Summary:

Jon Mittelhauser is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Jon worked on the Windows versions of both Mosiac and Navigator eventually became the project manager for the Netscape Navigator project on the whole. He gives us great background and details about the development of browsers, the creation of features (he is the father of the hand icon, for example, and was instrumental in bringing image support to the web) and early web advancements in general.

Summary:

Aleks Totic was one of the original Mosaic engineers at the NCSA, responsible for the Mac version of Mosiac. They don’t call him “Mac Daddy” for nothing. He was then one of the 6 original programmers recruited by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark to form Netscape. Aleks gives us some excellent behind the scenes anecdotes about both projects, and what it was like to head out to California to work on some crazy startup before doing something like that was “cool.”

A few fun nuggets of history we mention in the conversation:

•  Click to hear Marc Andreessen ask, “What is global hypermedia?” back in 1993. 
•  The famous whiteboard. They packed up the truck and moved to Beverly Mountain View 
•  Original Mozilla t-shirt designs.
•  20-year old photos of the NSCP team.

Summary:

Microsoft was on top of the world at the dawn of the Internet Era… but like Jack Dawson in Titanic? Microsoft would pivot, and pivot hard, once it realized that the Internet was The Next Big Thing. This episode outlines how younger Microsoft employees agitated for a greater focus on the Internet, and how Bill Gates “got” the Internet religion. Microsoft’s embrace of the Internet is truly one of the greatest acts of agility in corporate history. Windows 95 and Internet Explorer are launched, and the seeds are sewn for the great anti-trust battle to come.

Bibliography:

•  How the Web Was Won; Andrews, Paul; Broadway, 1999
•  https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fabout%2Fcompanyinformation%2Ftimeline%2Ftimeline%2Fdocs%2Fdi_killerapp_InternetMemo.rtf&ei=ThtoUsvfDq234APWkICIDw&usg=AFQjCNHO04HZPALsUN9Rp4v1jKDYQ8eRpQ&sig2=_bymmx2MJUK8z9gzgACCTw&bvm=bv.55123115,d.dmg
•  Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace; Wallace, James
•  http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2008020017_webgatesmemo275.html
•  http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-07-14/inside-microsoft
•  http://www.zdnet.com/news/browser-wars-high-price-huge-rewards/128738
•  The Microsoft File : The Secret Case Against Bill Gates; Rohm, Wendy
•  http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,985115-2,00.html
•  http://news.cnet.com/2009-1032-995681.html
•  Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business; Reid, Robert

Summary:

Chris Wilson has been working on browser technology for the better part of two decades. A member of the original Mosaic team, he went on to work first at Spry (producing Internet in a Box) and then later at Microsoft, where he was a major developer of Internet Explorer for almost 15 years.

Chris tells us about developing the first Windows port of Mosaic, describes how he was one of the original champions of CSS as a technology, gives us more background about the evolution and life cycle of Internet Explorer, and even described his brief tenure working on Microsoft's first foray into search engine technology!

The quora thread I mention briefly can be found here.

Summary:

Lou Montulli is a web pioneer. In 1991 and 1992 he co-authored a text web browser called Lynx with Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac while he was at the University of Kansas. This web browser was one of the first available and is still in use today.

In 1994 he became a founding engineer of Netscape Communications (employee number 9) and programmed the networking code for the first versions of the Netscape web browser.

He is also responsible for several browser innovations, such as HTTP cookies, the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, and the implementation of animated GIFs into the browser. While at Netscape, he also was a founding member of the HTML working group at the W3C and was a contributing author of the HTML 3.2 specification. He is a member of the World Wide Web Hall of Fame.

Lou was also a co-founder of Epinions.com. He was the CEO of Memory Matrix, and when that company was purchased by Shutterfly, he served as Shutterfly’s Vice President of Engineering. He is currently the co-founder and Chief Scientist at Zetta.net.

• More about Lynx here.
• Here is the famous fishcam!
• Here is the post we discuss where Lou lays out the reasoning behind the birth of the browser cookie.
• The birth of the <blink> tag.