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A bit of history: the Wold Wide Web

WWW (what ?)

HTML developed from the creation of the Wold Wide Web.

Wold Wide Web, AKA www, AKA the Web, is not the Internet.

The Internet is essentially the motorway where many vehicles (or protocols) circulate, the Web is simply one, but a very popular one. Others vehicles on the Internet are email, FTP, torrents, IRC chat, etc.

The Web is a network of interlinked pages, that are accessible through a Web Browser.

www_lets_share_what_we_know_canvas_lunch_bag.jpg

Tim Berners-Lee

The vision for what would become the Web came from the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee who happened to be working at CERN in the late 1980s

Tim-Berners Lee


Enquire (why?)

a bloody mess

Tim Berners-Lee in 1980 worked as a software developer at CERN.

He was faced with a few facts that would make him muse about what would later become the Web.

  • CERN's incredible abundance of knowledge and research
  • CERN's equally abundance of different computer hardware/software, protocols, file formats, documentation systems
  • == a bloody mess

unified, global documentation system

Berners-Lee wanted to create some unified, global documentation system, that allowed CERN research team to document and share their progress in ways that would be readable, but also writable to others.

Enquire

Berners-Lee's first efforts went to the development of a program called Enquire, a pet project to help him remember the connections among the various people, computers and projects at CERN.

"In Enquire I could type in a page of information about a person, a device or a program. Each page was a ‘node’ in the program, a little like an index card. The only way to create a new node was to make a link from and old node"[1].

a single information space

The Enquire first experiment got him thinking:

"Suppose all the information stored in computers everywhere were linked … Suppose I could program my computer to create a space in which anything could be linked to anything. All the bits of information in every computer at CERN, and on the planet, would be available to me and anyone else. These would be a single information space"[1].


Vannevar Bush: the Memex

Although unaware, Berner's Lee was venturing into territory previously explored by others. One of them was Vannevar Bush with his Memex.

Memex2.jpeg

  • summarize
  • reference to 'As We May Think'


steps after ENQUIRE (How?)

How to create a single information spaces?

Hypertext

Berners-Lee was looking for a minimal approach the wouldn't force anyone at CERN to change the software, hardware or formats they were using, to be part of the same information space.

He chose hypertext, and expanded it, by moving beyond internal links, to external link, that would allow jumps between different nodes.

Ted Nelson: Project Xanadu

Another person who explored the same territory Berner's Lee was now exploring was Ted Nelson

links: anchors

HTML

what is HTML?

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.

It is the most popular publishing language for the Web, but is also used as a source for ePubs.

In essence HTML is a descriptive markup language[2]. The markup of HTML tags describes to the browser on how text, images (, video, audio) should be displayed on the screen.

  1. 1.0 1.1 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named WeavingtheWeb
  2. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named markup

[1]

[2]




Resources

  1. A markup language provides instructions to the software to displaying text with given formatting, when it is interpreted.
  2. Weaving the Web reference