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]
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
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]
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.
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]
Further reading
von Wolfgang, Nefzger; Andreas F Golla (September 1998). Web Publishing (in German). Franzis Verlag GmbH.
ISBN978-3-7723-8112-6.
^Herrmann, B. (January 1998).
"BelWü Spots"(PDF) (in German). BelWü (Baden-Württembergs extended LAN). Retrieved March 22, 2010.
^Müller, Paul; Hans Peter Großmann (June 10, 2003). "UDINE a universal document information and navigation entry". Computer Networks and ISDN Systems. 26: S29–S38.
doi:
10.1016/0169-7552(94)90096-5.
^Weinreich, Harald; Hartmut Obendorf, Winfried Lamersdorf (2001). "The look of the link - concepts for the user interface of extended hyperlinks". Proceedings of the twelfth ACM conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia - HYPERTEXT '01. p. 19.
doi:
10.1145/504216.504225.
ISBN978-1591134206.
S2CID14289046.
^From the help file "UDIWWW32.hlp" from the Version 1.2.000 installation.