Transcript History - Computer Science Department

CSIS-390
History
Dr. Eric Breimer
Syllabus
1. 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…
Internet
World 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 pplications
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)
 Really 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
 URLs
Understanding the WWW
 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
World Wide Web
 Nuts and bolts
 Content layer of
 Hardware
 TCP/IP
 Packet Switching
 Network of Networks
concept
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

Reach 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


Netscape makes its source code open, so developers can build upon it.


Microsoft paid billions in lawsuit (EU mostly) but still won the war
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