History

Timeline

  • 1988-1993: World Wide Web at CERN
  • 1994: Netscape
  • Since 1994: First Browser War
  • 1994: Emergence of the W3C
  • 2004: WHATWG
  • 2004/05: Web 2.0
  • 2007: iPhone (mobile revolution)
  • 2007-18: Current developments and trends

1988-1993: World Wide Web at CERN

  • 1980: Tim Berners-Lee developed application called Enquire at CERN
    • Text file can be divided in of nodes
    • Each node could be any type of info (address, note, idea,…)
    • Nodes link to each other bidirectionally
  • 1988: Berners-Lee tried to build a distributed system similar to Enquire
  • 1989: Berners-Lee submits project proposal to CERN
  • 1990: Name of project: World Wide Web
  • 1990: Berners-Lee finalized core ideas:
    1. HTTP (specify communication between client and server)
    2. URI (specify addressing of arbitrary files/resources)
    3. HTML (specify the markup language of web documents)
  • 1991: First Web page
  • 1991: Project presented at a hypertext-conference
  • 1993: WWW is published at CERN

1994: Netscape

  • 1993: Browser Mosaic developed by Bina and Andreessen at the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications)
  • 1994: Andreessen left the NCSA and created Netscape
  • 1995-1996: Due to Netscape, web sites become more colorful, get tables and frames
  • Private persons and companies go into the WWW
  • Fast development of Mosaic and Netscape

Since 1994: The First Browser War

  • 1995/96: Netscape has market share of 90 %
  • 1995:
  • Microsoft publishes IE (MS has ignored the Web market)
  • Microsoft couples Windows and IE (fast growth)
  • 1997: IE 4.0 equal to Netscape
  • 1998: Netscape loses market share
  • Slow development
  • Missing compatibility with Stylesheets and Java
  • 2005: Netscape is quit

1994: Emergence of the W3C

  • Problem: Rapid and unstructured growth made application development hard
  • 1994: First initiatives for developing Web standards
  • 1995: Emergence of W3-consortium (W3C)
    • Companies and institutions pay membership fees (3-year-contract)
    • They can develop W3C standards
    • Working groups for HTML, XML, CSS, …
    • Recommendations are publicly available

2004: Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group

  • 2003: Apple publishes Safari
    • Based on the KHTML-Engine
    • Goal: Establish W3C standards
  • 2004: Mozilla Foundations publishes Firefox
  • 2004: Opera, Apple and Mozilla create the WHATWG
    • Motivation: W3C is quite slow and has a big focus on XML
    • Goal: Faster developments of Web standards (e.g., HTML5)

2004/05: Web 2.0

  • 2004/05: Term Web 2.0 is coined
    • Should describe an interactive WWW
    • Location transparency
      • Distinction local vs. remote storage is relaxed
    • Browser as new OS (applications use the browser)
    • Mashups: Web content of different services is re-combined (cf. remix in music)
    • Users without technical knowledge can use the Web (e.g., blogs)
    • But: Term is overloaded - basically it is a further development of the WWW

2007: iPhone

  • 2007: Apple presented the iPhone
    • Mobile revolution (touch-only, big screen)
    • Safari could display normal websites