Ian Holmes

People are calling today the 30th birthday of the web; more accurately it’s the 30th birthday of CERN releasing the source code. I vividly remember websites being a curiosity among FTP servers, Usenet newsgroups, and gopher holes.

Here’s to this marvelous technology, Earth’s biggest Choose Your Own Adventure book, one of the most backwardly compatible systems ever built. Modern browsers may be elaborate interpreter-compilers but they still render the first site: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

The World Wide Web project

Apr 30, 2023 at 2:18pmMetatext
Show threadthe roamerApr 30, 2023

@ianholmes

Oh, beautiful. Thank you for the #BirthdayWWW reminder and for the link to #SiteNumberOne. As you say, what a marvelous technology, a design masterstroke.

And classical straight #html is still right.

Happy birthday, #www.

Show threadRalph BrandiApr 30, 2023
@ianholmes I remember those days as well. Ed Krol came out with a book in September, 1992, ”The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog", that covered gopherspace intensively, but also had a chapter about this new interloper, the World Wide Web. I think I had to get the book from a specialist store in Philadelphia; it wasn't easy to find. And I remember accessing the web via the line mode browser before XMosaic came out.
Show threadKate WatsonApr 30, 2023
@ianholmes @thereisnocat Not quite so vintage but my Rough Guide to the Internet 1999. The back half of which is a printed directory of useful websites. ⁉️
Show threadRalph BrandiApr 30, 2023
@antinomy @ianholmes Tilde URLs!
Show threadKate WatsonApr 30, 2023
@ianholmes @thereisnocat I know right!
Show threadthe roamerApr 30, 2023

@thereisnocat @ianholmes

Ah, I remember that book, one of the fine O'Reilly books that (for me) defined the decade. I kept my copy as a historical artifact, though I'm not sure where ...

Show threadJeffrey J. DeanApr 30, 2023
@thereisnocat @ianholmes @antinomy Same.
Show threadLiam CaffreyApr 30, 2023
@thereisnocat @ianholmes I still have my copy
Show threadBob Blaskiewicz 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇬🇱Apr 30, 2023
@ianholmes
I thought gopher WAS the internet. LOL
Show threadDmitri ☕️Apr 30, 2023
@ianholmes I ❤️ the web.
Show threadMike LemurApr 30, 2023
@ianholmes it’s true. In the first addition of Internet for Dummies, the World Wide Web was barely a footnote. They wrote more explaining why there could never be porn on the Internet than they did about the web.
Show threadDavid MaloneApr 30, 2023
@ianholmes I used Usenet to make a chronology of early websites in Ireland, by searching for the first mention of websites in posts. It worked relatively well: https://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwmalone/early-web.html
Early Irish Web Stuff

Show threadrj07thomasApr 30, 2023
@ianholmes wowsers; so when I was browsing the Web in '95 with the Lynx Text browser and Netscape, it really was very early days?
Show thread.morrisMay 1, 2023
@rj07thomas @ianholmes yup.
Show threadrj07thomasMay 1, 2023
@clockworkfish @ianholmes loved Lynx and it still works!
Show threadSimon BrookeApr 30, 2023
@ianholmes It's SO LONG since I actually directly interacted with an FTP server. I wonder if I even remember how?
Show threadsys)~$Apr 30, 2023

Even with W3C standards, Web technology is still flaky and inconsistent.

Google Chrome keeps pushing for more features.

FTP was good. BitTorrent is now more popular

Show threadlukashauserMay 1, 2023

@ianholmes I like what wasn’t included in the original proposal:

“Browsers on vt220 terminals to give cursor-oriented readership to a very large proportion of readers; A browser on the Macintosh in the Macintosh style; A browser on the NeXT using the NeXTStep tools, as a fast prototype for ideas in human interface design and navigation techniques.”

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Proposal.html

WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project

Show threadOver ThereMay 1, 2023
@ianholmes I remember discussing with my bosses in 1991/92 whether we should go for the World Wide Web or Minitel. I thought the web sounded more interesting as it might have wider applications, but they went for Minitel, probably because it was already established
Show threadDaniil BaturinMay 1, 2023
@ianholmes I wish modern browsers didn't render it because in a perfect world, valid HTML would be a requirement rather than a badge (and invalid one would cause parse errors) and microformat metadata annotations would be a widely-accepted best practice.
Show threadDan TuckerMay 1, 2023
@ianholmes 73 lines of code that changed the world
Show threadIan HolmesMay 2, 2023
@dctucker Just 73 lines? Wow…. Do you happen to know if that code is easily accessible online now?
Show threadDan TuckerMay 2, 2023
@ianholmes Go to the page. Right click/double tap, select View Source
Show threadIan HolmesMay 3, 2023
@dctucker oh I thought you meant the server code, lol
Show threadsebastian büttrichMay 1, 2023

@ianholmes

In the early days of the #web, we had hopes that it would somehow be liberating, educating, connecting.
That hope lasted til around 2005. We have understood since, and the reasons seem quite clear.
https://mastodon.cc/@ianholmes@mastodon.social/110288193523310567

Ian Holmes (@[email protected])

People are calling today the 30th birthday of the web; more accurately it’s the 30th birthday of CERN releasing the source code. I vividly remember websites being a curiosity among FTP servers, Usenet newsgroups, and gopher holes. Here’s to this marvelous technology, Earth’s biggest Choose Your Own Adventure book, one of the most backwardly compatible systems ever built. Modern browsers may be elaborate interpreter-compilers but they still render the first site: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

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