UdiWWW

UdiWWW HTML3 Web Browser

A screenshot of UdiWWW showing its rendering capabilities.
Original author(s)	Bernd Richter
Initial release	1995 (1995)
Last release	1.2.000 / April 9, 1996 (1996-04-09)
Development status	Discontinued
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 was an early 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] something that 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]

History

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 NSCA 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]

Features

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.

It should be noted that 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]

Criticism

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]

Releases

The following versions were released:^[2][35][36]

32-Bit

16-bit

DLL

Notes

The browser was only available via download.

Also, all releases were compressed using the PKSFX Self-Extract Utility Version 2.04g shareware version.

The browser's source which has been released into public domain is available at Archive.org.

Technical

Start-up Splash Screen

The user agent for UdiWWW is UdiWWW/<version> so the latest one is UdiWWW/1.2.000.

A typical get request from the UdiWWW browser would be as follows:

GET http://www.wikipedia.org/ HTTP/1.0
Date:Sat, Mar 13, 2010 18:42:02 "GMT"
MessageID: <10031318024194304>
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: UdiWWW/1.2.000
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, image/png
Accept: text/html;version=3.0, text/plain, */*

Although the browser's HTML3 support allows it to view most webpages, new extensions to the http protocol require that you use a proxy server for most current websites.^[4]

System requirements

UdiWWW has the following system requirements:^[1]

• Processor: 80386 or better
• Operating System: Windows 3.1 / 3.11 / NT / 95^[1]
• Ram: 8 MB RAM
• A TCP/IP connection running Winsock

References

Further reading

• von Wolfgang, Nefzger; Andreas F Golla (September 1998). Web Publishing (in German). Franzis Verlag GmbH. ISBN 978-3-7723-8112-6. 

External links

• UdiWWW Web Browser Home Page at the Wayback Machine (archived July 24, 1997)
• UdiWWW Download, Internet.com
• UdiWWW – a HTML 3.0 browser for Microsoft Windows FTP mirror at the Wayback Machine (archived December 6, 2004)
• UdiWWW, Evolt.org
• Experiences with UdiWWW
• UdiWWW, The Winsock-L FTP Area
• Screenshots of UdiWWW, ImageShack