List of Internet pioneers
Nicola Pellow, one of the nineteen members of the "WWW Project" at CERN working with Tim Berners-Lee, is recognized for developing the first cross-platform internet browser, Line Mode Browser, that displayed web-pages on dumb terminals and was released in May 1991. She joined the project in November 1990, while an undergraduate math student enrolled in a sandwich course at Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University). She left CERN at the end of August 1991, but returned after graduating in 1992, and worked with Robert Cailliau on MacWWW, the first web browser for the classic Mac OS.
Internet Explorer for Mac
The first version of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh operating system was a beta version of "Internet Explorer 2.0 for Macintosh", released on January 23, 1996 as a free download from Microsoft's website. This first version was based on the Spyglass Mosaic web browser licensed from Spyglass. Available for both 68k and PPC based Macs running System 7.0.1 or later, it supported the embedding of a number of multimedia formats into web pages, including AVI and QuickTime formatted video and AIFF and WAV formatted audio. The final version was released three months later on April 23. Version 2.1 released in August of the same year, was mostly aimed at fixed bugs and improving stability, but also added a few features such as support for the NPAPI (the first version of Internet Explorer on any platform to do so) and support for QuickTime VR. AOL 3.0 for Macintosh used the IE 2.1 rendering engine in its built-in web browser.
On November 5, 1996 Microsoft announced the release of a beta version of "Internet Explorer version 3.0 for Macintosh". This release added support for HTML version 3.2, Cascading Style Sheets, Java applets and ActiveX controls. The final version, made available on January 8, 1997, also added support for the SSL and NTLM security protocols and the PICS and RSACi rating systems that can be used to control access to websites based on content ratings. A problem with an operating system extension used in the Mac OS, called CFM68K Runtime Enabler, led to a delay in the release of the version 3.0 for Macs based on the 68k line of processors. Four months later on May 14, Microsoft released version 3.01 which included a version for 68k-based machines. This version also included features from the Windows version of Internet Explorer 4.0 such as AutoComplete and Monitoring Favorites that notified users when sites in their Favorites list have been updated. It also included support for JavaScript and introduced a Download Manager and a Cookie Manager.
At the 1997 Macworld Expo in Boston, on August 6, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates announced a partnership between Microsoft and Apple. Amongst other things, Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer the default browser instead of Netscape Navigator.