MosaicMosaic is a graphical user interface Internet browser. It allows users to access information from the WWW by clicking on hypertext links connecting hypertext documents.
Not only is Mosaic one of the original WWW browsers, it is also one of the most popular. It is among a group of Internet browsers known as graphical browsers. Graphical browsers support multimedia elements such as graphics, video, and sound. These browsers differ from Text- Based browsers in that the latter display only text.
WWW browsers are Internet client software applications that allow users to access information from a number of resources. Mosaic can access data from WWW servers (HTTP), gopher servers, FTP servers and news servers (NNTP). With the addition of gateway servers, Mosaic can access information from Archie, WAIS and Veronica.
Documents viewed with Mosaic (and other WWW Browsers) are written in HTML. Mosaic users may jump easily from one hypertext document to another by clicking on hyperlinks. The most richly formatted hypertext document viewed on Mosaic would send the user on an informational odyssey appealing to both sight and sound.
Mosaic was developed by the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications). The NCSA, which is located at the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois, was established in 1985 with a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The purpose of the NCSA is to provide an improved platform for scientific research. The scientific users of Mosaic are involved in computational science, which is an approach to scientific research that allows scientists to complement traditional research methods by incorporating computational technology. NCSA Mosaic currently exists for the purpose of academic research and personal use.
Spyglass, Inc. provides a commercial version of Mosaic, called Enhanced Mosaic. Spyglass sells licenses of Enhanced Mosaic to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM). Mosaic software is currently licensed to IBM, CompuServe, FTP Software, and many other commercial software systems vendors, publishers, and online service providers.
There are versions of Mosaic which are compatible with Windows, Macintosh and UNIX formats.