Last month's issue of Dr. Dobb's Developer Update described how the structural underpinnings of the Internet are being revamped via the new version of the IP protocol. This month we look at one aspect of the superstructure that is growing rapidly on top of the IP technological foundation. Of the numerous applications that rest on the TCP/IP suite of protocols--such as ftp, gopher, telnet, wais, netnews, and irc--by far the most successful is Mosaic and its kindred World Wide Web (WWW) browsers. According to Netscape Communications, there are now over 3 million WWW users accessing 10,000 Web servers--three times the number of one year ago.
It was not too long ago that the Mosaic package emerged as the clear winner in a crowded field of public-domain or non-profit Web browsers such as Cello, Viola, Emacs-W3, Lynx, Chimera, MacWeb, WinWeb, and OmniWeb. Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and is based on the HTTP protocols (designed by Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN European physics facility) that define the World Wide Web.
In the December 1994 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal, Ray Duncan reviewed dozens of existing Internet books. Leafing through these books, you'll notice that many of these discuss classic Internet applications (ftp and its archaic ilk) with scant mention of Mosaic and other Web browsers. This will rapidly change. Look for bookstore shelves to sag under the weight of an upcoming flood of WWW-related books. But book authors will be hard-pressed to keep up with fast-moving changes in this market. For some time to come, the only up-to-date information will be available electronically, via the Web itself. Bob Allison, posting in comp.infosystems.www, writes:
While Mosaic has certainly earned bragging rights as the "killer app" of the Internet, it has become long in the tooth, and its position is now being challenged by a host of new contenders. These challengers include direct offspring from the Mosaic code base--such as packages from O'Reilly, Spry, Spyglass, Quarterdeck, Infoseek, Ubique, and Quadralay--as well as products that lack a bloodline connection, such as BookLink Internetworks, IBM Web Explorer, Netcom NetCruiser, Pipeline, and Apple's rumored "Cyberdog" project. And then there's Microsoft Network, which I'll discuss a bit later.
At the moment, the principal pretender to the Mosaic throne is Netscape Navigator, from Netscape Communications. As has been widely reported here and elsewhere, Netscape Communications (formerly Mosaic Communications Corp.) was founded by Marc Andreessen, the original author of NCSA Mosaic (or, in Netscape's words, "creator of the NCSA Mosaic research prototype"), together with Jim Clark, founder and ex-CEO of Silicon Graphics (SGI), plus a host of talented engineers hired away from NCSA and SGI. Although the company was only founded in April 1994, it has already released a beta version of its Web browser. Version 0.9 of Netscape Navigator has been available since early October from ftp.mcom.com and several other ftp sites. Version 0.93 was recently released, for Windows, Mac, X (including Linux).
Netscape Navigator has quickly become the Web browser of choice, given that it is free, fast, and robust. The company has stated that Version 1.0 will also be free, for personal use. What does it do that NCSA Mosaic doesn't? At the moment, not much. One early user says: "There isn't anything particularly new in it, it's basically just an industrial-strength version of Mosaic." Reducing the bug count is nothing to sneer at, however. NCSA Mosaic is not known for being bug free, although it has a better reputation than some of its other university-bred brethren. Another user adds:
Navigator V0.93 has built-in proprietary security features that support Netscape's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) extension to the HTTP protocol. The encryption and authentication facilities (using technology licensed from RSA Data Security) go beyond the basic HTTP access authorization now in use at a number of Web sites (for example, Wired magazine's popular HotWired site). This basic access authorization is supported in many other browsers. The SSL layers over HTTP and can layer over any TCP/IP protocol, such as NNTP, FTP, and so on. SSL is different from a similar proposal by Enterprise Integration Technologies (EIT), called Secure-HTTP (SHTTP). Marc Andreessen writes: "SHTTP and SSL have different motivations and provide different capabilities; however, we all have a common interest in interoperability."
When the first beta of Navigator was released, there was a flurry of speculation in the comp.infosystems.www newsgroup that perhaps parts of the original NCSA codebase had found their way into Navigator. Suspicions arose because, when Navigator crashed, the following message would appear: "Mosaic caused a General Protection Fault at_" Users found you could not launch both NCSA Mosaic and Navigator on Windows at the same time, because NCSA Mosaic would complain that you can only have "one copy of Mosaic" running at a time, due to having the same Windows instance name. However, Jon Mittelhauser of Netscape explained:
But one user noted:
Guy Harris, who is not affiliated with Netscape, provides an answer:
Netscape Communications is perhaps the most visible company offering a Web browser, but it is by no means the only one. Another promising contender that has also stormed out of the starting gate is the Internetworks package from BookLink Technologies. Like Netscape Communications, BookLink is a startup that spun off an established organization, in this case Interleaf, a Massachusetts-based, high-end electronic-publishing vendor. BookLink Technologies presently numbers about 20 people, compared to Netscape's 75. Both companies are top-heavy with engineering talent. Like Netscape, BookLink was demonstrating a highly functional package within a few months of its founding; the company was started in March 1994 and demonstrated its impressively fast browser in June. Part of the reason for the extremely short implementation time may be that most Web browsers consist of user-interface code sitting on top of a sizable existing library: libWWW from CERN, which was placed into the public domain by Tim Berners-Lee. The original NCSA Mosaic is only 9000 lines of code.
The distinguishing features of the BookLink browser are: speed, multithreading (which allows simultaneous multiple data- transfer sessions in an unlimited number of windows), multipaned windows that allow different documents in each window, progressive rendering of graphical elements (GIFs) so that you don't have to wait to see the completed page, persistent caching of rendered pages so that you don't wait for redraws, and extensive support of OLE 2 features, including OLE Automation. The OLE support allows you to drag-and-drop a Web page into Microsoft Word, then later double-click on that element and navigate the Web from your memo or document. With the possible exception of OLE support, which has to be designed in from the outset, it's likely that Netscape Navigator will soon incorporate desirable features found in Internetworks, and vice versa. Like Netscape, the software is available for free via the Internet, from ftp.booklink.com. Unlike Netscape, this free version is a reduced-functionality version (Internetworks Lite). Jane Lennon of Booklink says that the company is also implementing a server to accompany the browser, but could not reveal more details at this time. Although Internetworks is now only available for Windows, Lennon says a Mac version will appear in a few months.
BookLink passed below most people's radar until America Online recently bought the company in a stock swap valued around $30M, which is about $1.5M per employee if it were equally divided (chances are a good portion of that went to Booklink's parent company, CMG). In any case, not bad for six months of work.
This king's ransom will turn out to be a bargain if it enables America Online to survive the onslaught of Microsoft Network (formerly "Marvel"). Microsoft Network, recently unveiled by Bill Gates in his Comdex keynote address, is now part of the M7 beta of Windows 95 (formerly "Chicago"). Microsoft has reportedly predicted that 35 million Windows 3.x users will upgrade to Windows 95 in the first year, and of these, 10 percent will connect to Microsoft Network, resulting in an installed base three times larger than the major online services (Compuserve, Prodigy, America Online). America Online's stock has fluctuated in response to Microsoft's perceived and actual movements, dropping 13 percent in value after a single story on Marvel appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
All this is not lost on Marc Andreessen, who reportedly views Bill Gates as his primary competitor. The established PC software companies, such as Lotus, Novell, Borland, and Symantec are no match for the Microsoft army. Only by mustering the world-wide resources of the Internet, namely the legions of talented hackers working for something other than cash, can the giant of Redmond be challenged. Perhaps hedging its bets, Netscape Communications recently announced that MCI's new Internet service, internetMCI, will use Navigator as its front end.
Although both Windows 95 and NT include TCP/IP support, neither will provide Internet-specific applications such as a Web browser. However, Microsoft strategists are well aware of reasons behind the Internet's tremendous growth and seek to leverage some of that energy by an open business model, different from the closed models of newly launched online services like Ziff Interchange and Apple's eWorld. Note that this business model is open only with respect to publishing information, not to consuming it (that is, users must possess Windows 95 to join the party). This match between an Internet-style free-for-all versus Microsoft's more disciplined approach will become increasingly interesting over the next few months.