A report on Line Mode Browser

Line Mode Browser displaying the German Wikipedia
Line Mode Browser displaying the German Wikipedia

Second web browser ever created.

- Line Mode Browser
Line Mode Browser displaying the German Wikipedia

9 related topics with Alpha

Overall

Libwww

4 links

Modular client-side web API for Unix and Windows.

Modular client-side web API for Unix and Windows.

From 1995 onwards, the Line Mode Browser was no longer released separately, but part of the libwww package.

WorldWideWeb, c. undefined 1994

WorldWideWeb

3 links

First web browser and web page editor.

First web browser and web page editor.

WorldWideWeb, c. undefined 1994
WorldWideWeb, c. undefined 1994

By this time, several others, including Bernd Pollermann, Robert Cailliau, Jean-François Groff, and visiting undergraduate student Nicola Pellow – who later wrote the Line Mode Browser – were involved in the project.

Nicola Pellow with Tim Berners-Lee in their office at CERN in Switzerland, 1992

Nicola Pellow

3 links

English mathematician and information scientist who was one of the nineteen members of the WWW Project at CERN working with Tim Berners-Lee.

English mathematician and information scientist who was one of the nineteen members of the WWW Project at CERN working with Tim Berners-Lee.

Nicola Pellow with Tim Berners-Lee in their office at CERN in Switzerland, 1992

The outcome was that she wrote the first generic Line Mode Browser that could run on non-NeXT systems.

Traditional browser arrangement: UI features above page content

Web browser

2 links

Application software for accessing the World Wide Web or a local website.

Application software for accessing the World Wide Web or a local website.

Traditional browser arrangement: UI features above page content
Nicola Pellow and Tim Berners-Lee in 1992
Marc Andreessen, lead developer of Mosaic and Navigator, in 2007

He then recruited Nicola Pellow to write the Line Mode Browser, which displayed web pages on dumb terminals.

Screenshot of MacWWW

MacWWW

2 links

Early minimalist web browser from 1992 meant to run on Macintosh computers.

Early minimalist web browser from 1992 meant to run on Macintosh computers.

Screenshot of MacWWW
Screenshot of MacWWW

Pellow worked originally on the Line Mode Browser and both browsers shared some parts of the source code after her switching.

Agora (web browser)

1 links

World Wide Web email browser and was a proof of concept to help people to use the full internet.

World Wide Web email browser and was a proof of concept to help people to use the full internet.

The Agora server is based on the Line Mode Browser and on the libwww and thus it supported different kinds of internet protocols besides the classical http and gopher browsing, namely NNTP, Archie, Finger, WAIS.

Testbed

0 links

Platform for conducting rigorous, transparent, and replicable testing of scientific theories, computational tools, and new technologies.

Platform for conducting rigorous, transparent, and replicable testing of scientific theories, computational tools, and new technologies.

The Line Mode browser got a new function to interact with the libwww library as a sample and test application.

Firefox 1.5 (2005)

Gopher (protocol)

1 links

Communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks.

Communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks.

Firefox 1.5 (2005)
Kristall 0.3 (2021)

Line Mode Browser, since version 1.1, January 1992

A telnet client accessing the Busybox in a router.

Telnet

0 links

Application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection.

Application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection.

A telnet client accessing the Busybox in a router.

Line Mode Browser, a command line web browser