CSIS-390Some Web

HistoryDr. Eric Breimer

Syllabus1. Google “Eric Breimer”

2. Click on first link

3. Click on CSIS-390

4. Click on Syllabus

History Before designing and developing web

pages and web applications it is important to know how it all came about…

InternetWorld Wide Web

(WWW)

Are these things the same?

Internet World Wide Web

ARPAnet ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects

Agency

1968, Cold War, Military Applications

ARPAnet Originally, Custom/Tailor-made network

applications for sharing data and messages 1968-1973

1971 Email concept developed Person can have an identifier

ebreimer@network_name Virtual mailbox

By 1973 Email was 75% of the ARPAnet traffic File Transfer Protocol (FTP) was developed in

1973 General/Generic service concept

ARPAnet Internet Transition Period 1971-1983 Packet Switching developed and perfected

Instead of point-to-point persistent connections

Robust, fault-tolerant, efficient, survivable

Network of Networks realized on a large scale The ability to connect

different types of networks TCP/IP

Early Internet 1983-1989

No web browsers, no web pages at all… Only…

Email FTP (document and image sharing) Early message board system (BB systems) Custom data transfer applications

Banking Early business to business E-commerce

In 1989 came the WWW The concepts existed, but one man

implemented the concepts and made them real…

WWW concepts Hypertext concept – Documents can have

links to other documents, just click the text URL concept – Documents, computers, virtual

mailboxes, networks can all have uniform identifier to help locate them

Tim Berners-Lee (TBL)

He invented the WWW in the sense that he put together a bunch of “good ideas” and implemented… The first web browser The first web server

In the process he proposed and developed HTML The URL concept

Before the WWW, finding stuff was hard

To find documents or data on the Internet you had to Know numeric IP addresses to locate FTP servers Login anonymously or with a user account Know the folder hierarchy and file name of the

document/data.

People would share this information via Email. The idea of just browsing the Internet was silly, you

just couldn’t do it. If you didn’t have connections, you had no idea what

was out there…

Understanding the WWW HTTP instead of FTP

Web Browser instead of FTP client Web Server instead of FTP server

URLs instead of numeric IP addresses Clicking Hyperlink instead of navigating

through folder hierarchies Universal/Standard document formatting

HTML instead of proprietary documents Word, doc, docx, pdf, etc.

Are these things the same?

Internet

Nuts and bolts Hardware TCP/IP Packet Switching Network of

Networks concept

World Wide Web

Content layer of Internet

Software HTTP URLs Hyperlinks

Internet vs. WWW Terms used interchangably by general public

and media You should know that

The WWW is a framework built “on top of” the Internet. The framework includes protocols for sharing data, standards for formatting data, and conventions for locating data. (The boat)

The Internet is really the “transport layer” of the WWW. (The river)

WWW Matures 1989-1995

1989 TBL invents first web browser and server 1991 Al Gore passes Gore Bill, which helps pave the way $

$$ for future development 1993 Mosaic (first good graphical web browser) is

born

1993 The National Science Foundation (NSF) creates the InterNIC, which centralizes the control of URL and domain names

1995 NSFnet (formally ARPAnet) becomes research only network Internet traffic starts to get routed through a commercial

backbone (operated by AT&T, Sprint, and others)

Commercialization Period 1995-2000

1995 – Netscape become a household name Sells web server software…gives away browser for free Reached almost 90% market share by 1996

1995 – 1996 Microsoft scrambles to come out with competing software (Internet Explore, IIS Web Server)

1996-1999 – Browser Wars between Microsoft and Netscape HTML is pushed to the limit Browser plug-ins developed, Flash, RealMedia, etc.

1997-2000 – E-commerce Commercial Explosion Amazon, E-bay, Online Stock Trading, MP3 trafficking, etc.

Browser Wars 1996-1999

Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and Netscape compete to be the #1 browser. In ’96 Netscape dominated By ‘99 Internet Explorer was #1

Microsoft Integrated IE into the Windows OS and it was often forced upon people as the default browser Microsoft paid billions in lawsuit (EU mostly) but still won the war

Netscape makes its source code open, so developers can build upon it. Leads to the Mozilla Foundation, which eventually develops Firefox.

In 2000, AOL buys out Netscape, which is was failing financially This marks the end of the war and beginning of Microsoft’s

dominance in the WWW.

Browser Wars - Significance

Early competition pushed web browsers to the limit.

Browsers use to be simple client applications that could render HTML code.

Now browsers are heavy-weight applications (JavaScript, ActiveX, Flash plug-ins, etc.)

Microsoft’s recent dominance was terrible. Proprietary, No regard for recognized

standards