Ten Years of Web Browsing

AnamanFan writes "Today in 1993, a group of students at the University of Illinois released a little program called Mosaic. News.com.com.com has a special four-part series on the anniversary. I for one will celebrate by spending extra time with Mozilla and Camino." Slashdot marked the anniversary a little while ago.

Comments

Lucky

[mrphish697]

Computer Science seems to be the only profession in which we still have access to the people that helped start it. I've always enjoyed that. Take Whitfield Diffie, for example.

Advent of html/http worse thing for online apps

[binaryDigit]

IMHO, in 10 years we've progressed in the negative direction in regards to online applications thanks to Mosiac/http/html. 10 years later we're stuck with ecommerce pages that get hopelessly confused if you press the back button. Annoying website timeouts. Complex logic on the backend to handle stateless connections. Ugly front end development models. Half/assed Java Applets/Javascript attempts to actually create decent applications.

Now as a presentation model, the web is great. But as an application infrastructure, we've gone nowhere if not backwards.

Re:Advent of html/http worse thing for online apps

[archen]

I wouldn't say it's the fault of Mozaic/http/html. It's the lowest common denominator. In fact i'd say we've advanced due to the fact that browsers can handle more on the client side than they ever have. Stateless connections are not something that should be used for web apps, but it works (in a half asses way). That doesn't mean you should blame a pliers because it does a crap job of hammering in a nail.

Isn't lynx older?

[leandrod]

Shouldn't that be 10 years of *GUI* web browsing? Isn't lynx, and the whole web stuff a little bit older?

The web is great and all, but...

[Iscariot_]

The web is great, but I think lately there's been a real focus on making the web do things it shouldn't. And by that, I mean web-based applications.

There are certain things the web can do well application wise. Like an online calendar, or email application (yahoo/hotmail). However, things like office applications should not use web-based technologies. It's always slow and clunky. I mean, sure you can do drag-and-drop with dhtml, but it's inconsistant and slow. I'd much rather deal with a java applet, or ActiveX, so as to have a true GUI instead of a GUI-emulator.

Am I totally off base here, or does anyone else agree?

Re:You're in good company

[Speare]

Gates has always said that (paraphrased) Microsoft makes mistakes all the time, and that just one particularly bad misstep could doom Microsoft's prospects. The key to survival is to outlive the mistakes, to make fewer mistakes than the competition, and to keep tons of money in the bank instead paying them out in dividends, but these things can't always be done. This is why his company has tried to lowbal investor expectations every quarter, and exceed those expectations every quarter.

Because

[Gonoff]

Such adverts are designed by people whose profession is wearing a suit.

No - they are not HR droids, managers or agency clones. All of those may contain people who wear suits while they work. I am talking about people who wear suits as the major part of their jobs.

Consider a conversation...

What do you do?
a. I'm an accountant. What about you?
b. I'm a programmer. And you?
c. I wear a suit.

These are the people that are currently requiring 5 years experience with XP for Tier 2 support jobs....

Come the revolution...... ;)

Re:The speed of information

[Cyno]

Me too.

I was just thinking the other day where would we be without the net. Right now I have access to answers to almost any questions on google, which is always available when I'm at work or home or over at a friend's house. Everyone I know has an email address or IM or some account somewhere on the net.

Soon I will use the net for all communications, including audio, video and text. It has become as essential to everyone's every day lives as the telephone or TV. Which is very similar to AOLTW's and most corporation's mission statement, replacing internet with the company name of your choice.

But no matter how much has been changed because of the net we can never forget that those changes happened because of open communication, open protocols, free intellectual property, free access, and the hard work of many many extremely skilled engineers. I don't think the internet could be rebuilt today in the US under our current administration or their preference for security over freedom.

The internet is based entirely on freedom and could not exist without everyone agreeing to maintain that freedom. The freedom to send a packet around the world for $0.00. The freedom to say what you want without fear of prosecution, etc. Those freedoms might not exist forever. And then what will become of the internet as we know it or as it could be used tomorrow?

American Capitalist Perspective: The net was only useful for commercialism. But then all those dotcoms crashed. So does that mean the net is worthless?

MPAA/RIAA Rep: No, the net is a tool for terrorists and pirates to steal your IP and must be monitorred, enforced and secured. It is a dangerous place.

Tech: The net can be used for voting and education and automation and software development and music and video and games and... if we just got rid of money we have the technology to make it all work for us, instead of the other way around.. Hello.. anybody listening?

Re:Web browsing? So what!

[Glytch]

I don't know, but I do remember how pissed off myself and a few friends were in junior high when we spent an hour downloading a jpeg off of Playboy, and found out that Mosaic didn't have jpeg support after the download was finished.

My god, I feel old now.