Decrypts the world's first graphics browser, Erwise

Generally, people think that the predecessor of Mosaic web browser) is the first graphic web browser. Although Mosaic once led the revolution in Web browsers, in fact, the world's first graphic Web browser should be Erwise.

Recently, four developers of Erwise have an interview with each other to reveal the development history of Erwise in detail.

Inspired and encouraged by Robert Cailliau in 1991, Kim niberger Kim Nyberg), timu Rantanen Teemu Rantanen, a student at Helsinki University of Technology in Finland) kati somini Kati Suominen) and kerui sadema Kari sydänmaanlakka decided to develop a new browser and use it as their Bachelor's Degree research subject.

In April of the following year, the first graphic Web browser Erwise was born. Erwise's features were already quite powerful at the time, and even the Mosaic launched a year later could not reach its level, such as Erwise's webpage text search function. It is worth mentioning that Erwise already supports multi-window operation. You can click a hyperlink to open another window.

So how do these young people think of developing a graphic Web browser? Tim berneas-Lee Tim Berners-Lee, father of the world wide, once suggested that a graphic browser would make web pages easier to use. This graphic project is of great significance to students. The four developers chose this browser project.

Jin niberger, one of Erwise developers, revealed that we have followed Mosaic later, but we found that there are many problems that have been solved in Erwise. Jin niberger even sent emails to Mosaic developers and made some valuable suggestions.

Why did the Erwise browser not become a pioneer in Web browsers? At that time, Finland's economy was in a recession and the country was on the verge of bankruptcy, So venture capital could not be discussed at all. In the end, Silicon Valley in the United States has created the glory of the Mosaic browser.

Timu rantana revealed that in Finland at the time, we could not commercialize Erwise browsers. The only way to make a profit is to expect that Netscape can buy the products we develop. Although the Erwise we developed has reached the initial level of Mosaic, Erwise is still a semi-finished product. We should have made Erwise run on multiple platforms. However, we finally gave up.

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