page_title: Browser wars
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Browser wars / Background
context_page_description: A browser war is competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "First Browser War" during the late 1990s pitted Microsoft's Internet Explorer against Netscape's Navigator. Browser wars continued with the decline of Internet Explorer's market share and the popularity of other browsers including Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera.
  With the introduction of HTML5 and CSS 3, a new generation of browser war began, this time adding extensive client-side scripting to the World Wide Web, as well as more widespread use of smartphones and other mobile devices for browsing the web. These newcomers have ensured that browser battles continue among enthusiasts, while the average web user is less affected.
context_section_description: The World Wide Web is an Internet-based hypertext system invented in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Tim Berners-Lee. He wrote the first web browser WorldWideWeb, later renamed Nexus, and released it for the NeXTstep platform in 1991.
  By the end of 1992 other browsers had appeared, many of them based on the libwww library. These included Unix browsers such as Line Mode Browser, ViolaWWW, Erwise, and MidasWWW, and MacWWW/Samba for the Mac. Even though these browsers tended to be simple HTML viewers, relying on external helper applications to view multimedia content, they provided choice to users both in browsers and platforms.
caption: Usage share as of Q2 2009 by percent of layout engines/web browsers