History of the Browser World Wide Web 1991

History of the Browser World. Wide. Web 1991 (Tim Berners-Lee, Cern) Mosaic 1993 (Marc Andreessen, NCSA) Netscape Navigator 1994 (Marc Andreessen) Opera 1994, 1996 (Norway) Internet Explorer 1995 (Microsoft) Safari 2003 (Apple) Firefox 2004 (Mozilla Foundation, open source) Chrome 2008 (Goggle)

Browser Wars 1996 – 2001 Internet Explorer crushes Netscape business model Navigator free for non-commercial use Sales to businesses fund research & development Differentiate to hold market share Internet Explorer business model IE free to everybody Bundled with Windows monopoly profits fund R&D Differentiate to gain market share

Browser Wars (continued) In October 1997, Internet Explorer 4. 0 was released. The release party in San Francisco featured a ten-foot-tall letter "e" logo. Netscape employees showing up to work the following morning found the giant logo on their front lawn, with a sign attached that read "From the IE team. . . We Love You". The Netscape employees promptly knocked it over and set a giant figure of their Mozilla dinosaur mascot atop it, holding a sign reading "Netscape 72, Microsoft 18" representing the market distribution. [8] - Wikipedia

Browser Wars (continued) Rapid (and buggy) development / release cycles Proprietary HTML tags: <blink>, <marquee> Blurring the line between “document” and “program” Security problems Some web developers took sides “best viewed in Netscape / Internet Explorer” logos Linked to the download page for the indicated browser Neither browser was interested in standards But the need became obvious to web developers

Browser Wars (continued) When Microsoft won It stopped innovating Internet Explorer was the (de facto) standard When Netscape lost It created the non-profit Mozilla Foundation It made the code for Navigator open-source W 3 C continued to recommend standards Separate structure (HTML 4. 01) and presentation (CSS) Upstarts (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Crome, etc) Competed on their support for the W 3 C standards Eventually, Internet Explorer followed

“Quirks” Mode Today, all browsers support standards Compliant pages are displayed similarly There are multiple standards HTML 4, HTML 4. 01, XHTML 1. 0, XHTML 1. 1, … Browsers need to know which standard a page adheres to Browsers still need to support old web pages Each browser does this differently (and slowly) To avoid “quirks” mode DOCTYPE announces the standard your page uses Make sure your page obeys that standard.

DOCTYPE On the top line of your html file Only a handfull to choose from Spelling (including capitalization) must be identical HTML 4. 01 (transitional) <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W 3 C//DTD HTML 4. 01 Transitional//EN" "http: //www. w 3. org/TR/html 4/loose. dtd"> HTML 4. 01 (strict) <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W 3 C//DTD HTML 4. 01//EN" "http: //www. w 3. org/TR/html 4/strict. dtd"> XHTML 1. 0 (strict) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W 3 C//DTD XHTML 1. 0 Strict//EN" "http: //www. w 3. org/TR/xhtml 1/DTD/xhtml 1 -strict. dtd">

Compliance Issues Images need an alt attribute Specify a character encoding <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=“text/html; charset=utf-8”> Don't leave off end (or start) tag html element required Containing head and body elements (and nothing else) title element required in head element Only block elements nest directly in body or blockquote Block elements cannot be in p or inline elements a elements cannot contain other a elements