Ian HolmesApr 30, 2023

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

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 Watson
@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. ⁉️
Apr 30, 2023 at 6:05pmWeb
Show threadRalph BrandiApr 30, 2023
@antinomy @ianholmes Tilde URLs!
Show threadKate WatsonApr 30, 2023
@ianholmes @thereisnocat I know right!