"Fifteen years ago, the Web browser was invented on Christmas day. We look at the history of the browser, talk to its creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and ponder how the software increasingly provokes users to define their own ways of consuming information online." Berners-Lee: "A lot of people really want to have an arrangement to provide them with the software that is maintained, and to pay for that support. So, there's a place for the commercial software makers. But the open-source community is absolutely essential for the development of the Web. That's very important to maintain a healthy community."
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Member since:
2005-11-05
Correct, Open source *is* essential for the development of the Web. Thats apparent in how Apache run ~70% of the
internet's web servers:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html
Just because software is open source doesn't mean that it
can't be commercially maintained. A pretty good example
would be mysql being commercially maintained by mysql ab.
Member since:2005-06-29
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Member since:
2005-11-10
So that's why I made it an editor and I was really surprised when on platforms which didn't have wizzywig editors, that people were prepared to go to the trouble of learning all the angle brackets and doing the html.
And a lot of people still do, so that was something that the user interface engineer in me was horrified to find that people would put up with such a terrible interface.
I personally feel I'm much better off writing the tags raw. I can change a single style and it reflect across an entire site, instead of nested font tags, and instead of multiple classes for the same thing made by dumb editors. Even NVu is miles from perfect in reducing redundency.
Member since:2005-11-10
Forgot to add that not requiring a WYSIWYG editor probably helped acceptance of the standard and the growth of the web a huge amount.
A binary format that would require a WYSIWYG tool would save tons of bandwidth back in a time when you could see the letters appear one by one, but as a text format, HTML can be written on any computer without the need of any software other than any notepad like app, which even DOS has (edit). People can make their own editors with ease, people can create and edit HTML on any platform, any spec machine without having to rely on any one vendor or platform or minimum specification.
Part of Sir Tim's reasons for HTML was the plethora of different software, computers and networks that prevented easy information exchange at the time.
Member since:2005-07-06
<em>I know how to code in XHTML, but I don't want to code it by hand for my blog either.</em>
Then you must not be very good at <em>marking up content</em> in XHTML (you don't <em>code</em> in XHMTL), or you'd be more comfortable with writing the tags by hand, rather than depending on a tool to do it for you.
Member since:2005-06-29
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RE[2]: lol@computer nerds
Member since:
2005-07-06
Some interesting stuff, especially where he mentions he envisioned the web a lot more interactive instead of publishing oriented. Originally anyone was supposed to be edit pages from the browser, assuming proper permissions for the user. Instead, every site has implemented it's own authentication mechanisms, and wikis are considered revolutionary.
But he points out one important defect: it's not straightforward to edit. You got to work around with tags, instead of for example selecting text and hitting ctrl+b (or pushing the 'bold' button). Drag and drop integration with the browser could be the next desktop revolution, if current webstandards would be able to handle various formats more transparently. For example: if you have a information site that's maintained by a group of people; a person would be able to drag a graph to the browserscreen from his OpenOffice document, and get that graph embedded into a webpage seemlessly.
Perhaps, with environments like the Mezzo desktop, stuff like this will be possible soon. But the standard wouldn't be a standard for the rest of us. That's where we perhaps set out on the 'wrong' path for our webstandards, partly because of technical limitations we had earlier on.
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Member since:
2005-07-25
Member since:2005-11-10
I'm not so sure about that. Web browsers still diaplay the content given them. Bookmarks have been around since the earliest browsers and nothing much has changed in the browser scene since the basic inception of the brower itself 15 years ago.
What has come a LONG way is the content on the web. Dynamic content (Servers), Ads, shops, services and more.
Only with the extensibility of Firefox have we seen an actual evolution of the browser from a simple document-viewer to a more rich application. Having prettier graphics on screens and supporting more standards doesn't change the fact that a browser is still Back / Forward / Reload / Stop / Home.
Member since:
2005-08-20
