<P> Students at the University of Kansas adapted an existing text - only hypertext browser, Lynx, to access the web . Lynx was available on Unix and DOS, and some web designers, unimpressed with glossy graphical websites, held that a website not accessible through Lynx wasn't worth visiting . </P> <P> The first Microsoft Windows browser was Cello, written by Thomas R. Bruce for the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School to provide legal information, since access to Windows was more widespread amongst lawyers than access to Unix . Cello was released in June 1993 . </P> <P> The Web was first popularized by Mosaic, a graphical browser launched in 1993 by Marc Andreessen's team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign (UIUC). The origins of Mosaic date to 1992 . In November 1992, the NCSA at the University of Illinois (UIUC) established a website . In December 1992, Andreessen and Eric Bina, students attending UIUC and working at the NCSA, began work on Mosaic with funding from the High - Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a US - federal research and development program . Andreessen and Bina released a Unix version of the browser in February 1993; Mac and Windows versions followed in August 1993 . The browser gained popularity due to its strong support of integrated multimedia, and the authors' rapid response to user bug reports and recommendations for new features . </P> <P> After graduation from UIUC, Andreessen and James H. Clark, former CEO of Silicon Graphics, met and formed Mosaic Communications Corporation in April 1994, to develop the Mosaic Netscape browser commercially . The company later changed its name to Netscape, and the browser was developed further as Netscape Navigator . </P>

When did the world wide web became popular