Early Web Browsers from PCMag 11-7-95

Google's considering dropping the address bar from Google Chrome and, naturally, the mere possibility has thrown average people into a tizzy. Imagine the reaction to someone pulling down all the street and highway signs in your town and you get a sense of the outrage: This is a bad idea and one that Google shouldn't even be considering.

That's nonsense, of course.

Good programming and User Interface (UI) design is all about consideration. You pull in a lot of ideas and try them out, sometimes with user testing, other times by measuring the impact of UI choices on a variety of variables. You can see some of this in real-time as both Microsoft and Google try out some fairly radical browser interface ideas in Chrome 9 and Internet Explorer 9. The trend is obvious: less "chrome." While the word was adopted by Google for its browser, "chrome" originally meant all the stuff around the browser window. Hiding the address bar, though, could be the most radical chrome-reduction act.

It's not a good idea, and Google will soon discover that as it goes through the development and testing process. First of all, if you can't see the URL you just clicked on, then you leave it to security software to catch all faked URLs. Plus, how many of us have mistyped a URL only to realize it seconds after we hit enter. If you're fast enough, you see that bad URL in the address bar and you can stop "PCjag.com" from loading before it's too late. Not sure how you'd do that if the browser bar is quietly whisked away.

All this talk about what Google should and shouldn't do to the browser got me thinking, though, about how far we've come on the World Wide Web (these days we all call it "The Internet") and with Web browsers in general. PCMag has been all digital for over two years, but I have all the back issues, including those that covered the early days of the Web in 1994 and 1995. Let me tell you, the Web was an ugly place back then. In 1994, the major browsers were Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer (previously Spyglass Mosaic). Microsoft's IE was considered something of an upstart. Netscape held a commanding market share lead and was doing its best to make the Web in its own image. At the time, only Netscape Navigator supported tables (through proprietary extensions); so people who built more complex websites with tables ran the risk of not running on other browsers (at the time, PCMag.com actually avoiding table coding). Even with tables, though, the Web was an awkward, 256 color mess and the Web browsers weren't much better.

Web browsers in 1995 were little more than simplistic windows into a world relatively few were using and most had yet to fully understand. Paging through PC Magazine back issues from the era, I'm struck by how basic the browsers are and the relative dearth of information on any early web page. What's also notable is how little "chrome" there is on some of these early web interfaces. Internet Explorer has a file menu, action icons and an address bar. Netscape Navigator is virtually the same, though its action buttons are text-based and three times as wide as the IE icons. The largest thing on either browser is the logo icon. In these early days, the Netscape brand was the only recognizable one in the browser space. Microsoft had yet to introduce IE's iconic "E".

Over the next dozen years, the Web browser landscape underwent a vast number of significant changes, not the least of which was Internet Explorer trouncing the once popular Netscape Navigator. Microsoft did this, in part, by giving away the browser with every version of Windows. Netscape used to cost $39 and simply could not compete with free. Over time, the Web turned into a complex ocean of data, images, and interactivity and browsers changed to keep up and make sure everyone could still access everything. Standards wars largely faded into the background and soon browsers became perfect vehicles for third-party enhancements. Some were pieces of code that help browsers play video, music and Flash interfaces. Nearly just as many involved browser tool bars. Even to this day, I see co-workers, family members and friends running Web browsers with as many as four toolbars pinned to their browsers. None of them seem to notice that they're seeing less and less of the web.

On the other hand, someone must've been complaining, because, as noted above, the byword of today's modern browser development is less chrome.

With the perspective of nearly 17 years of Web browser history, I think today's efforts could best be characterized as a return to our browser roots. The Web, thankfully, will never again be as dull or spare as it was in 1995, but Google and Microsoft's efforts to get out of the way of today's Web wonders is admirable, even if they do occasionally come up with an undeniably bone-headed idea.

Get on Lance Ulanoff's RSS Feed.

Follow me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/LanceUlanoff

More Lance Ulanoff:
•   Will HP Ever Make a Comeback?
•   Ebook Pricing War Wages On
•   Microsoft Screws Up Windows 8
•   Stalking by Any Other Name is Still Stalking
•   Cybersecurity and False Hope
•  more