Trend-setting desktop software applications

BANGALORE, Have you ever imagined what would it be like if there were no browser to let you surf on internet? Or if there weren no word-processor or spreadsheet available? You cannot? Well there were software applications that changed everything in the wake. We have listed five such applications.

Photoshop

It never mattered whether you are a professional photographer or an amateur, taking breathtaking photographs was never an easy task. Photoshop came along and it changed the dynamics of the way people looked at photos or looked in photos.

Photoshop was actually the brainchild of Thomas Knoll, a PhD student at Michigan University. At initial stage, in 1987, it was called Display but was later changed to ImagePro in 1988 and was finally renamed Photoshop. After it was purchased by Adobe and was launched for Mac, there was no turning back. Photoshop drastically changed the world we see , the movies we watch. Photo manipulation, special effects, advertisement, games Photoshop was being used everywhere and showed us a complete different world that we were not aware of.

Mosaic

Mosaic Web Browser, may not be the first browser, but is said to be the first browser that took the World Wide Web to the general public, and made it popular. Browsers before Mosaic displayed the images separately but it was Mosaic that introduced or rather put images in the same window and within the text. Introduction of Mosaic was considered to be the turning point in the World Wide Web, since it was the first browser based on graphical user interface. It also introduced support for sound, video, bookmarks and history.

Mosaic was released in January 1993 and was developed at National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). It was also considered to be the first cross-platform browser. It supported different protocols like FTP, HTTP, telnet and Gopher. But its popularity began to lessen after Netscape Navigator was introduced in 1994. Though Netscape had the same mind behind it- Marc Andreessen. initially the browser was named Mosaic Navigator but due to some legal issues it was renamed Netscape Navigator. It became successful and dominated the World Wide Web to a great extent. But then Microsoft was there to cash-on this new market and opportunity and came up with Internet Explorer and later bundled it with the Windows OS. Though it raised a legal issue against Microsoft, as installation of other browser was not allowed in Windows.

Finally after other began to dominate the market, Mosaic was discontinued in 1997.

Lotus 1-2-3

Lotus 1-2-3 was launched on 26th January, 1983. It was 1-2-3 that established spreadsheet in the market. It was also the first spreadsheet application that introduced cell naming and cell ranges. It allowed users to plot, create charts and also to create a database.

Lotus Development Software was founded by Mitchell Kapor and Jonathan Sachs in 1982. Mitchell started working on Lotus 1-2-3 after he left VisiCorp (brain behind VisiCalc, first spreadsheet application). The suffix 1-2-3 refers to the three important elements in Lotus which are spreadsheet, graphic and database. Features like pop-up menus, data sorting, and macros led to the popularity of Lotus 1-2-3. Soon after its launch it became the leading spreadsheet application in the market. But Lotus lacked in bringing this application to Windows. Also the popularity of Lotus 1-2-3 forced Microsoft to come up with another spreadsheet program after Multiplan. So they come up Excel, Windows version, in 1987. Soon it outsells Lotus 1-2-3 and established Microsoft as a leading software development company. Later Lotus also launched Lotus SmartSuite but lately it did not perform well. Lotus was finally acquired by IBM in 1995.

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