Over the last 25 years, the web has grown from a simple idea to the most important technological breakthrough of our time. | Continue reading
Is a website the same as a web application? That question is older than you think The post Web Apps, Web Sites, Are they all the Same? appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
When Paul Phillips the web is at its best when its being useless he did the only thing he could think of. He built his own useless site to catalog it. The post The Long Tail of Uselessness appeared first on The History of the Web. | Continue reading
There's one site that is connected to Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo!, Twitter, and many others. And you probably never think about it. | Continue reading
In 1999, the word "community" took on a new meaning on the web. One that would have a lasting impact for years to come. | Continue reading
In 2007, the web standards project entered the scene once more to push Microsoft to build its most standards-compliant browser to date. | Continue reading
A decade before modern day web components, Microsoft had already hit on a formula for their success. | Continue reading
Recently, I’ve been told that my email has been bouncing some messages back, so if you tried to email me […] | Continue reading
From Yahooligans! to Club Penguin, the of sites we made for kids on the early web were a bit unsteady, but formative and fun for the first web generation. | Continue reading
In 1998, Netscape announced a bold new plan to the world. One announcement was expected. The other took the tech world by surprise. | Continue reading
1996 was the year of the city guide. By 1998, they were already gone. | Continue reading
The mid-2000's were often referred to as the era of Web 2.0. That may have been an overused term, but it undeniably changed the way designers and developers approached their practice through patterns. | Continue reading
A single website changed his life, and set him on a path to activism, and ultimately, exile. | Continue reading
My ongoing research has me taking another look at the Browser Wars and thinking about how they're retelling themselves in real-time today. | Continue reading
You might be surprised by what options you have. Already, in the late-90's, travel was abuzz on the web. And the competition was fierce. | Continue reading
There are plenty who make the case that the web makes us lonely. But sometimes, the opposite is true. | Continue reading
Ever wondered how people found about the web. The first transmission of its existence was a digital one, a Usenet post that sparked a following of early web pioneers. | Continue reading
The web's first browser featured full color, read/write capabilities, and multiple windows. The second browser was a text-only command line tool. Guess which one people actually used? | Continue reading
Over the last 25 years, the web has grown from a simple idea to the most important technological breakthrough of our time. | Continue reading
In 1995, it would be hard to believe that you could win a million dollars from surfing the web. Then, AOL made it possible. | Continue reading
Pseudo.com is a forgotten relic of the dot-com era. Was it ahead of its time? A moonshot that went too far? Or simply a piece of elaborate performance art? | Continue reading
A look at how we can save our websites from ourselves, and the stories that keep us going. | Continue reading
You can link to anything on the web. That's a strength. And yet the right to link has been dragged into court on a regular basis for decades. Why is that? | Continue reading
If you're a developer today, you likely take advantage of built in tools for web debugging every day. They came from the smallest places, and it took years to get them where they are today. | Continue reading
When websites disappear, how do we make sure that our history is preserved? | Continue reading
The web's turn into commercial may have happened quickly—it was largely complete by the end of the 1990's—but that doesn't mean it didn't take a turn into the weird here and there. Case and point: Zima. | Continue reading
This week I have something a bit different, written by longtime newsletter author Ernie Smith, best known for his history […] | Continue reading
A look at the work that standards makes possible, and the kinds of hypertext that were never fully realized | Continue reading
Content Management Systems — software that helps people author and publish websites — likely dates back farther than you think. The problem is, it wasn't quite called that yet. | Continue reading
There are a near infinite number of sites that have launched that you've never heard about. This is likely one of them. But if not for poor timing, it may have been primed for success. | Continue reading
A report on the health of the Internet, and efforts to improve that health, bring us in to a new year. | Continue reading
People thought a magazine about the web would never work. People thought a magazine about the web on the web would never work. They both did. | Continue reading
This month, a look at the power center in tech in the wake of a move to de-platform hate, and what the future of the personal site might look like. | Continue reading
The web launched from a research lab in Europe, but it found its first major boom in the still-emerging Northern […] | Continue reading
There are the browsers that everyone's heard of. And then there are some that, for whatever reason, faded away. These are the latter. | Continue reading
What follows is an excerpt from the latest chapter an ongoing series I’ve been writing for the last few months […] | Continue reading
On September 16, 1985, Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple after a fraught and personal battle with then-CEO John […] | Continue reading
Chapter 5 of my series is out now, so make sure to get caught up! Plus, the weird web of the past and the independent web of the future. | Continue reading
The World Wide Web Foundation began as a way to bring the web to everyone. In these trying times, it is needed more than ever. | Continue reading
Web History, Now a Podcast! I’ve now written four parts in my chapter by chapter series on web history from […] | Continue reading
In June of 2015, Alex Russell, a software engineer on the Google Chrome team, published a blog post. In the post, […] | Continue reading
If you've been following along with my series on CSS Tricks, well now you can listen to all of that great history, narrated by Jeremy Keith. | Continue reading
When two sisters hit the web with their new idea, it was unlike anything anyone had seen. That one site, ChickClick, inspired so many more and crafted a foundational network of the early web. | Continue reading
When they opened their door to the public in the early 1990’s, Hot Hot Hot had over 320 hot sauce […] | Continue reading
The Complete History, by me If you haven’t seen it yet, the first three chapters of my ongoing series at […] | Continue reading
The fan fiction community is tough. Resilient. Fandom — a catch-all term that includes fan fiction writers, readers, and participants […] | Continue reading
Image courtesy of Muhammad Rehan Saeed In 1999 the two largest browsers, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, were in all […] | Continue reading
Starting today, I will have an ongoing series at CSS-Tricks that we’re just calling Web History. It’s a chapter by […] | Continue reading