Sorry if this is a super huge question but I’m actually curious.
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It goes along with the programming language HTML (hypertext markup language). Websites were written in HTML which is a mostly-text file with tags like “bold” “italic” “header” and the dreaded “blink”
The browser reads the file that says
Welcome to <blink> Reddit! </blink>
And the word Reddit would blink on your screen. This still works but websites are more complex now and the HTML has more features. But back in the early 90s, that’s what we used. You couldn’t use jpg files until Netscape browser 1.1 released.
The earliest browser I can think of was called Lynx. It was text and links to other websites only, no image capability.
The very first web browsers were text only. I remember using the Lynx browser back in the early 90’s. The interwebs were a bit more primitive back then.
The first web browser was called [WorldWideWeb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb) and was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, widely considered the creator of the World Wide Web (the browser was later renamed Nexus Browser to avoid confusion with the web system itself).
It was written in Objective-C programming language for the NeXTSTEP operating system. The source code is public domain if you wish to look at it. At the same time Berners-Lee also created the HTML and HTTP standards fundamental to the modern world wide web, I imagine there was a lot of overlap there going back and forth between updating the standard/documentation and implementing the browser.
Besides that I couldn’t find any information about how specifically it was developed, but I can’t imagine it was significantly different to any other software created at the time. Is there some specific aspect of its development that you believe is too complex such that it requires explaining like you’re five?
Think of a school textbook with footnotes and references. The “web” was an attempt to present the same type of information on a computer screen. The goal was to make it easy to follow the references from one document to another. That is ALL the original browser did. Later, pictures, sounds, etc. we’re added. Then someone decided it was all a bit too static, too much like a book, and they added scripting to allow the display to be more dynamic. Then everything got out of control and we have the mess that is the modern browser.
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