MacWeb

MacWeb
Developer(s) TradeWave
Initial release May 31, 1994 (1994-05-31)
Stable release
2.0 / 1996
Operating system Classic Mac OS
Type Web Browser
License Freeware
Website N/A

MacWeb was an early classic Mac OS-only web browser for 68k and PowerPC Apple Macintosh computers, developed by TradeWave (formerly EINet) between 1994 and 1996.[1]

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, 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 "2.0c" was released by Antoine Hébert in 1998 to correct a problem on old machines not supporting color QuickDraw.

Although one author in 1995 called MacWeb the second web browser released for the Macintosh,[2] this is not quite true. The text-only MacWWW browser became available in 1992, with the graphical Mosaic released for the Mac the next year.

Features

MacWeb was a basic browser that contained features common to most browsers such as:

MacWeb pioneered the "click and hold" gesture to display a popup contextual menu. This mouse gesture was commonly used on the Macintosh before the prevalence of two-button mice on the Mac platform.[3] MacWeb's preferences dialog allowed users to customize display styles on a per-tag basis similar to Cascading style sheets[4]

System requirements

MacWeb has the following system requirements:

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 December, John; Randall, Neil (1994). World Wide Web Unleashed. Sams Publishing. p. 234ff. ISBN 0-672-30617-4.
  2. Eric Lease Morgan, "MacWeb", from "Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks" article on infomotions.com (September 26, 1995)
  3. "MacWeb 1.x hints and tips".

Further reading

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