Cello (web Browser)

Cello (web Browser)

Cello was an early shareware 16-bit multipurpose web browser for Windows 3.1 developed by Thomas R. Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. It was the first web browser for Microsoft Windows, and thus was among the first free winsock browsers. It was reported that it worked without any problems on Windows NT 3.5 and with small modifications on OS/2.

Cello was created because, at the time, lawyers used Microsoft Windows on their computers, but the web browsers available at the time were mostly for Unix operating systems. This meant many legal experts were unable to access legal information made available in hypertext on the World Wide Web. Cello was popular during 1993/1994, but fell out of favor following the release of Mosaic and Netscape, after which development was abandoned.

Cello was first publicly released on 8 June 1993. Although a version 2.0 had been announced, development was abandoned prior to a public release leaving version 1.01a, released on 16 April 1994, to be the last version. Since then, the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School has licensed out the Cello 2.0 source code which has been used to develop commercial software.

The browser is no longer available from its original homepage. However, it can still be downloaded from mirror sites.