How the web started

Kier Vergel de Dios
Mar 30, 2020
3 min read

The internet that we know now isn’t what was planned to be when it was first conceived. Tim Berners-Lee, a young software engineer at a particle physics laboratory in Switzerland called CERN, saw that scientists from all over the world who uses the company’s accelerators struggle hard to share information. He saw the dire need to create a language that will be understood by all, accessible anytime, anywhere in the world. He later found himself creating the foundation of what we know now as the Internet.

By the end of 1990, Berners-Lee had created the very first web browser and web server. In 1991, Berners-Lee selflessly released the breakthrough out of his hands, and into the world, making it available to everyone on a royalty-free basis, forever.

Internet has evolved since then. With the creation of the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994, web standards were established, making web development and online experience consistent and enjoyable. Among these standards include the three foundation of the modern-day web: HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

The building blocks of web development

Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) was first conceived in 1990 as the building blocks of all websites. They are a series of codes that generate web contents in its raw form. It was created by Tim Berners-Lee and was improved continuously by World Wide Consortium (W3C). HTML versions 1-4 were created all throughout the 90s. In 2004, Web Hypertext Application Technology (WHATWG) was created to further improve HTML. In favor of the cause, major web browsers gave support to the working group as the web evolves to a more dynamic environment. In 2008, WHATWG released the draft for HTML 5. Six years later, the official HTML 5 recommendation was released by W3C, who took over its development in 2012.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), the language that styles HTML codes, was not utilized until 1994. Berner-Lee’s team did not think of styling HTML as they were more concerned on using web as its employee’s directory. Instead, different developers conceived of this breakthrough, the most notable was the one created by Håkon Wium Lie from Norway. In its early formation in 1996, users can create simple design modifications such as changing the font style and color. This later improved with CSS 2. Its latest version is CSS 3 which was completed in 1999. This improvement gave developers full control over the web page’s design and visual appearance while making sure that the pages will load as fast as possible an all browsers.

Despite of HTML and CSS creating a big impact on web technology in the early 90s, developers felt that these improvements were not enough. Netscape Communications Corporation, the creator of the first commercial-like browser, saw the need to make web pages dynamic and interactive for users, hence, the creation of JavaScript. Along with Sun Microsystems (the creator of Java, a language application for creating smart applications), Netscape launched JavaScript to the world in 1995. Since then, JavaScript has been the most popular scripting language for the web.

Looking forward to the future

Front-end development has been a work in progress since the day it started. But unlike the old days, it has evolved in ways that allowed web developers to create complex designs using emerging libraries and frameworks. The web standards were also improved with semantic elements being the most important feature of HTML 5. Because of these standards and improvements, the world wide web, once a lawless environment, now becomes more regulated with rules that guide front-end developers to create web pages that will work on all platforms and browsers. In addition, digital product users have drastically changed over the years. Consumers are becoming more and more intolerant of slow, and complicated websites. They are more driven into a much simpler interface, with the desire of getting what they want real time. This is called intuitive design. Web experts think that, more than a trend in web development, intuitive design is the direction, the future of front-end development.

Conclusion

Web development has evolved tremendously from its creation in the early 90s. Web technologies have been emerging non-stop to meet the industry and consumer expectations, especially at this day and age where users desire faster and improved web experience. Thus, addressing the core users’ needs and desires is important in creating a user-centric web experience.