Of course, the keystone of the Web's success was the Web browser itself. The notions of hypertext linking and navigating forward and backward through Web pages resulted in such an easily graspable standard that the interface was universally adopted -- which isn't to say there wasn't room for improvement. Almost immediately after Berners-Lee completed the WorldWideWeb browser for the NeXT platform, Nicola Pellow, one of his collaborators on the WWW project, wrote a generic text-only version called WWW that could run on non-NeXT systems.
Not long after, several other text-and-image browsers were developed and released. One of the most popular was Pei-Yuan Wei's ViolaWWW for the X Window platform. This browser, which bore a strong resemblance to the Mac's HyperCard application, was the first to feature support for modern browser implantations like style sheets and tables. It also incorporated back and forward buttons, as well as bookmarks and a browsing history.
  From 1992 to 1993, ViolaWWW was the leading Web browser. Courtesy of Pei-Yuan Wei. Click image to enlarge and to launch image gallery. |
In 1993, however, NCSA Mosaic -- written by Mark Andreessen and Eric Bina for Unix but translated to the Apple and Windows platforms shortly after its release -- supplanted ViolaWWW as the Web browser of choice. Mosaic was the first Web browser to successfully integrate text and graphics in the same window. It was also the first browser ported to both Windows and the Mac, and the result was nothing short of phenomenal -- ordinary, everyday computer users were suddenly able to browse the World Wide Web.
Editor's Note: For more about the great browser battles for the hearts and minds of Web users, see the sidebar Browser Wars: The Saga Continues.
The advent of Windows- and Mac-based browsers, along with the medium's inherent simplicity and graspability, laid the foundation for the explosion of the World Wide Web. Over the first five or six years of its life, millions of Web sites were launched by corporations, publishing companies, retail outlets, and more.
A Brand New Media Outlet
Besides the pure novelty of Web-surfing, one of the most appealing aspects of the World Wide Web was -- and still is -- the ability to access and read newspaper and magazine articles from around the globe.
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 Introduction WWW: Past, Present, And Future• Beginnings • The Web Debuts • Better Browsers, New Media • E-Commerce And Search • Self-Expression Ascendant Browser Wars: The Saga Continues The Skinny On Web 2.0 WWW Pop-Up Timeline Browser Image Gallery |
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The availability of instant-access news had a profound impact on traditional media and society. As the masses flocked to online sites such as ESPN.com and CNN.com, the evening news, newspapers, and even magazines suddenly felt a whole lot less relevant. These industries would spend years attempting to reconfigure themselves to accommodate the changing desires of their followers.
Ironically, and unbeknownst to media experts at the time, a similar status erosion would soon affect traditional journalistic outlets -- both print and online. By the turn of the century, the elite status, privileged access, and relative influence of traditional publishers would be hobbled and occasionally overshadowed by "regular" people's blogs and homegrown sites.
(Another form of media that quickly found a niche on the World Wide Web -- and in turn helped drive the adoption and usage of computers and the Internet -- was pornography. The potential psychological and societal implications of Web-based porn have been impossible to ignore; for better or worse, the perceived privacy and specificity afforded by the Web have allowed the public unprecedented indulgence of their erotic fantasies.)
As with all new ventures, revenue rapidly became a primary concern. How would companies monetize their new Web presences? For media-oriented organizations, the answer came in a very traditional form: advertising. Global Net Navigator launched the first clickable Web ad in 1993. A year later, Hotwired.com -- started by Wired Magazine -- became the first site to sell banner ads. AT&T was the first company to purchase one of these banners.
For other companies, though, the road to online riches lay not in selling ads on media sites, but in a more traditional capitalist outlet: selling and marketing goods and services.
