The Mosaic web browser was the first graphical web browser. Development was begun in 1992 at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications when the internet was still very new to most of the world. At the time it was mostly navigated via FTP, Usenet, and Gopher, and Mosaic became one of the killer apps of the early 90s. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina created the browser for the X Windows system and Version 1.0 was released in April 1993, followed by 2.0 in December with versions for both the Apple and Windows platforms as well. Both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator still used technology that originated with Mosaic for a time, and in each program’s Help>About menu credit is given.
Mosaic was the dominant web browser until it was eclipsed by Netscape Navigator, which became the new leader after Andreessen and others left the University of Illinois and formed Mosaic Communications Corporation, which later became Netscape Communications Corporation.
