Comment by forgotmypw17
2 years ago
I created a note-taking app which works in every* browser, with and without JS and CSS, has bookmarklets for clipping, PKI-backed user accounts, completely portable data format, threaded conversations, completely auditable data structure, labeling, queryable with SQLite, web of trust for the user identities, and support for adding and running code.
* Mosaic has issues, and I have not tested on many pre-Mosaic browsers. I've never tested with WorldWideWeb. I've done extensive testing with Netscape and IE. Older versions of Chrome are extremely flaky for some reason, and often don't even run. Most old and retro browsers work, however, including sessions, posting, voting, etc.
Wow! I thought I was familiar with the history of the web, but I didn’t realize there were pre-Mosaic browsers!
Just to confirm: you are referring to this link in your profile, correct?
https://github.com/gulkily/pollyanna
Edit: glad to see w3m in the supported browser list!
Yes, the first browser was WorldWideWeb, written by TBL himself. Then, there was a small ecosystem of other browsers before Mosaic came into the picture. Mosaic was the first browser with a "must-have feature" which allowed it to become very popular compared to the others. This must-have feature was inline images, using the <img> tag. Before this, if you wanted to include an image to a page, you linked to the file with an <a> tag. After Mosaic became popular, the team who developed it started Netscape, which was unofficially called Mozilla, i.e. Mosaic K*lla. This was sort of the "zeroth" browser war. Netscape's must-have feature at the time was frames using the <frameset> and <frame> tag. After that, came IE and the "first" browser war, between IE and Netscape...
(I wasn't there, but I've done a lot of research into this.)