WWW Beginnings – Web Development History

December 8, 2021 by Richard MacManus

1993: Mosaic Launches and the Web is Set Free

1993 was the year of Mosaic, the first truly multimedia web browser. The Web was still very niche by the end of 1993, but it was pushing on the door of the mainstream. Early adopters in companies like MTV were experimenting with it, while curious reporters were beginning to publicize it. CERN had done its part too, by gifting the World Wide Web to the world so that anyone was free to build on top of it.

November 18, 2021 by Richard MacManus

1992: The Web vs Gopher, and the First External Browsers

Throughout 1992, there were just a scattering of websites on the World Wide Web — somewhere between ten and twenty. So the Web in 1992 was still a niche system, used almost entirely by academics. However, there were signs that the Web was starting to get noticed by people who used other internet protocols, like Gopher. Also, two significant new web browsers were launched: ViolaWWW and Erwise.

November 10, 2021 by Richard MacManus

1991: Tim Berners-Lee Tries to Convert the Hypertext Faithful

The Web at the end of 1991 was still a tiny niche product used primarily by European academics, but it was primed to expand. The software was globally available via certain mailing lists, it was free to download and experiment with, its read/write browser application was engaging and simple to use, and the ability to click on a link to ‘jump’ to a web server across the world meant that the World Wide Web promised global access to information. All it needed was more people to test it out.

November 1, 2021 by Richard MacManus

1990: Programming the World Wide Web

In the final few months of 1990, 35-year Tim Berners-Lee and his colleague Robert Cailliau developed the world’s first web client (a browser/editor), created the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), wrote the first web server, and tied it all together with an Internet communication protocol called Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). This led to the first web page at info.cern.ch, which was live by Christmas Day, 1990.