IBM WebExplorer was an early

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

designed at IBM facilities in the Research Triangle Park for

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...

History

Presented in 1994 with

OS/2 Warp OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 re ...

(v3), it was hailed as the best browser by '' Internet Magazine'' in their November issue and leveraged its position as the only native browser in OS/2 at that time. It was a "coming attraction" in ''The HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML''. Almost immediately after the introduction of OS/2 Warp version 3, IBM dismantled the development team and that relegated the WebExplorer to the annals of history. OS/2 Warp 4 (1996) included it, but also included a link to download an OS/2 version of

Netscape Navigator Netscape Navigator was a web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in ...

2.02, which was late for shipping on CD. IBM had already planned the substitution of WebExplorer. In 1995, it was added to AIX, IBM's proprietary UNIX platform. A 1996 review in

PC Mag ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...

found that WebExplorer "lack dseveral standard features" and wasn't very strong in terms of

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

support. The IBM browser shipping with the IBM Internet Connection suite, WebExplorer Mosaic, was based on the

Spyglass Spyglass may refer to: * Another term for a hand-held refracting telescope A refracting telescope (also called a refractor) is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens as its objective to form an image (also referred to a dioptric tel ...

Mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

code base and was found by the reviewer to be "far superior" to the OS/2 version, which was developed solely by IBM.

Features

*Support for

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

3.0 (with tables)

Read me Read Read may refer to: * Reading, human cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning * Read (automobile), an American car manufactured from 1913 to 1915 * Read (biology), an inferred sequence of base pairs of ...

file of the Web Explorer 1.1h. * Usenet reader *Some of its parts could be reused in other programsUnder the Scope
section. EDM/2 June 1996, Volume 4 Issue 5 and scripted with Rexx. Some external companies used this capability to offer an enhanced browser with IBM's rendering engineWebNav 2.0
added user interface enhancements on WebExplorer rendering. *A page could define what the animated

throbber A throbber, also known as a loading icon, is an animated graphical control element used to show that a computer program is performing an action in the background (such as downloading content, conducting intensive calculations or communicating w ...

should look like. It was implemented through a non-standard

HTML tag The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScrip ...

. OS/2 users created several animations. The later introduction of web frames leads WebExplorer to confusion on modern pages *A presentation mode without visible menu bars *A menu option ''Links'' collecting all the links in the page. It was used by IBM VoiceType for voice navigation *

Java applet Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...

s *Graphics Interchange Format, GIF support *Proxy server, Proxy authentication *Image map *''Webmap'' "hierarchically displays your complete path through the web; a pointer denotes the current site, but any site can be revisited with only a mouse click."

Version history

There were severals builds released by IBM. IBM released some beta builds and also fixed many bugs in WebExplorer, one beta including support for Java.

Criticism

The browser did not support Framing (World Wide Web), Frames and the installation of Plug-in (computing), plugins like Java was complicated.

References

External links

*
The IBM OS/2 WebExplorer
in United States v. Microsoft.

Downloads

versions 1.01 and 1.1h
at browsers.evolt.org
version 1.1h
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ibm Webexplorer OS/2 web browsers 1994 software Discontinued web browsers IBM software, Webexplorer Products and services discontinued in 1998