Re: Mosaic vs WWW

Tim Berners-Lee (timbl@www3.cern.ch)
Thu, 25 Nov 93 17:27:13 +0100


>Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 15:25:41 -0500
>From: Jim Davis <davis@dri.cornell.edu>

>Am I the only one who is getting irritated by this constant
>confusion in the press between WWW and Mosaic?

It does cause a lot of confusion. We hear that "Gopher
and Mosaic" were on the White house lawn sun; we hear
that "Mosaic integrates gopher and web access". The last
one really grates, as WWW was designed to integrate the
works. The "web" is the result of the integration.

> Don't get
>me wrong, Mosaic is a major blessing, I am grateful beyond
>words to NCSA for funding it,

Agreed. Mosaic is fantastic. And noone else has time
to keep Marc's "What's new" list up to date (and program..
how does he do it? What brand of coffee?)

> but why can't people understand
>that Mosaic is NOT the WWW, but just one of the possible
>tools that work with it - that WWW is the client-server system,
>and Mosaic just one of those clients.

Now that NCSA have clearly demonstrated their dominance of the client
scene, perhaps they could take care that the web does not threaten
to become an application-specific creation. When you start
Mosaic, you get the Mosaic documentation, which lets you know
all about Mosaic. NCSA should be careful to be fair and fit
into the web along with the smaller players. The strong must
be just.

>it would probably help if the "What's New" page called itself
>"what's new with the WWW" instead of "whats new with Mosaic".

Or "What's new on the Web". They could even put in
pointers to announcements of new Lynx and Cello versions...

Tim