<P> However , the explosion in popularity of the Web was triggered by NCSA Mosaic which was a graphical browser running originally on Unix and soon ported to the Amiga and VMS platforms , and later the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms . Version 1.0 was released in September 1993 , and was dubbed the killer application of the Internet . It was the first web browser to display images inline with the document 's text . Prior browsers would display an icon that , when clicked , would download and open the graphic file in a helper application . This was an intentional design decision on both parts , as the graphics support in early browsers was intended for displaying charts and graphs associated with technical papers while the user scrolled to read the text , while Mosaic was trying to bring multimedia content to non-technical users . Mosaic and browsers derived from it had a user option to automatically display images inline or to show an icon for opening in external programs . Marc Andreessen , who was the leader of the Mosaic team at NCSA , quit to form a company that would later be known as Netscape Communications Corporation . Netscape released its flagship Navigator product in October 1994 , and it took off the next year . </P>
which early browser was the first to run on multiple computer platforms including windows
NCSA Mosaic