Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> - From vapourware to scareware, Microsoft keeps innovating
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Microsoft talks a lot about innovation. It innovated the Xbox, several
> | years after everyone else; it innovated the Zune, several years after
> | everyone else; it innovated the GUI, several years after Apple (okay,
> | and Xerox); it innovated Hotmail ... oh, alright, it bought Hotmail.
> | Bill Gates famously missed the internet revolution and then innovated
> | the web browser, several years after Netscape.
Has Microsoft claimed that they created the web browser?
The about box last I checked, mentions how they use code from Spyglass
originally for Mosaic, as well the the IJG JPEG library, and the PNG
library.
Netscape was not the first web browser. The Netscape *Navigator* was
preceded by the NCSA Mosaic which some of the Netscape engineers had worked
on before working at Netscape.
NCSA Mosaic was essentially a research project that used Motif, and ran on
commercial Unix systems.
NCSA Mosaic was not the first graphical web browser. There was a program
called ViolaWWW, as well as others back then. The original web browser was
written by Tim Berners-Lee and ran on a NeXT computer.
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html
http://www.w3.org/History/1994/WWW/Journals/CACM/screensnap2_24c.gif
XEROX had some awesome technology with Smalltalk and their many other
research systems that were IIRC partially funded by the US government. They
however had a myopic vision of the future, so they didn't actually want to
sell hardware and software, because some people at the company didn't want
to lose their copier sales. So, they were more than happy to demonstrate
technologies like email, and the window system they had to people like Steve
Jobs, and Bill Gates. Steve Jobs paid XEROX money for the vision of that
technology. Microsoft and others later cloned it with tweaks here and
there.
All of the graphical and hypertext systems were inspired by NLS that was
developed by the creator of the mouse.
http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/
Videos:
http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html
I think that the history of hypertext has been debated. I think at one time
the idea might have been attributed to Douglas Engelbart, but I recall some
other paper or research indicated someone before that had a similar idea.
The NLS project was also funded (in part I believe) by the US government.
-George
> | [...]
> |
> | In the meantime, though, the company that brought us vapourware has
> | innovated yet another new product: scareware (oh, okay, a couple ofy
> | ears after SCO).
> `----
>
> http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/D1173B1AE779A1A1CC2572E6000E30E6
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