MacWWW, also known as Samba,
is an early minimalist
web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
from 1992 meant to run on
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
computers. It was the first web browser for the
classic Mac OS
Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. Th ...
platform, and the first for any non-
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
. MacWWW tries to emulate the design of
WorldWideWeb.
Unlike modern browsers it opens each link in a new window only after a double-click.
It was a commercial product from
CERN and cost 50
European Currency Unit
The European Currency Unit (, ; , ECU, or XEU) was a unit of account used by the European Economic Community and composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979 and was assigned the ISO 42 ...
s
The browser is no longer available from its original ftp location, but can still be downloaded from mirrors.
[The original ftp location at ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/bin/mac/ is no longer available.]
History
It was written at
CERN by
Robert Cailliau and later
Nicola Pellow helped with the development.
Pellow worked originally on the
Line Mode Browser and both browsers shared some parts of the
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...
after her switching.
Pre-alpha version were available, but this version worked only on "coliur
icmac but not on big black and white ones it seems."
Version 1.00 was released on 12 May 1993 with the commentary: "We know there is much to be improved, but it works well on system 7 and system 6.0.5".
Features
The MacWWW which was a minimalist browser displayed only text, no images nor lists.
*Implemented in
THINK C using its human interface objects.
*Uses much code in common with the Line Mode browser.
This code later became
libwww.
*
bookmarks
A bookmark is used to keep one's place in a printed work. It can also refer to:
* Bookmark (digital), a pointer in a web browser and other software
* ''Bookmarks'' (album) by Five for Fighting
* ''Bookmarks'' (magazine), an American literary ma ...
*For the hypertext object, the THINK C text object was modified to allow multifont capability, and to allow anchors to be encoded in the styles.
According to critics, within a year the browser became obsolete because
Mosaic
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...
and
MacWeb had much more features, for example MacWWW showed no loading status.
Without the mouse and MacOS support MacWWW would be a
text-mode browser.
See also
*
List of old Macintosh software
Annotations
References
External links
MacWWW description and screenshotevolt.org– This browser archive has version 1.03 for download
{{DEFAULTSORT:Macwww
Classic Mac OS-only web browsers
1992 software
Discontinued web browsers