What was the first widely used web browser?

Mosaic was the first widely used web browser. Developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, it helped move the World Wide Web beyond academic and technical communities during the early 1990s.

Mosaic became influential because it displayed images directly within web pages alongside text, rather than opening them separately. Its graphical interface, straightforward installation, and support for common internet protocols made the growing web easier for ordinary computer users to explore.

Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina began developing Mosaic at the University of Illinois. The first public release appeared in January 1993, followed by versions for Windows and Macintosh later that year. Mosaic’s popularity helped spark rapid growth in web use, though Netscape Navigator soon overtook it after launching in 1994.

Mosaic was not the first web browser: WorldWideWeb, ViolaWWW, and other earlier programs came before it. The precise claim is that Mosaic was the first to achieve broad mainstream popularity. Netscape also descended from the work of former Mosaic developers, but it was a separate browser.