Ten Years of Web Browsing

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @05:30AM from the browse-baby-browse dept.

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.

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Re:Reminisce by rsheridan6 · 2003-04-22 05:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

I recall getting on yahoo, surfing all the interesting links in one night, getting bored and going back to usenet news.
Yeah, this web thing is a nice idea, but it'll never go anywhere without any content.

--
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
If Mosaic was released 10 years ago... by greysky · 2003-04-22 06:06 · Score: 5, Interesting

Then why is it that most of the web development job postings I've seen for the last couple of years say "minimum 10 years of HTML/DHTML programing experience required"?
Re:Reminisce by countzer0interrupt · 2003-04-22 06:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

Now it just has a different feel to it.

I know exactly what you mean. I only "surfed" for the first time in 1996, but the Web definitely felt less commercial, and more homely. Back then most of the web sites had a home-made quality to them, and viewing the HTML source showed an awful lot was written by hand (as opposed to web-authoring software, Flash or CGI).

You had the big name commercial sites back then of course (e.g. Microsoft), but even sites like Yahoo! felt like they were made by a bunch of fanatical semi-professionals, as opposed to some big corporation with big buildings and big salaries.

People used phrases like "home page", "surf the net" and "send me e-mail", and they all take me back to a time when the Web was more innocent, before every company, shop, charity or celebrity had their own "web-presence". The Web felt less tainted by greed. Now the feeling I get from the Web is a lot more like that I get in a shopping mall, where I'm constantly having to question people's motives and the veracity of information I'm getting. In '96 you knew with 95% certainty that the Michael Jackson fansite you were checking out was put together by a dedicated fan with all the pedantry and attention-to-detail that goes with it, so you tended to trust what you were reading a bit more.

Ok, I'm not saying that the Web was good then, and it's nothing but evil now. I'm not saying that the fantastic, informative, enjoyable, insightful sites are not there - just that they're a bit harder to find. I'm not saying that the Web is no longer a tool for free-speech and free-thinking, because as long as the standards that define the Web remain public, open and [relatively] anonymous we will still have this amazing playground for the groupmind.

Right, I'd better go, my pizza's rapidly cooling. :-)