About Windows 3.11 x86 with MCOM Mosaic 0.4 | A Classic Web Browser Showcase.

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The Operating System

Windows 3.11, an iteration of Microsoft’s graphical operating system, made its debut in 1993 as a modest evolution of its predecessor, Windows 3.1. Positioned as a transitional release, Windows 3.11 sought incremental enhancements in stability and networking capabilities. Introducing rudimentary support for networking through the inclusion of the Workgroups feature, it aimed to facilitate collaboration in small-scale environments. Displaying a graphical user interface, Windows 3.11 provided a visual leap forward for users accustomed to command-line interfaces. However, its limitations in multitasking and reliance on cooperative multitasking constrained its utility for more demanding applications.

The Web Browser

Relased on the 9th of September 1994, MCOM Mosaic 0.4 was the first in-development release of what would later develop into the Netscape family of browsers.
Developed a number of former NCSA Mosaic and SGI developers (plus others!), it was built to be a commercialised NCSA Mosaic killer. Known interally as ‘Mozilla’, legal issues with NCSA would eventually lead MCOM Mosaic to be first renamed to Mosaic Netscape and eventually to the now more familiar Netscape Navigator.

Browser User Agent

When contacting webservers ‘Windows 3.11 x86 with MCOM Mosaic 0.4’ will identify itself as ‘Mozilla/0.4 Beta (Windows)’.

Run Period

For ‘Windows 3.11 x86 with MCOM Mosaic 0.4’ Period Sites in Period Browsers is currently searching for pages archived between 1994-09-09 and 1996-12-31.

Emulation Platform

Hardware emulation for Windows 3.11 x86 with MCOM Mosaic 0.4 is provided by the 86Box Project.

Links

Both MS DOS 6.22 and Microsoft Windows 3.11 can be found at the WinWorld Operating System Library. MCOM Mosaic 0.4 can be found in JWZ’s Netscape archive as Netscape 0.4/Win16.