Original author(s) | Bernd Richter |
---|---|
Initial release | 1995 |
Final release | 1.2.000
/ April 9, 1996 |
Written in | C/C++ |
Operating system | Windows 3.1 / 3.11 / NT / 95[1] |
Size | 1.7 MB (32-bit)[2] 570 KB (16-bit)[2] |
Available in | English, German |
Type | Web browser |
License | Public domain[1] |
Website | www.uni-ulm.de/~richter/udiwww/index.htm at the Wayback Machine (archived July 24, 1997) |
UdiWWW is an early, now discontinued freeware graphical HTML 3.2 web browser for 16-bit and 32-bit Microsoft Windows. It was written and developed by Bernd Richter in C/C++ from 1995 to 1996. Following the release of version 1.2 in April 1996, Richter ceased development, stating "let Microsoft with the ActiveX Development Kit do the rest."[2][3][4]
UdiWWW was among the first web browsers to support the then proposed HTML 3.0 standard.[5][6][7] In doing so, it was also among the first browsers to support the specifications html math, html figures, and the PNG image format,[7] which other leading browsers at the time such as Netscape and Internet Explorer 2.0 did not.[8] The browser gained some popularity during 1996, but after development was abandoned, the browser fell out of favor.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]
The browser is no longer available from its original homepage. However, it (and its source) can still be downloaded from mirror sites.[17][18]
UdiWWW was created for the UDINE Projekt (Universal Document Information and Navigation Environment). UDINE was started in 1992 and the goal was to "create a flexible, multimedia information system that is able to show different files (text, picture, audio, and video) with a similar user interface on different systems."[19][20][21] To be able to read "web information" the UDINE project was expanded by a web browser. It was not able to integrate common browsers like the NCSA Mosaic because of the client-server architecture without modification. The source code of Mosaic was not available at that time, so the university started their own project. UDINE-WWW-Viewer was created and had most features of HTML 3 integrated.[7][22][23]
UdiWWW has the following features as of Version 1.2:[24][25][26]
It also features a clock in the lower right hand corner that tells how long the browser has been up.
There is no official help file; rather, in the included .hlp file, Bernd Richter stated, "This help file was automatically created by the developing environment and is quite useless. As you know, UdiWWW is a 'One Man Show' and the author could not find time for writing help files."[33]
UdiWWW was criticized for lacking many advanced features like news, FTP, HTML4, Dynamic HTML, support for targeted windows, a "new window" command for launching multiple sessions, client side image mapping, and security. It was also seen to be slow.[34]