollo Computer from circa 1980 to 1989. The machines were built around the Motorola 68k family of processors, except for the DN10000, which had from one to four of Apollo's RISC processors, named PRISM.-Operating system:The...
, IBM RS6000, DECStation/ultrix, VAX/VMS, VAX/Ultrix, MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
, 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...
, Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, MVS
MVS
Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390 IBM mainframe computers...
, VM/CMS
VM (operating system)
VM refers to a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers. The first version, released in 1972, was VM/370, or officially Virtual Machine Facility/370...
, FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, Solaris, and to Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
. The browser supports many protocols like File Transfer Protocol
File Transfer Protocol
File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...
(FTP), Gopher, Hypertext Transfer Protocol
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
(HTTP), Network News Transfer Protocol
Network News Transfer Protocol
The Network News Transfer Protocol is an Internet application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles between news servers and for reading and posting articles by end user client applications...
(NNTP), and Wide area information server
Wide area information server
Wide Area Information Servers or WAIS is a client–server text searching system that uses the ANSI Standard Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specifications for Library Applications" to search index databases on remote computers...
(WAIS).
Other features included rlogin
Rlogin
rlogin is a software utility for Unix-like computer operating systems that allows users to log in on another host via a network, communicating via TCP port 513.It was first distributed as part of the 4.2BSD release....
and telnet
TELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
hyperlink
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
s, Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
support (added at 25 November 1994 in version 2.15), and ability to be set up as a proxy
Proxy server
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
client. The browser could run as a background process and download files. The Line Mode Browser has had problems recognizing character entities
Character entity reference
In the markup languages SGML, HTML, XHTML and XML, a character entity reference is a reference to a particular kind of named entity that has been predefined or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition . The "replacement text" of the entity consists of a single character from the Universal...
, properly collapsing whitespace, and supporting tables and frames
Framing (World Wide Web)
When using web browsers, the terms frames or frameset refer to the display of two or more web pages or media elements displayed side-by-side within the same browser window...
.