各种浏览器版本发布时间表：

Mosaic
1.0    0.1   Mar. 1993 Final   Nov. 1993 2.0    Alpha 1   Jan. 1994 Alpha 2   Feb. 1994 Alpha 3   Apr. 1994 Alpha 8   Dec. 1994 Beta 1   Mar. 1995 Beta 4   Apr. 1995 Final Beta   Jul. 1995 Final   Oct. 1995 2.1    Final   Jan. 1996 3.0    Beta 2   Apr. 1996 Final   Jan. 1997 Mosaic Ends

Netscape

1.0    0.9 (Beta 1)   Oct. 1994 Final   Dec. 1994 1.1    Beta 1   Mar. 1995 Final   Apr. 1995 1.2    Beta 1   Jun. 1995 Final   Jul. 1995 2.0    Beta 1   Oct. 1995 Final   Mar. 1996 3.0    Beta 1   Apr. 1996 Beta 5   Jul. 1996 Beta 7   Aug. 1996 Final   Aug. 1996 4.0    Beta 1   Dec. 1996 Beta 2   Feb. 1997 Beta 3   Apr. 1997 Beta 4/5   May. 1997 Final   Jun. 1997 4.01-08 Updates   Jun 97- Nov. 98 4.5    Beta 1   Jul. 1998 Beta 2   Sep. 1998 Final   Oct. 1998 4.51 Update   Mar. 1999 4.6 Update   May. 1999 4.7 Update   Sep. 1999 4.79 Update   Nov. 2001 4.8 Update   Aug. 2002 6.0    Beta 1   Apr. 2000 Beta 2   Aug. 2000 Beta 3   Oct. 2000 Final   Nov. 2000 6.01 Update   Feb. 2001 6.1PR1   Jun. 2001 6.1 Update   Aug. 2001 6.2 Update   Oct. 2001 6.2.3 Update   May. 2002 7.0    Beta 1   May. 2002 Final   Aug. 2002 7.01 Update   Dec. 2002 7.02 Update   Feb. 2003 7.1 Update   Jun. 2003

Windows IE
1.0    Final   Aug. 1995 2.0    Beta 1   Oct. 1995 Final   Nov. 1995 3.0    Alpha 1   Mar. 1996 Beta 1   May. 1996 Beta 2   Jul. 1996 Final   Aug. 1996 3.01 Update   Oct. 1996 4.0    Beta 1   Apr. 1997 Beta 2   Jul. 1997 Final   Oct. 1997 4.01 Update   Nov. 1997 5.0    Beta 1   Jun. 1998 Beta 2   Nov. 1998 Final   Mar. 1999 5.5    Beta 1   Dec. 1999 Final   Jul. 2000 6.0    Beta 1   Mar. 2001 Final   Oct. 2001 SP1   Sep. 2002
Macintosh IE
2.0    Final   Apr. 1996 2.0.1 Update   May. 1996 2.1    Beta 1   Jul. 1996 Final   Sep. 1996 3.0    Final   Jan. 1997 3.0a Update   Feb. 1997 3.01 Update   May. 1997 4.0    Beta 1   Jul. 1997 Final   Jan. 1998 4.01 Update   May. 1998 4.5    Final   Jan. 1999 5.0    Final   Mar. 2000 5.0sr1 Update   Sep. 2001 5.1 Update   Nov. 2001 5.1.2 Update   Nov. 2001 5.1.4 Update   Jan. 2002 5.1.5 Update   Jun. 2002 5.2.1 Update   Jul. 2002

Opera

1.0    NA   NA 2.0    NA   NA 2.1    Beta 1-3   Sep.-Nov. 96 Final   Dec. 1996 2.12 Update   Feb. 1997 3.0    Beta 1-11   Sep.-Dec. 97 Final   Dec. 1997 3.1 Update   Feb. 1998 3.21 Update   Apr. 1998 3.5    Beta 1-10   Jul.-Oct. 98 Final   Nov. 1998 3.51 Update   Dec. 1998 3.6 Update   Jun. 1999 3.61 Update   Dec. 1999 4.0    Beta 1   Mar. 2000 Beta 2   Apr. 2000 Beta 3   Apr. 2000 Beta 4   May. 2000 Final   Jun. 2000 5.0    Final   Dec. 2000 5.1 Update   Apr. 2001 5.12 Update   Jul. 2001 6.0    Final   Nov. 2001 6.01-05 Updates   Feb.-Oct. 2002 7.0    Beta 1   Nov. 2002 Beta 2   Dec. 2002 Final   Jan. 2003 7.01 Update   Feb. 2003 7.1 Update   Apr. 2003 7.2B1-13 Update   Jul.-Sep. 2003 7.2 Update   Sep. 2003

以上材料作者：by Brian Wilson

Web History - Browsers

Summary: Dozens of different web browsers have been developed over the years.

The first widely used web browser was NCSA Mosaic. The Mosaic programming team then developed the first commercial web browser called Netscape Navigator, later renamed Communicator, then renamed back to just Netscape. The Netscape browser led in user share until Microsoft Internet Explorer took the lead in 1999 due to its advantage in being bundled with Windows operating systems. An open source version of Netscape was then developed called Mozilla, which was the internal name for the old Netscape browser, and released in 2002. Mozilla has since gained in market share, particularly on non-Windows platforms, due to its open source foundation.

A chronological listing of some influential early web browsers is provided below, each of which advanced the state of the art:

WorldWideWeb. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser on a NeXT computer, called WorldWideWeb, finishing the first version on Christmas day, 1990. He released the program to a number of people at CERN in March, 1991, introducing the web to the high energy physics community, and beginning its spread.
libwww. Berners-Lee and a student at CERN named Jean-Francois Groff ported the WorldWideWeb application from the NeXT environment to the more common C language in 1991 and 1992, calling the new browser libwww. Groff later started the first web design company, InfoDesign.ch (status unknown).
Line-mode. Nicola Pellow, a math student interning at CERN, wrote a line-mode web browser that would work on any device, even a teletype. In 1991, Nicola and the team ported the browser to a range of computers, from Unix to Microsoft DOS, so that anyone could access the web, at that point consisting primarily of the CERN phone book.
Erwise. After a visit from Robert Cailliau, a group of students at Helsinki University of Technology joined together to write a web browser as a master's project. Since the acronym for their department was called "OTH", they called the browser "erwise", as a joke on the word "otherwise". The final version was released in April, 1992, and included several advanced features, but wasn't developed further after the students graduated and went on to other jobs.
ViolaWWW. Pei Wei, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, released the second browser for Unix, called ViolaWWW, in May, 1992. This browser was built on the powerful interpretive language called Viola that Wei had developed for Unix computers. ViolaWWW had a range of advanced features, including the ability to display graphics and download applets.
Midas. During the summer of 1992, Tony Johnson at SLAC developed a third browser for Unix systems, called Midas, to help distribute information to colleagues about his physics research.
Samba. Robert Cailliau started development of the first web browser for the Macintosh, called Samba. Development was picked up by Nicola Pellow, and the browser was functional by the end of 1992.
Mosaic. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina from the NCSA released the first version of Mosaic for X-Windows on Unix computers in February, 1993. A version for the Macintosh was developed by Aleks Totic and released a few months later, making Mosaic the first browser with cross-platform support. Mosaic introduced support for sound, video clips, forms support, bookmarks, and history files, and quickly became the most popular non-commercial web browser. In August, 1994, NCSA assigned commercial rights to Mosaic to Spyglass, Inc., which subsequently licensed the technology to several other companies, including Microsoft for use in Internet Explorer. The NCSA stopped developing Mosaic in January 1997.
Arena. In 1993, Dave Raggett at Hewlett-Packard in Bristol, England, developed a browser called Arena, with powerful features for positioning tables and graphics.
Lynx. The University of Kansas had written a hypertext browser independently of the web, called Lynx, used to distribute campus information. A student named Lou Montulli added an Internet interface to the program, and released the web browser Lynx 2.0 in March, 1993. Lynx quickly became the preferred web browser for character mode terminals without graphics, and remains in use today.
Cello. Tom Bruce, cofounder of the Legal Information Institute, realized that most lawyers used Microsoft PC's, and so he developed a web browser for that platform called Cello, finished in the summer of 1993.
Opera. In 1994, the Opera browser was developed by a team of researchers at a telecommunication company called Telenor in Oslo, Norway. The following year, two members of the team -- Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy -- left Telenor to establish Opera Software to develop the browser commercially. Opera 2.1 was first made available on the Internet in the summer of 1996.
Internet in a box. In January, 1994, O'Reilly and Associates announced a product called Internet In A Box which collected all of the software needed to access the web together, so that you only had to install one application, instead of downloading and installing several programs. While not a unique browser in its own right, this product was a breakthrough because it distributed other browsers and made the web a lot more accessible to the home user.
Navipress. In February, 1994, Navisoft released a browser for the PC and Macintosh called Navipress. This was the first browser since Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb browser that incorporated an editor, so that you could browse and edit content at the same time. Navipress later became AOLPress, and is still available but has not been maintained since 1997.
Mozilla. In October, 1994, Netscape released the the first beta version of their browser, Mozilla 0.96b, over the Internet. On December 15, the final version was released, Mozilla 1.0, making it the first commercial web browser. The open source version of the Netscape browser released in 2002 was also named Mozilla in tribute to this early version.
Internet Explorer. On August 23rd, 1995, Microsoft released their Windows 95 operating system, including a Web browser called Internet Explorer. By the fall of 1996, Explorer had a third of market share, and passed Netscape to became the leading web browser in 1999.
Many other browsers were also developed in the 1990's to address niche requirements, several of which are listed below:

Historical Web Browsers
Active Worlds	NetAttache
Air_Mosaic	NETCOMplete
Amiga	NetCruiser
EI*Net	NetManage Chameleon
EmailSiphon	NetPositive
Enhanced NCSA Mosaic	PlanetWeb
GetRight	Quarterdeck WebC
HotJava	SPRY_Mosaic
IBM WebExplorer	Spyglass Enhanced Mosaic
internetMCI	TueV Mosaic for X
IWENG	WWWC
MacWeb

Resources. The following references provide more information about browser history:

Browser applications -- lists sites that keep track of the different types of browsers which access them.
evolt Browser archive -- contains a comprehensive repository of older browser applications.
DejaVu.org -- maintains a browser history timeline and a fascinating set of older browser emulators.

以上来自：http://www.zdnet.com.cn/

Web browser
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A web browser is a software package that enables a user to display and interact with HTML documents hosted by web servers. The largest networked collection of these documents is known as the World Wide Web.

Communication between the web server and the browser uses primarily the HTTP protocol. Most browsers also support other protocols, such as FTP, Gopher, and HTTPS (a SSL encrypted version of HTTP). Web browsers are able to retrieve documents stored in other file formats or in streams using these other protocols, but also using HTTP. This allows the author to embed images, animations, video and sound into a web page, or to make them accessible through the web page.

Some of the more popular browsers include additional components to support Usenet news and e-mail via the NNTP, IMAP and POP protocols. Most web browsers have the ability to save a file of bookmarks for sites the user has visited (or will often want to).

Early web browsers supported only a very simple version of HTML. The rapid development of proprietary web browsers led to the development of non-standard dialects of HTML, leading to problems with Web interoperability. Modern web browsers (such as Mozilla, Opera, and Safari) support standards-based HTML and XHTML (starting with HTML 4.01), which should display in the same way across all browsers.

Tim Berners-Lee introduced the first web browser, named WorldWideWeb, on February 26, 1991.

Table of contents [showhide] 
1 Web and web browser features

2 Examples of web browsers

2.1 Graphical

2.1.1 Gecko-based browsers
2.1.2 Internet Explorer-based browsers
2.1.3 KHTML-based browsers
2.1.4 Other Browsers

2.2 Text-based
2.3 Early browsers which are no longer being further developed

3 External links
 
Web and web browser features
Different browsers can be distinguished from each other by the features they support. Modern browsers and web pages tend to utilise many features and techniques that did not exist in the early days of the web. Competition between Netscape and Microsoft for browser market-share in the mid 1990s helped oversee a rapid and chaotic expansion of browser and World Wide Web feature sets. The following is a list of some of these elements and features:

Ad filtering
HTML Tables (HTML 3.02) and table color
Frames and I-Frames
Plug-ins
Java
javascript
Fonts (size, color) and cascading style sheets
DHTML and XML
Established graphics file formats such as PNG (ersatz for GIF), JPEG, SVG
Session management
Tabbed browsing

Examples of web browsers
Graphical
Gecko-based browsers
Mozilla
newer versions of Netscape Navigator (Netscape 6 and newer)
Beonex Communicator
Mozilla Firebird (formerly Phoenix)
IBM Web Browser for OS/2
Aphrodite
Galeon for GNOME
Salamander
Epiphany
Skipstone
K-Meleon for Windows
Camino for Mac OS X (formerly Chimera)

Internet Explorer-based browsers
Internet Explorer
MyIE2
NetCaptor
Crazy Browser
NeoPlanet
versions of the AOL interface's embedded browser

KHTML-based browsers
Konqueror
ABrowse
Safari
OmniWeb (4.5 and later)
SkyKruzer

Other Browsers
older versions of Netscape Navigator (up to 4.xx versions)
Opera
Oregano
Amaya
iCab
NetPositive
OmniWeb
Dillo
IBrowse
AWeb
Voyager
Espial Escape
HotJava
Arachne
Off By One
Emacs/W3

Text-based
ELinks
Lynx
w3m
Links
Netrik

Early browsers which are no longer being further developed
Arena
Cello
CyberDog
MidasWWW
Mosaic
Viola
WorldWideWeb
See also: History of the Internet, Browser exploit, Browser-based software

External links
Browser timeline: http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/browsers.htm (1993-2001)
evolt.org - Browser Archive
Deja Vu: (re-)creating web history
Web Browser History