History of the World Wide Web

Wikipedia: History of HTML

Tim Berners-Lee

The World Wide Web was invented by the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who was a researcher at CERN in Switzerlaned in the 1980 and 90s.

• He wrote a proposal to create the WWW by combining the Internet, which was new and evolving, with Hypertext.

  • The web is not the same as the internet--the internet consistes of other services as well.
  • The proposal was submitted March 12, 1989--considered the birthday of the web.

• The first web site went online in 1991.

• He founded the W3C and is it's current director.

• Originally used by scientists to share research papers.

The first web browser available on PC and Mac was Mosaic, developed by Marc Andreessen's team at the NCSA and released in 1993

HTML 5

HTML 5 is the current version of HTML. The specification for this version was developed as a reaction against the W3C's proposal for a new standard called XHTML. - History of HTML 5

From HTML to XHTML to HTML5

From 1991 to 1999, HTML developed from version 1 to version 4.

In year 2000, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommended XHTML 1.0. The XHTML syntax was strict, and the developers were forced to write valid and "well-formed" code.

In 2004, W3C's decided to close down the development of HTML, in favor of XHTML.

In 2004, WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) was formed. The WHATWG wanted to develop HTML, consistent with how the web was used, while being backward compatible with older versions of HTML.

In 2004 - 2006, the WHATWG gained support by the major browser vendors.

In 2006, W3C announced that they would support WHATWG.

In 2008, the first HTML5 public draft was released.

In 2012, WHATWG and W3C decided on a separation:

WHATWG wanted to develop HTML as a "Living Standard". A living standard is always updated and improved. New features can be added, but old functionality cannot be removed.

The WHATWG HTML5 Living Standard was published in 2012, and is continuously updated.

W3C wanted to develop a definitive HTML5 and XHTML standard.

The W3C HTML5 Recommendation was released 28 October 2014.

-- W3Schools

The web at 30 something

The World Wide Web turned 30 on March 29, 2019. The original idea was to make it easy for scientists, and then later, for everyone to freely share information and ideas. How is this working out now? What is the effect of:

• Commercialization

• Search engines and the way they prioritize searches

  • Originally the links people saw were on pages created by friends, colleages or other trusted sources, so they were relevant and the quality was high.

• Social media

• Personal information stored "in the cloud"

What can we as web authors, designers, developers do to make the web better?

Tim Berners-Lee Says We've Messed Up The Internet But It Can Be Fixed