WorldWideWeb

WorldWideWeb was the first web browser and editor for the World Wide Web, developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN around 1990–1991. Built to navigate and author linked documents, it ran on the NeXTSTEP operating system and provided an integrated interface for browsing, hyperlinking, and editing web pages. The browser supported the basic technologies of early Web design, including HTML for formatting, URLs for addressing, and HTTP for data transfer. It could display text and allowed users to create new pages directly within the browser, effectively enabling publishing on the Web.

In 1994 Berners-Lee renamed it Nexus to reduce confusion with the Web itself. The rename preserved the original program’s identity in historical references while the broader system continued to be known as the World Wide Web.

WorldWideWeb was used to demonstrate and develop the Web concept at CERN; the first website and server, info.cern.ch, launched in 1991 using this browser. The World Wide Web concept, including the ideas of a global hypertext system, standardized HTML, and a universal resource locator (URL), and the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), grew from this project and influenced subsequent browsers and the broader Web standards community, culminating in the formation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1994.