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The Mosaic browser not only captivated Dean's mind, but it also rose to a new level of priority at the NCSA.
The story has to be traced back to half a year ago, at which time Mosaic was a project that did not receive much attention.
Smar, the director of the research center, originally intended just to design a simple and practical browser for non-researchers.
He planned to use it as a sort of research achievement to apply for more funding from the National Science Foundation or the University of Illinois.
However, when a student named Anderson put it on a shared website, things began to change.
Within just a week, this browser named Mosaic was downloaded thousands of times.
It became very popular, and many proactive users sent a plethora of suggestions for improvement to Anderson and his team.
Most of these users came from various universities or research institutions and were tech-savvy, so their suggestions were very targeted.
