Sufyan bin Uzayr, Freelance Writer, Graphic Artist, Photographer, www.sufyan.co.nr

BANGALORE, INDIA: Internet has become a part and parcel of our lives – ok, that's fairly obvious! Until a decade ago, there used to be long queues in train reservations, examination results and many other similar tasks. However, the internet has revolutionized the way we live and get things done, as well as amuse ourselves. Internet has found its way in every home and office and is no longer a luxury anymore – rather, it is a commodity! Whether one wishes to learn about rocket science or is simply seeking ways of recreation, most of the time, one turns to the internet for company (and advice, if need be).

A LESSON IN HISTORY

Internet came to India way back in the late 1980s – it was in 1987 that the first dial-up email network was setup in Mumbai between NCST and IIT-M. However, it was only as late as 1995 that commercial internet access became available in India, courtesy of VSNL (a TCP/IP access account would cost somewhere around Rs. 15,000-18,000 back then). Following that, it was only a matter of years before many Internet Service Providers came to the fore. And today, India stands as the hub of internet and technology with the number of broadband users increasing as you're reading this!

Web Browsers

The WorldWideWeb, or WWW as it is popularly called, was invented by Tim Berners-Lee. His web browser (which was later named as Nexus) could deal with http:, ftp:, news: and local file: handles.

Anyway, for a good part of the early 1990s, the web browser diaspora was dominated by Netscape. Netscape was initially not a free web browser, yet, it had a robust set of features – including support for Javascript, frames, and even the mouseover effect! Naturally, Netscape dominated the scene for many years. The only worthy competitor it had was in the form of Microsoft Internet Explorer – which was both free as well as backed by the marketing strategem of Microsoft. Eventually, IE replaced Netscape as the de-facto standard for browsing the web. Especially after the release of Internet Explorer 3.0 (which was meant for Win95), IE paved the way for many innovations in web browsing overall, such as the advanced usage of cookies for user preferences, playing MIDI sound files and, most importantly, native support for Cascaded Style Sheets (CSS files).

However, as a last bid to save itself, Netscape decided to go open source. While this clearly did not 'save' Netscape as such (the browser still continues to be produced, though it lags behind most of its competitors), it paved the way for Mozilla Firefox, a free open source web browser based on Netscape's core engine. Firefox took the world by a storm, and still continues to command as much as 30% of the total market share among web browsers.

The decade of 1990s also saw the presence of two other web browsers, namely, Opera and Safari. Opera was launched in 1994 by two engineers at the Scandinavian telecom company Telenor. The aim was to include features that enhanced productivity, and Opera did just that! Displaying a list of favorite websites right on the main page (Speed Dial), online backup of bookmarks and other data (Sync), providing compressed images and other content on slower networks (Turbo) and creating a user community base (Community) – are just some of the many features that were innovated and invented by Opera, and have found their way into many other web browsers.

Safari, on the other hand, can at best be described as the IE for Mac users. While Internet Explorer itself was available for Apple machines way back in 1996, Safari continued to be the default web browser for Apple devices.

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