Oldest or first web browser you used was?

[gneebore]

I was looking at some old floppy disks I found today. One of them was a Compuserve installation floppy. Actually on 5 1/4 disks and they were 360 k. Back to the web browser though. Cserve had a seperate web browser as part of their installation. That way you could log on to their service and then start the included web browser to go to placed that were not part of their service, the chat rooms and file rooms they maintained for their customers. That web browser was called Spry Mosaic. It was an 8 bit browser meant to be used with dos only. I remember when I upgraded to win 95 and Spry Mosaic would not work correctly. Then if you wanted to surf the web outside of Compuserve you actually had to download and install the new web browsers , Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. Of course before Compuserve and AOL if you were going online privately more than likely you were using bulletin boards. And I have no way to remember how that was accomplished it has been so long ago.

[CompyTech]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

Growing up in the 90s remember using Netscape Navigator on a Mac installed from a floppy. Switched to IE sometime around 98. When moving on to Windows few years later, eventually got on Firefox sometime around 02.

I remember all those horrible isp gatekeeper companies, good ol AOL comes to mind. I even vaguely remember some free dialup service that basically displayed an Ad window on top of the browser, and if you closed it would disconnect you from the internet.

[Hansoon]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

Netscape Navigator. After that Phoenix which turned to Firefox.

Hans

[jonhiker]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

I remember using netscape navigator and then IE, now i use chrome or fireox

[zed255]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

First browser I used was Netscape Navigator, circa 1996 when I got my first dial-up ISP account. Prior to that, no real exposure to the internet.

I have used several different browsers without any real favourite, though I seem to use FireFox or Chrome now for most browsing. The only one I can say I hated with a passion is Edge.

[slimslob]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

My current preferred browser is Mozilla Firefox which is a direct descendant of Netscape Navigator. It has always been a more secure browser than anything Microsoft provides. It was the first browser that provided tabbed browsing.

I just wish that Mozilla had continued the Netscape Suite concept. With it, once you entered your master password in either the browser or the email program, in was good for both until you closed both.

[EasyRider]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

IE and Nutscrape Navigator were my first web browsers. Netscape usually crashed for me which is why I called it Nutscrape.

Before the "web", I started with a Commodore Desktop and a 300 baud modem! Got on the BBS's, thought that was cool. Big upgrade to a 1200 baud modem, thought I was flying! Download a pic, one slow line at a time.

First "real" PC? Packard Bell 486 SX 25! 210Mb HDD! 2Mb RAM! No CD-ROM (added later $300) Internet was Compuserve, Prodigy, AOhell.

The good ol' days, eh?

I still have that 486 SX 25 in the closet somewhere.

[CompyTech]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

IE and Nutscrape Navigator were my first web browsers. Netscape usually crashed for me which is why I called it Nutscrape.

I remember seeing that term back then. I'm pretty sure I switched to IE at the time as it was becoming "The" browser and Netscape was pretty much dying out. Often some sites wouldn't even load in Netscape at all.

Got excited when finally got to use Firefox and was reminded how it looked a lot like Netscape. The thing that pushed me to it at the time was the idea of the popup blocker. Now we can run all kinds of extensions that block various things in browsers today.

[gneebore]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

IE and Nutscrape Navigator were my first web browsers. Netscape usually crashed for me which is why I called it Nutscrape.

Before the "web", I started with a Commodore Desktop and a 300 baud modem! Got on the BBS's, thought that was cool. Big upgrade to a 1200 baud modem, thought I was flying! Download a pic, one slow line at a time.

First "real" PC? Packard Bell 486 SX 25! 210Mb HDD! 2Mb RAM! No CD-ROM (added later $300) Internet was Compuserve, Prodigy, AOhell.

The good ol' days, eh?

I still have that 486 SX 25 in the closet somewhere.

Yes same here I actually started using the C-64 to access local bbs systems. and of course I had to use a 300 baud modem. I just do not remember what program or command was used to actually dial the number and connect to the bbs with. I do remember the command (load "*,8,1" was how you got the C-64 to run anything from the floppy drive. Then a nice new fast Leading Edge 8088 with a twenty meg hard drive with dos 3.0 and dual floppy drives, 360 k 5 1/4 inch. And the really good part a CGA monitor. Of course with teh dos 3.0 the hard drive had to be set up as two drives one boot and one virtual drive since dos 3.0 early versions did not recognize a hard drive larger than 10 meg.

[mikadonovan]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

This sends me back to my first "modern" computer, a Packard Bell( total pos) with a Pentium 1 90mhz processor, windows 95. Those were the days where you HAD to do some configuring if you wanted your software/hardware to work. I used Explorer and Navigator, and neither were great. I do not miss those days. Spent as much time fixing the glitches as I did actually using the computer.

[emujo2]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

I'm getting old...My 1st browser was Nexus..this was late in my Navy days (early 90's). I was "schooled" on the Motorola 8080 processor..3 MHz clock speed, and 8 bit bus..My 1st browser for personal use was Netscape Navigator. E

[FrohnB]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

I vaguely remember as a kid (in like 1995) seeing Netscape on my parents' computer (don't remember what they had). Shortly thereafter (1997-ish) was the "upgrade" to the Gateway 2000 desktop and the switch to AOL with the Good Ol' Dial-up connection, this was the first computer/ internet I actually used (at age 7!). Learned A LOT on that computer (mostly good, but some not so good things also).

[guitar9199]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

IE and Nutscrape Navigator were my first web browsers. Netscape usually crashed for me which is why I called it Nutscrape.

Before the "web", I started with a Commodore Desktop and a 300 baud modem! Got on the BBS's, thought that was cool. Big upgrade to a 1200 baud modem, thought I was flying! Download a pic, one slow line at a time.

First "real" PC? Packard Bell 486 SX 25! 210Mb HDD! 2Mb RAM! No CD-ROM (added later $300) Internet was Compuserve, Prodigy, AOhell.

The good ol' days, eh?

I still have that 486 SX 25 in the closet somewhere.

First "Real PC" you say??


IBM 8088 with dual 5 1/4" floppies.... 20 MEG HDD, and 640 K of RAM!! Linked with a 9-pin tractor feed dot matrix printer. Ran on DOS 3.0.

Green Screen monochrome monitor.

First actual "Computer" experience?? TTY (Type 33??) Teletype with punch tape and Dot Matrix printer. Separate 2800 baud cradle modem.


....GOD I feel old now.....

[NeoMatrix]

Re: Oldest or first web browser you used was?

Before the internet was actually called the internet we would use Win3.11 ,TTY Ascii text software over AARNET using dumb terminals....
hhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARNet
AARNet - Wikipedia

Later on we moved to win95 & 98 along with better PC architecture and GUI software using Netscape, Mosaic.
In the days of AARNET, if you wanted to send a picture over the "now internet"; you had to encode the image into ascii text blocks with MIME and similar base64 encryption software. The picture would then be decoded from ascii text back into graphics format at the Rx end.