MacWeb is an early, now discontinued
classic Mac OS-only
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 ...
for
68k and
PowerPC Apple Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
computers, developed by
TradeWave (formerly EINet) between 1994 and 1996.
MacWeb's major attraction was its ability to run well on low-end hardware footprints as well as fast page display. This compactness led to MacWeb's inclusion on many "Internet starter kit"
floppy disks and
CD-ROMs that were popular at the time. TradeWave also developed a similar
Microsoft Windows browser named
WinWeb. However, they were eclipsed by more full-featured competitors such as
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 ...
, and development was eventually abandoned.
Versions
The first public release was 0.98-alpha on May 31, 1994, and the final official release was version 2.0 in 1996. An
unofficial patch
An unofficial patch is a patch for a piece of software, created by a third party such as a user community without the involvement of the original developer. Similar to an ordinary patch, it alleviates bugs or shortcomings. Unofficial patches do ...
"2.0c" was released by Antoine Hébert in 1998 to correct a problem on old machines not supporting color
QuickDraw
A quickdraw (also known as an extender) is a piece of climbing equipment used by rock and ice climbers to allow the climbing rope to run freely through protection such as a bolt anchors or other traditional gear while leading.
A quickdr ...
.
Although one author in 1995 called MacWeb the second web browser released for the Macintosh, this is not quite true. The text-only
MacWWW browser became available in 1992, with the graphical
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 ...
released for the Mac the next year.
Features
MacWeb was a basic browser that contained features common to most browsers such as:
* support for
HTML forms
A webform, web form or HTML form on a web page allows a user to enter data that is sent to a Server (computing), server for processing. Forms can resemble form (document), paper or database forms because web users fill out the forms using checkboxe ...
*
bookmarks with import tool for Mosaic's bookmarks
* a
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 ...
viewer
MacWeb pioneered the "click and hold" gesture to display a popup
contextual menu
A context menu (also called contextual, shortcut, and pop up or pop-up menu) is a menu in a graphical user interface (GUI) that appears upon user interaction, such as a right-click mouse operation. A context menu offers a limited set of choic ...
. This
mouse gesture was commonly used on the Macintosh before the prevalence of two-button mice on the Mac platform. MacWeb's preferences dialog allowed users to customize display styles on a per-tag basis similar to
Cascading style sheets
System requirements
MacWeb has the following system requirements:
*
Operating System
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
:
Classic Mac OS
*
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
: less than 700
KB RAM
*
HDD: 680 KB
References
Further reading
*
External links
MacWeb archiveon ''evolt.org''
Classic Mac OS-only web browsers
1994 software
Discontinued web browsers
{{web-software-stub