Netscape time's influence has gone far beyond Netscape itself, and tis a legacy that we still wrestle with on the web. We probably always will. The post Thinking more about Netscape Time appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
After Netscape, the speed of software sped up beyond what anyone could have imagined. Thanks to a documentary crew and a ghost writer, we have a full view of the whole thing. The post The lasting influence of Netscape Time appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
Thinking about Anil Dash's "Endgame for the Open Web," and what we can do to prepare. The post Prepping for the endgame of the open web appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
Permalinks are commonplace on the web. But it took the rise of blogging to codify them, and bring them out into the world. And it all started with a single exchange of blogs. The post Did you want that link to be permanent? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
Blogging is so fundamentally native to the web that twenty years of commoditization has left it relatively untouched. We share information, freely. The post Information is still free appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
I had a chance to go on Igalia Chats and walk through the history of Shadow DOM with Eric Meyer, Brian Kardell, and Jeremy Keith. It was a fun, and pretty light discussion, but I learned a ton. The post Chatting about Shadow DOM appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
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In 1998, Bruce and Susan Abelson launched Open Diary. Building on personal site builders like Geocities, Angelfire, and Tripod, Open […] The post What happened to the comment section? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
I'm reflecting on a lot of really interesting responses I got last month to my article about feeling lonely on the web. And maybe now, I'm feeling a bit less so. So thank you to everyone who responded. The post Feeling Less Lonely appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
Something like a channel changer, for the web. That's what the idea was at first. But it led to a whole new path of discovery that even the site's creators couldn't have predicted. The post Stumbling upon appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
If the web is participatory, and I really think it is, then how come blogging can feel so lonely? The post Do blogs need to be so lonely? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
Twenty years ago, Kevin Kelly wrote an absolutely seminal piece for Wired. This week is a great opportunity to look back at it. The post We Are Still the Web appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
In the early 1990s, three companies pioneered online transactions, facing challenges of security and user accessibility. They are hardly known today. The post Three attempts at making payments secure appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
By the end of 1995, the web moved outward and into the hands of everyone. The post Exploring the web in 1995 appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
With search getting worse by the day, maybe it's time we rebounded in the other direction. The long forgotten directory. The post Can Directories Rise Again? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
In 1995, a new industry was born, and design became a true practice. The post The innovative designs of 1995 appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
The world changed a lot in 1995. And for the web, it was a transformational year. The post 1995 Was the Most Important Year for the Web appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
A home online is about as essential as it gets. But we need to make that easier. Where are we heading to build this new web together? The post Our Online Homes Need Infastructure appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
The earliest work with selling things online was all about reaching a shopping public ready to log on and start. But along the way, they found a whole new audience for shopping, which changed the way we think about commerce on the web.. The post Expanding Access: The History of E … | Continue reading
When we think about AI, we can't only think of what it has generated. We need to think about what it does to what the world has already created. The post What happens to what we’ve already created? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
The breakthroughs of the web are often compared to the printing press. But could the former exist without the latter? The post Would the internet exist today if the printing press didn’t come before it? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
Early computers faced unexpected failures, and that gave us graceful degradation. But on the web, we needed something different. We needed progressive enhancement. The post Progressive enhancement brings everyone in appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
The term mainstream media is so common these days, we can forget where it came from. But it has an interesting connection with the web. The post Where did mainstream media come from? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
There is something you can do to help the open web. Put yourself on it. The post The Free Web appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
There's a website developed with a personalized experience in mind. It touts major breakthroughs in predictive technology, driven by sophisticated algorithms that provide real-time recommendations. And it was launched in 1995. The post The Website that Predicted AI appeared first … | Continue reading
When you get down to it, a lot of the web is just lists. And that's kind of what it was meant for. The post It’s Lists All the Way Down appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
In the open source community, there is perhaps no greater gift than code. This is about that time 135,000 lines of gifted code created a new era of JavaScript The post The Gift of Code appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
Earlier this month, MTV News abruptly pulled their site off the web without warning, eliminating a virtual archive of pop culture news stories that date back to 1997. This move coincided with a series of similar decisions from MTV’s parent company Paramount, including a similar m … | Continue reading
In 2007, one person tried to lay claim to the term SEO. But SEO had been invented by a community. It couldn't be owned. The post Where does SEO come from? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
We don't know how this AI thing will turn out, but there is much to be learned from the cycles of hype that have already occurred on the web. The post Beware the cloud of hype appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
On reclaiming the web's lost humanity, and the people still very much trying to do it. The post The Analog Web appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
In the early 2000s, Web 2.0 prompted new web standards, HTML5 and CSS3. Developers used 'shims' and 'polyfills' for browser compatibility, fostering innovation. The post Filling gaps with a polyfill appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
Reading the original text of ‘Information Management: A Proposal’, the initial proposal from the internet’s inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, doesn’t really put you in the moment. Until now thanks to an insane quest by John Graham-Cumming to take the original file created by Berners-Lee … | Continue reading
The indie web may be back. But if is, it is likely in a way we least expect. The post We’ve been waiting 20 years for this appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
In 2011, early Facebooker John Hammerbacher was quoted as saying: The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks Given Facebook (sorry, I mean Meta’s) latest statement about artificial general intelligence, an all the enthusiasm poured … | Continue reading
If it's the early 2000s you might make a dire decision: it's time to block IE6. The post How to Block IE6 appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
Today I’m looking at the work of Faruk Ates, who created the first version of Modernizr back in 2009. With the help of several other developers in a remarkably short period of time, Ate’s initial prototype transformed into a fully-featured library that empowered developers worldw … | Continue reading
The internet's openness, championed by pioneers like Tim Berners-Lee, as well as concerns over its limitations, are explored in a retrospective on the history and future of the open web. The duality of its freedom – a gift and a constraint – points to the need for a more inclusiv … | Continue reading
I am a bit distressed about the web. Sometimes, I panic about it. And it’s why I look back so often to try and capture the long view. But when I peak up to loo around a lot of what I see—or rather, what is surfaced to me by broken down algorithms that hides beneath the […] The po … | Continue reading
How this one small browser quirk turned into a tool used by countless people for decades. The post Wait, what’s a bookmarklet? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
When the Allaire brothers were looking for a way to build websites, nothing stuck out. So they built their own and called it Coldfusion. The post Building Coldfusion for the web appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
It occurs to me that, much like the web, what’s absent from the next wave of AI tools are any sort of concept of transclusion. Translcusion would have the sources of data traveling along the same pipes as that data itself, and make attribution actually possible. Can you imagine i … | Continue reading
I was reading about the latest experiment from Google, an AI-powered research tool called NotebookLM and I came across the name Steven Johnson. After doing a bit of digging I found that it was the same Steve Johnson who co-founded Feed magazine and wrote many books, including Int … | Continue reading
There are a lot of stories about companies or tech scenes that spawned really intricate web pedigrees as former employees made their way into the world and started new companies that had lasting impacts. The PayPal Mafia is the most cited example, but Silicon Alley also comes to … | Continue reading
I’ve been interested in Coldfusion for a while, as this language that was (and in some ways still is) very popular, but never quite made the headlines. I like what its creator, JJ Allaire, had to say about his goal when he created it though: We built a language that had as its at … | Continue reading
It used to not be all that common for some teenager to be borderline (internet) famous for just totally killing it at web dev. I’ve written about Lissa Explains it All and then recently came across this post about Nick Heinle, who wrote a book about JavaScript for O’Reilly when h … | Continue reading
I just learned that Molly Holzschlag has passed. She was a tireless advocate for the principles of the open web. […] The post Remembering Molly: one of the greats appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
In 1994, Ted Leonsis was the head of the new media marketing firm he created, Redgate Communications, spun out six […] The post AOL Pretends to be the Internet appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading