Netscape

Netscape became a big success within months of its release. And some of the contributing factors to its success were the pace with which software releases took place. New innovations and improvements were constantly being made to the browser and
that made it “the” browser to browse the Internet with. Netscape wanted to counter this situation in a manner that would impress its clients and in March 1996 launched Netscape 2. With the launch of Netscape 2 a bevy of must-have breakthrough features (frames, Java, Javascript and Plug-ins) which helped distance it from the pack. Netscape 3 rolled out in August 96 at almost the same time as Internet Explorer 3.0 June 1997 saw the release of Netscape 4 while IE 4 was released in October 1994

Currently, Netscape has been sidelined by the barrage of new browsers such as Firefox and Opera. Features such as tabbed browsing, which was the mainstay of Netscape, has found new homes in these other browsers. The current version of Netscapeis 8.0.2 and is based on the Mozilla Firefox core

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer arrived at a time when Netscape was the master of the game. Internet Explorer 1.0 When Windows 95 first made its appearance in July 1995 it included inbuilt support for dial-up networking and TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) plus other key technologies for connecting to the Internet. Internet Explorer 2.0 arrived in November 1995 and was the first cross platform browser released by Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 technology introduced Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol as well as support for HTTP cookies, Virtual Reality Modeling Language.
The next big Microsoft browser release was IE 3.0 in August 1996, which had a completely rebuilt core and considered one of the best browsers of the time. This browser was designed for Windows 95 and included features that users immediately took to such as Internet Mail and News 1.0 and WindowsAddress Book. IE 7 which was scheduled for release along with Longhorn willnow be released prematurely.

The First Browser – WorldWideWeb (Nexus)

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web or WWW in 1989, to distinguish
between the program and the abstract information space “www” which was typed in the Uniform Resource Locator (URL). WorldWideWeb was written in Objective-C and it would let users browse “http:”, “news:”, “ftp:” and local “file:” spaces.The browser was the best at the time, since it was the only one The menu bar looked like a primitive version of the Windows Desktop, and clicking on it would provide a list of options similar to the Windows of today.