Mosaic gives the Web a visual, approachable interface

Early Web browsers displayed pages mainly as text, and using them still required enough technical familiarity that the Web remained largely a tool for researchers rather than the general public. NCSA Mosaic added inline images alongside text and a simple point-and-click interface that ran on ordinary desktop computers, making pages look and behave more like the visual documents people already expected from print and software. Because Mosaic was free and reasonably easy to install, it spread quickly through universities and then homes, and is widely credited with turning the Web from a niche research tool into something non-specialists actually wanted to use, setting up the commercial browser market that followed.