Reply to: Happy Birthday WWW

[NickFitz]

TBL has done an AMA on Reddit this evening: I am Tim Berners-Lee. I invented the WWW 25 years ago and I am concerned and excited about its future. AMA : IAmA

Top-voted question and answer at the moment:

totharescue: What was one of the things you never thought the internet would be used for, but has actually become one of the main reasons people use the internet?

timbl: Kittens.

[NickFitz]

I have the source code for CERN httpd on some old linux CDs somewhere, from the days when you used to get mail order distros.

And of course TBL did all the original WWW work on a NeXT, Steve Jobs' other computer. The NeXT operating system, NextStep, later became the foundation for Mac OS X and iOS (hence all the classes named NSSomethingOrOther in Cocoa). So, in theory, you should be able to get the original WWW source to build for the iPhone without a huge amount of trouble

[doodab]

They found a backup of the first website recently and put it back up: The World Wide Web project

I have the source code for CERN httpd on some old linux CDs somewhere, from the days when you used to get mail order distros.

[NickFitz]

Of course being paid by CERN helped him in his generosity ;-).

I was paid £3 at university to try out this new "hypertext" system and give my comments. From memory it looked like the web we're used to today (i.e. blue underlines), but I've no idea if that was this or some other hypertext system. I was there 89-92, so "the internet" really meant email and usenet, at least as far as us undergrads got to use it.

They found a backup of the first website recently and put it back up: The World Wide Web project

[cailin maith]

I think my phone has more horsepower now.

It's mental isn't it? I look at Jnr and how he uses the iPad without any hassle (and my mobile phone for that matter) and I think he is never going to know what it's like not to just have the whole world at his fingertips.

I remember when my parents didn't even have a house phone.

[doodab]

Email, usenet, ftp (HENSA was dead useful, got C & Fortran compilers for my Atari so I could do all my coursework at home then save it on a disk), we used to telnet around all over the place to get into unix servers running chat programs as well. First you had to use kermit to connect to a pad to get onto JANET then the world was your oyster.

Then we got X terms in the lab as well as PCs. Giddy stuff, graphics and everything. Maple was like magic only better.

Hard to imagine what we have now looking back. The departmental computer was a unix box with 8 386 processors and we were given CPU quotas. I think my phone has more horsepower now.

[VectraMan]

It also helped - as in, it was absolutely crucial to the web's success - that he gave it away, making the whole thing free and open, rather than attempting to create a commercial product out of the technology.

Of course being paid by CERN helped him in his generosity ;-).

I was paid £3 at university to try out this new "hypertext" system and give my comments. From memory it looked like the web we're used to today (i.e. blue underlines), but I've no idea if that was this or some other hypertext system. I was there 89-92, so "the internet" really meant email and usenet, at least as far as us undergrads got to use it.

[darmstadt]

He also implemented the first web server software and web client software, the latter being more commonly known as a browser.

Yep, we ran that, must have been about '92 although I can't remember the browser name but I do recall Mosaic which pretty much changed everything. We were on BITNET (EARN) at the time and one of our RJE links was to CERN (not to be confused with CEARN.) I also remember running a GOPHER server which was written in REXX on MVS in the early 90's as well. Much of the main hubs in those days were mainframes running in educational and research institutions running VM and most of the others were large UNIX systems. A lot of software was written by a lot of people to frontend the various servers and of course, much of this was 'green screen' technology but it exists these days in a totally different format. I remember IRC, Netnews, CHAT, etc. all running on 3270 terminals and connected all over the world. One of the main components that people miss when talking about the Internet is TCP/IP without which, you wouldn't have it (well you would as you could have some of the funcionality with LU6.2, SNA, etc. but not as much fun!)

[darmstadt]

SGML is a system for defining markup languages, HTML is a markup language. But you are right that there is a lot of similarities

For more information see this comparison

Correct although it's a stupid acronym for a standard although it actually derives from GML which is really just a set of macros that implement intent-based (procedural) markup tags for SCRIPT and SCRIPT/VS is the main component of Document Composition Facility (DCF). I remember writing large, and I mean large, documents using this and this was all done by hand, including the tags. Eventually I even managed to imbed graphics in ADMGDF format. I even have the source to many of the documents and they'll still 'compile' and print out and actually look more professional than many modern word processing documents that I've seen (mainly because you can't bugger about with fonts, spacing, etc.) so you get a nice clean look.

[NickFitz]

HTML, or at least Hypertext was around long before Sir Tim did his thing as well. Which bit he actually invented is hard to fathom; perhaps it just was to call it WWW.

He invented HTML, which was inspired by Ted Nelson's concept of hypertext and influenced by SGML (Standard Generalised Markup Language). He also invented HTTP (along with his collaborators). And he invented URLs, which allowed resources to be referred to by an identifier that could be linked to. It is those three things brought together, and using the Internet to provide a communications network, that make up the WWW.

He also implemented the first web server software and web client software, the latter being more commonly known as a browser.

The key thing that distinguished TBL's work from that which had gone before, such as Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu, was using the Internet as the platform.

It also helped - as in, it was absolutely crucial to the web's success - that he gave it away, making the whole thing free and open, rather than attempting to create a commercial product out of the technology.

[MicrosoftBob]

For some of us old mainframe farts, when we first saw HTML it rang a bell. Many years ago documentation was created using various markup languages, in particular Script/VS, Waterloo Script, GML, SGML, etc. and you'll find that many of the tags used in these languages and their functions bare more than a passing resemblance to HTML. Mind you DW/370 was a pig...

SGML is a system for defining markup languages, HTML is a markup language. But you are right that there is a lot of similarities

For more information see this comparison

[darmstadt]

HTML.


HTML, or at least Hypertext was around long before Sir Tim did his thing as well. Which bit he actually invented is hard to fathom; perhaps it just was to call it WWW.

For some of us old mainframe farts, when we first saw HTML it rang a bell. Many years ago documentation was created using various markup languages, in particular Script/VS, Waterloo Script, GML, SGML, etc. and you'll find that many of the tags used in these languages and their functions bare more than a passing resemblance to HTML. Mind you DW/370 was a pig...

[Bunk]

HTML.

The lines are a little blurry, and lots of things do use HTTP to inefficiently transfer binary data as a way of getting around firewall restrictions, particularly company networks are setup this way. I believe Skype tries to connect using its own protocol, and if that fails, tries again with HTTP. There used to be lots of clever protocols for streaming video, but these days if you use the likes of YouTube, or iPlayer, it's using HTTP.

HTML, or at least Hypertext was around long before Sir Tim did his thing as well. Which bit he actually invented is hard to fathom; perhaps it just was to call it WWW.

Hypertext was Ted Nelson's invention I think, although I know he wasn't happy about how HTML and the web turned out in the end.

[VectraMan]

So skype is used for transferring voice data primarily. HTTP is a text document used to describe the layout of a web page so isn't the best vehicle to send voice data. The application still uses the interconnected network (internet), but doesn't use www protocols such as HTTP as they are inefficient at transferring large and frequently changing pieces of data.

HTML.

The lines are a little blurry, and lots of things do use HTTP to inefficiently transfer binary data as a way of getting around firewall restrictions, particularly company networks are setup this way. I believe Skype tries to connect using its own protocol, and if that fails, tries again with HTTP. There used to be lots of clever protocols for streaming video, but these days if you use the likes of YouTube, or iPlayer, it's using HTTP.

HTML, or at least Hypertext was around long before Sir Tim did his thing as well. Which bit he actually invented is hard to fathom; perhaps it just was to call it WWW.

[suityou01]

Crikey! So is this fick, parochial persona of yours all a big act then?

Don't you have some goats to attend to?