Logo (from WorldWideWeb 0.12)

Ancient Web Browsers

MidasWWW

[Icon]
Tony Johnson of SLAC's Motif browser, notable for its ability to display PostScript files and for Chung Huynh's Chinese language support version.
[Screenshot]
MidasWWW 1.0 on Solaris 2.6.

Links

Run MidasWWW

The source for version 1.0 was recovered and posted to Github in 2015 by Dan Connolly. It was patched to (partially) run on (some) modern (32 bit) systems by Kostas Michalopoulos, as detailed on Reddit. Other sources for version 1.0 are available at the W3C Historical Archives; those will build on Solaris 2.6, as shown above, although the menus don't work (probably because of Sun's Motif implementation).

Notes

Here is Johnson writing presciently about the Web in late 1994 in SLAC's Beam Line magazine:
At worst [the World Wide Web] may just become a glorified video delivery system and integrated home shopping network with a built-in method of tracking your purchases and sending you personalized junk e-mail. At its best such as system could provide truly interactive capabilities, allowing not only large corporations and publishers but also individuals and communities to publish information and interact through the network, while maintaining individual privacy. The outcome will have a major impact on the quality of life in the 21st century, influencing the way we work, play, shop, and even how we are governed.

Unfortunately, MidasWWW (1.0) displays rather than ignores HTML tags it doesn't recognize, making it unsuitable for browsing even basic modern pages.

Versions

1.0
16 November 1992
1.0 TimBL Patches1
-
1.0 KM Patches2
-
2.0 pre13
November 1993
2.1 (incomplete)
April 1994
2.1 via EarlyBrowserReborn
-
2.2
Missing
--

1 Source patched by TimBL, possibly to build on NeXTStep

2 Patched to build on Debian 9

3 Chinese language support version (README)