Developer(s) TradeWave Website N/A Stable release 2 Downloadable Discontinued | Type Web Browser Initial release date 31 May 1994 License Freeware | |
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MacWeb was an early classic Mac OS-only web browser for 68k and PowerPC Apple Macintosh computers, developed by TradeWave (formerly EINet) between 1994 and 1996.
Contents
MacWeb's major attraction was its ability to run well on low-end hardware footprints as well as fast page display. This compactness led to MacWeb's inclusion on many "Internet starter kit" floppy disks and CD-ROMs that were popular at the time. TradeWave also developed a similar Microsoft Windows browser named WinWeb. However, they were eclipsed by more full-featured competitors such as Netscape Navigator, and development was eventually abandoned.
Versions
The first public release was 0.98-alpha on May 31, 1994, and the final official release was version 2.0 in 1996. An unofficial patch "2.0c" was released by Antoine Hébert in 1998 to correct a problem on old machines not supporting color QuickDraw.
Although one author in 1995 called MacWeb the second web browser released for the Macintosh, this is not quite true. The text-only MacWWW browser became available in 1992, with the graphical Mosaic released for the Mac the next year.
Features
MacWeb was a basic browser that contained features common to most browsers such as:
MacWeb pioneered the "click and hold" gesture to display a popup contextual menu. This mouse gesture was commonly used on the Macintosh before the prevalence of two-button mice on the Mac platform. MacWeb's preferences dialog allowed users to customize display styles on a per-tag basis similar to Cascading style sheets
System requirements
MacWeb has the following system requirements: