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In April 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois released Mosaic, the first browser with a graphical interface. And that changed everything. Though the Web itself was first invented in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, it didn't become a popular pastime (much less a commercial venue) until the release of Mosaic. Mosaic's graphical representation of sites brought the Net to life as never before. And for over a year, it was the browser everybody was talking a bout.

Users downloaded the free browser at an unprecedented rate, and Mosaic soon became synonymous with the Web, which was growing wildly by the day. Pundits speculated on the browser's glorious future. "It's a great little application now," said one such c ommentator. "And it's only going to get better."

Which might have been true had Marc Andreessen stayed onboard. But the initial developer of Mosaic knew a good thing when he saw it. In 1994, he left the NCSA to form his own company, Mosaic Communications Corp, with Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark. Many were curious about what Andreessen was up to, but no one could have predicted how drastically his company - which soon became Netscape - would affect, and in fact, dominate the Web.

Mosaic did continue to improve, but it was no competition for Andreessen's commercial venture. Netscape had cherry-picked most of the Mosaic engineers, and threw a lot more money at development than the NCSA ever could. With the beta release of Netscap e's first browser (code-named Mozilla) in October 1994, the popularity of Mosaic soon waned. Following the NCSA's lead, Netscape opted to give away its client, which allowed the company to gain market share with relative ease. At first the browsers were v ery similar (though Netscape was sleeker and faster from the start), but while the NCSA stuck steadfast to World Wide Web Consortium specs, Netscape threw standards to the wind and churned out proprietary tags. In the end, Mosaic just couldn't keep up wit h the rate of innovation. The browser is still produced and upgraded - the most recent versions support tables and frames - but it accounts for only a tiny share of clients.

Features at a Glance
no	Java
no	Frames
YES	Tables
no	Plug-ins
no	Font Size
no	Font Color
no	JavaScript
no	Style Sheets
no	Animated GIFs

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