danieleunlimited

The Nexus Browser

Jim Boulton of Digital Archeology demonstrates the first web browser on the system it was developed on, the NeXT Cube:

Tim Berners-Lee made the first website, and the first web browser, on a NeXT Cube running the now obsolete NeXTSTEP Operating System. As a result, very few people have seen the first website in its true environment.

The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb and later renamed Nexus, was a browser-

editor. It could be used to create pages as well as browse them. Not only that, it allowed user-centric and document-centric browsing.

Usually technology dates very quickly but though twenty-five years old, the NeXT computer and its operating system have aged well. In fact, the GUI looks very similar to modern desktops. In particular, the dock on the right hand side looks very familiar and this is not a coincidence. When Steve Jobs left Apple and set-up NeXT, he took a few key employees with him, one of whom was Susan Kare, who designed the Apple Macintosh GUI. When Apple bought NeXT, one of the key assets they bought was the NeXTStep O/S, which formed the basis of Mac OS X.