In the beginning, let there be HTML

j

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Apr 30, 2013, 11:23:53 PM4/30/13

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A flash from the past for those who have forgotten:

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

The first website, brought back for the 20th birthday.

Jeff

Jukka K. Korpela

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May 1, 2013, 1:07:47 AM5/1/13

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Last-Modified: Thu, 03 Dec 1992 08:37:20 GMT
they say; but the content at the URL has varied a lot, as once can see
at http://www.archive.org (where the oldest version is from 1998, saying
that the page has gone).

I can't remember whether they have actually reconstructed the historical
content or just something that looks like that. In the page source code,
'<NEXTID N="55">' looks genuine, but <HEADER> suggests some interference
from HTML5, doesn't it?

At http://info.cern.ch they celebrate the 20th birthday of something,
saying: 'On 30 April 1993 CERN published a statement that made World
Wide Web ("W3", or simply "the web") technology available on a
royalty-free basis.'

But at
http://web.archive.org/web/20121028121830/http://info.cern.ch/www20/
they say: 'March 2009: 20 years of the web'.

It's good to have several birthdays. Preferably, more than non-birth days.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Chris F.A. Johnson

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May 1, 2013, 1:21:42 AM5/1/13

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On 2013-05-01, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 2013-05-01 6:23, j wrote:
>
>> A flash from the past for those who have forgotten:
>>
>> http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
>>
>> The first website, brought back for the 20th birthday.
>
> Last-Modified: Thu, 03 Dec 1992 08:37:20 GMT
> they say; but the content at the URL has varied a lot, as once can see
> at http://www.archive.org (where the oldest version is from 1998, saying
> that the page has gone).
>
> I can't remember whether they have actually reconstructed the historical
> content or just something that looks like that. In the page source code,
> '<NEXTID N="55">' looks genuine, but <HEADER> suggests some interference
> from HTML5, doesn't it?

No, it's outside the BODY.

--
Chris F.A. Johnson
<http://torontowebdesign.cfaj.ca/>

Message has been deleted

Jukka K. Korpela

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May 1, 2013, 2:21:30 PM5/1/13

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2013-05-01 9:20, Lewis wrote:

>> I can't remember whether they have actually reconstructed the historical
>> content or just something that looks like that. In the page source code,
>> '<NEXTID N="55">' looks genuine, but <HEADER> suggests some interference
>> from HTML5, doesn't it?
>

> Header has nothing to do with html5.

My message was not entirely serious, but I really find it interesting
that the ancient page, or a replica of an ancient page, uses <HEADER>,
which *is* an HTML5 thing too. It is true that here <HEADER> is really
what later became <HEAD>, as Chris F.A. Johnson alluded to, if I
understood correctly. Heads, headers, headings – it’s really messy

>> It's good to have several birthdays. Preferably, more than non-birth days.
>

> March 1989 is when Sir Tim first proposed the idea of something that
> became http and html.

Well, maybe. The early history of the web is poorly documented, and what
“Sir Tim” (who wasn’t Sir at that time) wrote that time can be construed
as the birth of the web in retrospect only.

> The first website went online in 1991, and the
> oldest version of that page is from 1992.

Around that time, the World Wide Web was demonstrated to me, and I was
underwhelmed. It was clearly inferior to the well-structured Gopher
system that serious people were working on. It had a line mode
interface, and it lacked structure and flexibility. The World Wide Web
that conquered the world later was really something rather different.

> The 1993 'birthday' is the
> real birthday of the web because it is when http and html were made
> available for anyone to use for anything they wanted, free from patents
> or royalties.

As I wrote, it’s good to have several birthdays. But the announcement in
1993 was rather irrelevant both from the perspective of that time and
from our view. The real change was the advent of Mosaic, the first
widely available graphic browser. The patent issue was just theory (even
in our time, computer programs as such are not patentable in the
European Union, and protocols and markup languages aren’t patentable
either, so this was all for US lawyers only).

> Within 2 years the web exploded, and within another 2
> years, most people were at least aware that it existed, even if it was a
> "geek thing".

Well, even Mosaic wasn’t for the general audience really. The most
important explosion was related to the development of Internet
connections, more than anything else. I remember how I commented in 1995
that maybe some day people will be able to use the World Wide Web even
at home! Right, it was possible at that time too, in principle... but
with 1,200 bits per second it wasn’t too sexy. So we could find many
other birthdays, too, more relevant than those that have been
celebrated. Isn’t it nice when you can celebrate your 20th birthday over
and over again?

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

j

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May 1, 2013, 10:59:44 PM5/1/13

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On 5/1/2013 2:20 AM, Lewis wrote:> In message
<klq7op$t6n$1...@dont-email.me> Jukka K. Korpela

> <jkor...@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
>> 2013-05-01 6:23, j wrote:
>
>>> A flash from the past for those who have forgotten:
>>>
>>> http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
>>>
>>> The first website, brought back for the 20th birthday.
>
>> Last-Modified: Thu, 03 Dec 1992 08:37:20 GMT
>> they say; but the content at the URL has varied a lot, as once can see
>> at http://www.archive.org (where the oldest version is from 1998, saying
>> that the page has gone).
>
>> I can't remember whether they have actually reconstructed the historical
>> content or just something that looks like that. In the page source code,
>> '<NEXTID N="55">' looks genuine, but <HEADER> suggests some interference
>> from HTML5, doesn't it?
>

> Header has nothing to do with html5.

And no html wrapper. Is html still not a required tag?
>
> I believe the current 'original' version was found in Sir Tim's
> archives.

Well, if it was the very first web page,there would be no hyperlinks to
other sites.

Still, I find it interesting that every one of us looked at the source.
It's what we do. And the html still works.

>
>> At http://info.cern.ch they celebrate the 20th birthday of something,
>> saying: 'On 30 April 1993 CERN published a statement that made World
>> Wide Web ("W3", or simply "the web") technology available on a
>> royalty-free basis.'
>
>> But at
>> http://web.archive.org/web/20121028121830/http://info.cern.ch/www20/
>> they say: 'March 2009: 20 years of the web'.
>
>> It's good to have several birthdays. Preferably, more than non-birth
days.
>

> March 1989 is when Sir Tim first proposed the idea of something that

> became http and html. The first website went online in 1991, and the
> oldest version of that page is from 1992. The 1993 'birthday' is the

> real birthday of the web because it is when http and html were made
> available for anyone to use for anything they wanted, free from patents

> or royalties. Within 2 years the web exploded, and within another 2

> years, most people were at least aware that it existed, even if it was a
> "geek thing".

I thought I was a late comer at the time in '95.

Jeff
>

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