Line Mode Browser: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:40, 18 November 2019

Revision as of 22:46, 8 January 2020

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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.<ref>{{cite journal |title= PRIAM and VMEbus at CERN |last= Eck |first= C. |date= December 1985 |work= VMEbus in Physics Conference |url= http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/17/041/17041317.pdf |accessdate=26 July 2011 }}</ref>

The short development time produced software in a simplified dialect of the [[C (programming language)|C programming language]]. The official standard [[ANSI C]] was not yet available on all platforms.<ref name="IEEE" />

The Line Mode Browser was released to a limited audience on [[VAX]], [[RS/6000]] and [[Sun-4]] computers in March 1991.<ref name="cern">{{cite web|last=Crémel|first=Nicole|title=A Little History of the World Wide Web|url=http://ref.web.cern.ch/ref/CERN/CNL/2001/001/www-history/|publisher=[[CERN]]|accessdate=2 June 2010|date=5 April 2001}}{{dl|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071219114722/http://ref.web.cern.ch/ref/CERN/CNL/2001/001/www-history/|archive-date=November19 2019December 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref> Before the release of the first publicly available version, it was integrated into the [[CERN Program Library]] (CERNLIB), used mostly by the [[Particle physics|High-Energy Physics]]-community.<ref name="howthewebbegan" /><ref name="newsletter92" /> The first [[Software development process#beta|beta]] of the browser was released on 8 April 1991.<ref>{{cite book|first1=James|last1=Gillies|first2=Robert|last2=Cailliau|authorlink2=Robert Cailliau|title=How the Web Was Born|year=2000|isbn=0-19-286207-3|pages=[https://archive.org/details/howwebwasbornsto00gill/page/345 345]|url=https://archive.org/details/howwebwasbornsto00gill/page/345}}</ref> Berners-Lee announced the browser's availability in August 1991 in the ''alt.hypertext'' newsgroup of [[Usenet]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, and the World Wide Web|url=http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_lee.htm#dev|accessdate=26 July 2010|first=Bill|last=Stewart|publisher=Living Internet}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/1991/08/art-6484.txt|title=Re: Qualifiers on Hypertext links...|authorlink=Tim Berners-Lee|first=Tim|last=Berners-Lee|date=6 August 1991|accessdate=28 July 2010|quote=We have a prototype hypertext editor for the NeXT, and a browser for line mode terminals which runs on almost anything.}}</ref>

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.<ref name="tenyarscern" /><ref>{{cite book|first1=James|last1=Gillies|first2=Robert|last2=Cailliau|authorlink2=Robert Cailliau|title=How the Web Was Born|isbn=0-19-286207-3|year=2000|page=[https://archive.org/details/howwebwasbornsto00gill/page/205 205]|url=https://archive.org/details/howwebwasbornsto00gill/page/205}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Berners-Lee|first=Tim|title= Public Domain CERN WWW Software |url= http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/0259.html |accessdate=11 October 2010|date=7 May 1993}}</ref>

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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:

<blockquote>"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"<ref name="IEEE">{{cite web|last1=Petrie|first1=Charles|title=Interview Robert Cailliau on the WWW Proposal: "How It Really Happened."|url=http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/ic-cailliau |publisher=[[Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers]]|accessdate= 18 August 2010|authorlink2=Robert Cailliau|first2=Robert|last2=Cailliau|date=November 1997|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110106041256/http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/ic-cailliau|archive-date=6 January 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref></blockquote>

== Features ==