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NCSA Mosaic, or simply Mosaic, is a discontinued early web browser. It has been credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. The browser was named for its support of multiple internet protocols. Its intuitive interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to its popularity within the web, as well as on Microsoft operating systems. Mosaic was also the first browser to display images inline with text instead of displaying images in a separate window. While often described as the first graphical web browser, Mosaic was preceded by WorldWideWeb, the lesser-known Erwise and ViolaWWW. Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)〔 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign beginning in late 1992. NCSA released the browser in 1993, and officially discontinued development and support on January 7, 1997. However, it can still be downloaded from NCSA.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/Mosaic/ )〕 Netscape Navigator was later developed by Netscape, which employed many of the original Mosaic authors; however, it intentionally shared no code with Mosaic. Netscape Navigator's code descendant is Mozilla Firefox. Starting in 1995 Mosaic lost a lot of share to Netscape Navigator, and by 1997 only had a tiny fraction of users left, by which time the project was discontinued. Microsoft licensed the browser to create Internet Explorer in 1995. More than twenty years after Mosaic's introduction, the most popular contemporary browsers, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Mozilla Firefox retain many of the characteristics of the original Mosaic graphical user interface (GUI), such as the URL bar and back/forward/reload buttons, and interactive experience. ==Background== David Thompson tested ViolaWWW and showed the application to Marc Andreessen. Andreessen and Eric Bina originally designed and programmed NCSA Mosaic for Unix's X Window System called ''xmosaic''.〔〔〔 Funding for the development of Mosaic came from the ''High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative'', a program created by the ''High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991''. Development of Mosaic began in December 1992. Marc Andreessen announced the project on Jan 23, 1993.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=NCSA X Mosaic 0.5 released )〕 The first alpha release (numbered 0.1a) was published in June 1993, and the first beta release (numbered 0.6b) followed quickly thereafter in September 1993. Version 1.0 for Windows was released on November 11, 1993.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The History of NCSA Mosaic )〕 NCSA Mosaic for Unix (X-Windows) version 2.0 was released on November 10, 1993.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=NCSA Mosaic for X 2.0 available )〕 A port of Mosaic to the Commodore Amiga was available by October 1993. Ports to Windows and Macintosh had already been released in September.〔 Marc Andreessen, the leader of the team that developed Mosaic, left NCSA and, with James H. Clark, one of the founders of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), and four other former students and staff of the University of Illinois, started Mosaic Communications Corporation. Mosaic Communications eventually became Netscape Communications Corporation, producing Netscape Navigator. 1994 saw the first commercial product to incorporate Mosaic: SCO Global Access, a modified version of its Open Desktop version of Unix that served as an Internet gateway. Spyglass, Inc. licensed the technology and trademarks from NCSA for producing their own web browser but never used any of the NCSA Mosaic source code. Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic in 1995 for US$2 million, modified it, and renamed it Internet Explorer.〔 After a later auditing dispute, Microsoft paid Spyglass $8 million. The 1995 user guide ''The HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML'', specifically states in a section called ''Coming Attractions'', that Internet Explorer "will be based on the Mosaic program". Versions of Internet Explorer before version 7 stated "Based on NCSA Mosaic" in the About box. Internet Explorer 7 was audited by Microsoft to ensure that it contained no Mosaic code, and thus no longer credits Spyglass or Mosaic. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mosaic (web browser)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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