# Look at this fake "first ever web browser"



## CharlieJ (Mar 5, 2006)

http://www.w3.org/History/1994/WWW/Journals/CACM/screensnap2_24c.gif

Look at that and take note of the OSX Mouse in the top left corner?
Also on www.Digg.com


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## Mikuro (Mar 5, 2006)

That OS is NeXT. Didn't NeXT use the same black-in-white cursor design as the Mac OS?


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## Lt Major Burns (Mar 5, 2006)

um.  thats not a fake.  the internet was pretty much developed on NeXT computers, apparently.  

RacerX?


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## nixgeek (Mar 5, 2006)

It's legit as far as I know.  The Web was created on a NeXT computer, and that screenshot is of the NeXTSTEP operating system along with the first web browser.

Check wikipedia, CJ.  You'll see it there.


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## ora (Mar 5, 2006)

Yep, you can see a pic of the NeXT box Berners-Lee used on the CERN Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN (down the page on the right). Plus the info on screen is real (diagrams etc).


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## CharlieJ (Mar 6, 2006)

But is it fake because the cursor?


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## Lt Major Burns (Mar 6, 2006)

no, NeXT was the precursor to mac os x, and was founded by Steve Jobs, who of course founded apple, and the Mac.  it's likely that steve jobs just liked Black on white cursors


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## nixgeek (Mar 6, 2006)

Well, you find the same cursor under most X11 desktop environments nowadays, and considering he basically created a Unix for the masses way ahead of its time it's not that surprising that he would use elements of the Mac OS since he was co-founder of Apple.


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## RacerX (Mar 6, 2006)

Well, what can I add that others haven't already said?

It is real. That is the first ever web browser/editor. It was designed to read and create a modified version of SGML documents that included linked text within a document... this is where HTML started. And the name _World Wide Web_ came directly from the name of the first web browser.

As for the authenticity of the image... the only thing _wrong_ with it is that it is in color. But there is a gray scale image on his page too (he states that the screen shot was taken later on a color NeXT system, his original NeXTcube was not a color system).

As for the curser... yes, the Mac OS X curser is the same as the NEXTSTEP curser. In fact, the spinning disk curser in early versions of Mac OS X is identical to the NEXTSTEP spinning disk. That is because Mac OS X is a direct descendant of NEXTSTEP.

Attached is two shots of NEXTSTEP 3.3 taken a couple minutes ago. They show examples of the NEXTSTEP cursers.


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## Mikuro (Mar 6, 2006)

If I'm not mistaken, the OS X cursor is the exact same as the classic Mac OS cursor used since System 1. The NeXT cursor is different by 1 pixel at the base of the arrow. The Mac OS (all versions) has a square, pointed lower-right corner. NeXT omits that pixel for a more rounded effect. I think Rhapsody uses the NeXT-style cursor.

Of course, today the OS X cursor is no longer black-and-white on most systems, but rather grayscale with a dynamic shadow. It now seems to have a more rounded lower-right (like NeXT), but a more pointy upper-left (like _nothing else before!_ ).

Now that's enough UI pedantry for the day.


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## RacerX (Mar 7, 2006)

I hadn't noticed that missing pixel before. Though it seems to be there on both my 8600 and ThinkPad running Rhapsody... so I guess they put it back after Apple bought NeXT.


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## Lt Major Burns (Mar 7, 2006)

by 10.2 apple had stopped using the classic typeface and moved to Myriad Pro....


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## symphonix (Mar 7, 2006)

There are lots of elements of Next throughout Mac OS X. If you look through some of the manual pages you'll find lots of kernel and unix system elements that show, under their "history" section, that they were introduced in NextStep or OpenStep. "open" is a good example.

AppleScript and Cocoa also have plenty of codebase that came over from Next. If you've ever programmed in Mac OS X and wondered why so many of the APIs have "ns" prefixes, it stands for "NextStep". The aquisition of NeXT by Apple (and the return of Steve Jobs as Apple's CEO) was a big part of making Mac OS X what it is today.

Anyway CJ the image is not fake. The first web-browser was on NeXT, and NeXT slowly evolved into what would become Mac OS X.


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## RacerX (Mar 7, 2006)

Lt Major Burns said:
			
		

> by 10.2 apple had stopped using the classic typeface and moved to Myriad Pro....


Then some one should have told Apple that they changed at 10.2... because it wasn't change *at* Apple until 10.3.


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