Erwise

Erwise

Screenshot of the browser
Developer(s) Kim Nyberg, Teemu Rantanen, Kati Suominen, Kari Sydänmaanlakka[1]
Initial release 0.1 / 15 April 1992 (1992-04-15)
Last release
0.1 / 25 April 1994 (1994-04-25)
Written in C
Platform Unix (Sun-4,[2] NeXT/CubX,[2] DEC[2] Ultrix) using Motif[1]
Available in English
Type web browser
License Public Domain

Erwise is a discontinued pioneering web browser, and the first commonly available with a graphical user interface.[3][4]

Released in April 1992, the browser was written for Unix computers running X and used the W3 common access library.[5] Erwise was the combined master's project of four Finnish students at the Helsinki University of Technology:[6] Kim Nyberg, Teemu Rantanen, Kati Suominen and Kari Sydänmaanlakka.[1][2][7] The group decided to make a web browser at the suggestion of Robert Cailliau, who was visiting the university,[8] and were supervised by Ari Lemmke.

The development of Erwise halted after the students graduated and went on to other projects.[2] Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, travelled to Finland to encourage the group to continue with the project. However, none of the project members could afford to continue with the project without proper funding.[2]

The name Erwise originates from otherwise and the name of the project group, OHT.[8][9][10]

History

Characteristics

The following are significant characteristics of the browser:

Criticism

Erwise crashed on some versions of Unix, which Berners-Lee attributed to poor Motif implementations.[2][11]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Henrik Frystyk Nielsen (26 October 1999). "World Wide Web People - "Erwise" team". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Tim Berners-Lee (29 April 1992). "Comparison with ViolaWWW". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
  3. 1 2 Holwerda, Thom (3 March 2009). "The World's First Graphical Browser: Erwise". OSNews. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
  4. http://cnlart.web.cern.ch/cnlart/2001/001/www-history/
  5. "Computing at CERN in the 1990s". cerncourier. 7 September 2006. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
  6. Tim Berners-Lee. "What were the first WWW browsers?". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2010-06-15.
  7. "The Greatest Internet Pioneers You Never Heard Of". Xconomy.com. Retrieved 2010-06-15.
  8. 1 2 Stewart, Bill. "Web Browser History". Living Internet. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 "Status of "Erwise" browser". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
  10. "Helsingin Sanomat" (in Finnish). 10 February 2000. Retrieved 2010-06-15.
  11. Tim Berners-Lee. "Viola and Erwise". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 15 June 2010.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/8/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.