User:Brunnock/History of the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web ("WWW" or "The Web") is a global information medium which users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and Usenet also do. The history of the Internet and hypertext dates back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web.

CERN
In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee developed a platform for accessing and viewing documentation at CERN utilizing the Internet and hypertext. He designed a protocol (HTTP) and a markup language (HTML); and developed a browser (WorldWideWeb), a web server (CERN httpd), and a website (http://info.cern.ch/). Nicola Pellow complemented the NeXTSTEP browser with the Line Mode Browser which could work with a CLI.

While the Web was successful at CERN, it struggled to gain acceptance elsewhere. In two years, there were only 50 websites in the world. In the meantime, the University of Minnesota released a document browsing system for the Internet called Gopher which quickly gained traction. However, in 1993, the University of Minnesota declared that Gopher was proprietary and would have to be licensed. In response, CERN put their code into the public domain which spurred the development of various browsers.

NCSA
In 1993, NCSA used CERN's code to develop Mosaic, a browser that could display inline images and submit forms for Windows, Macintosh and X-Windows. NCSA also developed HTTPd, a Unix web server that used the Common Gateway Interface to process forms and Server Side Includes for dynamic content. Both client and server software were free to use with no restrictions.

Mosaic was an immediate hit. Within a year, Web traffic surpassed Gopher's. Wired declared that Mosaic made non-Internet online services obsolete.

Netscape
In 1994, Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen, the lead developer on Mosaic, founded Netscape and released Navigator, a browser that soon became the dominant web client. They also released the Netsite Commerce web server which could handle SSL requests thus enabling e-commerce on the Web. SSL became the standard method to encrypt web traffic. Netscape also introduced an unpublicized feature they called cookies. Netscape followed up with Navigator 2 in 1995 introducing frames, Java applets and JavaScript.

Netscape had a very successful IPO valuing the company at $2.9 billion despite the lack of profits and triggering the dot-com bubble. Over the next 5 years, over a trillion dollars was raised to fund thousands of startups consisting of little more than a website.

In spite of their early success, Netscape was unable to fend off Microsoft. In 1998, Netscape made Navigator open source and launched Mozilla. AOL bought Netscape that year and then disbanded it in 2003.

Apache
After Rob McCool joined Netscape, development on the NCSA HTTPd server languished. In 1995, Brian Behlendorf and Cliff Skolnick created a mailing list to coordinate efforts to fix bugs and make improvements to HTTPd. They called their version of HTTPd, Apache.

Apache quickly became the dominant server on the Web. After adding support for modules, Apache was able to allow developers to handle web requests with a variety of languages including Perl, PHP and Python. Together with Linux and MySQL, it became known as the LAMP platform.

Following the success of Apache, the Apache Software Foundation was founded in 1999 and produced many open source web software projects in the same collaborative spirit.

Apache remained the dominant web server until 2019 (see Nginx).

Microsoft
In 1995, Bill Gates outlined Microsoft's strategy to dominate the Internet in his Tidal Wave memo. Microsoft licensed Mosaic from Spyglass and released Internet Explorer 1.0 in 1995 and IE2 later that year. IE2 added features pioneered at Netscape such as cookies, SSL, and JavaScript. It was the start of a browser war between Microsoft and Netscape.

IE3, released in 1996, added support for Java applets, ActiveX, and CSS. At this point, Microsoft began bundling IE with Windows. IE3 managed to increase Microsoft's share of the browser market from under 10% to over 20%.

IE4, released in 1997, introduced Dynamic HTML setting the stage for the Web 2.0 revolution. By 1998, IE was able to capture the majority of the desktop browser market. It would be the dominant browser for the next fourteen years.

Standardization
As more software was developed for the Web, the need for rigorous standards increased.

HTML & CSS
In 1994, Tim Berners-Lee left CERN and founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT's LCS in order to create Web standards. However, Netscape and Microsoft, in the middle of a browser war, ignored the W3C and added elements to HTML ad hoc (e.g., blink and marquee). In 1995, NS and MS came to their senses and agreed to abide by the W3C's standard.

The W3C published the standard for HTML 4 in 1997, which included Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), giving designers more control over the appearance of web pages without the need for additional HTML tags. Unfortunately, the W3C couldn't enforce compliance so none of the browsers were fully compliant. This frustrated web designers who formed the Web Standards Project (WaSP) in 1998 with the goal of cajoling compliance. Furthermore, the influential websites A List Apart and CSS Zen Garden promoted good design and adherence to standards. Nevertheless, AOL halted development of Netscape and Microsoft was slow to update IE. Mozilla and Apple both released browsers that aimed to be more standards compliant (Firefox in 2002 and Safari in 2003), but were unable to dislodge IE as the dominant browser and hence, the de facto standard.

HTTP
Tim Berners-Lee submitted the first RFC for HTTP in 1996.

ECMAScript
Netscape transferred control of JavaScript standard to ECMA.

Google
During the dot-com bubble, many companies vied to create a dominant Web portal in the belief that such a website would best be able to attract a large audience that in turn would attract advertising revenue. While most of these portals offered a search engine, they weren't interested in encouraging folks to find other web properties and instead concentrated on "sticky" content.

In 1998, Google launched a stripped down search engine that delivered superior results. It was a hit with users who switched from portals to Google. Furthermore, with AdWords, Google had an effective business model. From $70 million in 2000, Google brought in over $100 billion in ad revenue in 2020. With the bursting of the dot-com bubble, portals either scaled back operations, floundered, or shut down entirely.

Web 2.0
As useful as the Web was, HTML pages were mainly static documents. Web pages could run JavaScript and respond to user input, but they could not interact with the network. Browsers could submit data to servers via forms and receive new pages, but this was slow compared to traditional desktop applications. Web developers that wanted to offer more sophisticated applications used Java or nonstandard solutions such as Flash or ActiveX.

In 1999, Microsoft added a little noticed feature called XMLHttpRequest to MSIE. In 2002, developers at Oddpost used this feature to create the first Ajax application- a webmail client that performed as well as a desktop application.

Ajax apps were revolutionary. Web pages evolved beyond static documents to full-blown applications. Websites began offering APIs in addition to webpages. Developers created a plethora of Ajax apps including widgets, mashups and new types of social apps. Analysts called it Web 2.0.

Browser vendors improved the performance of their JavaScript engines and dropped support for Flash and Java. Traditional client server applications were replaced by cloud apps. Amazon reinvented itself as a cloud service provider.

WHATWG
In spite of the success of Web 2.0 applications, the W3C forged ahead with their plan to replace HTML with XHTML and represent all data in XML leading to what Tim Berners-Lee called the Semantic Web.

In 2004, representatives from Mozilla, Opera, and Apple formed an opposing group, the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), dedicated to improving HTML while maintaining backward compatibility.

For the next several years, websites did not transition their content to XHTML ; browser vendors did not adopt XHTML2 ; and developers eschewed XML in favor of JSON.

By 2007, the W3C conceded and announced they were restarting work on HTML and in 2009, officially abandoned XHTML.

In 2019, the W3C ceded control of the HTML specification, now called the HTML Living Standard, to WHATWG.

Mobile
Early attempts to allow wireless devices to access the Web used simplified formats such as i-mode and WAP.

In 2007, Apple introduced the first smartphone with a full-featured browser. Other companies followed suit and in 2011, smartphone sales overtook PCs. Since 2016, most visitors access websites with mobile devices which led to the adoption of responsive web design.

Apple, Mozilla, and Google have taken different approaches to integrating smartphones with modern web apps.

Apple initially promoted web apps for the iPhone, but then encouraged developers to make native apps.

Mozilla announced Web APIs in 2011 to allow webapps to access hardware features such as audio, camera or GPS. Frameworks such as Cordova and Ionic allowed developers to build hybrid apps. Mozilla released a mobile OS designed to run web apps in 2012, but discontinued it in 2015.

In 2015, Google announced specifications for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and progressive web applications (PWA). AMPs use a combination of HTML, JavaScript, and Web Components to optimize web pages for mobile devices; and PWAs are web pages that, with a combination of web workers and manifest files, can be saved to a mobile device and opened like a native app.

Chrome
In 2008, Google released their Chrome browser with the first JIT JavaScript engine, V8, which overtook IE to become the dominant desktop browser in four years and Safari to become the dominant mobile browser in two. At the same time, Google open sourced Chrome's codebase, Chromium.

In 2009, Ryan Dahl used Chromium's V8 engine to power an event driven runtime system, Node.js, which allowed JavaScript code to be used on servers as well as browsers. This led to the development of new software stacks such as MEAN and Jamstack. Thanks to frameworks such as Electron, developers can bundle up node applications as standalone desktop applications such as Slack.

In 2011, Acer and Samsung began selling Chromebooks, cheap laptops running Chrome OS capable of running web apps. Over the next decade, more companies offered Chromebooks. Chromebooks outsold MacOS devices in 2020 to become the second most popular OS in the world.

In 2021, Microsoft rewrote their Edge browser to use Chromium as its code base in order to be more compatible with Chrome.

Privacy
As Google and Facebook came to dominate Web activity, those companies were able to record their users' habits, interests, and browsing data and allow advertisers to target ads more effectively. In addition, various companies used tracking cookies to record users activity on multiple websites alarming privacy advocates.

Tim Berners-Lee launched the Solid project in 2015 in order to decentralize the Web and give users control of their data.