1: History of the Web (HTTP, HTML)

Section 1: History of the Web (HTTP, HTML)

The World Wide Web, as we know it today, originated from a proposal by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while working at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory. His goal was to create a system for managing and sharing information among researchers globally using a hypertext system. This vision materialized into the three fundamental technologies that remain the web's cornerstone: HTML (HyperText Markup Language) for creating documents, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) for transmitting them, and URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) for providing each resource with a unique address.

The first version of HTTP, now referred to as HTTP/0.9, was extremely simple. It was a one-line protocol that only allowed for the GET method to request an HTML document. There were no headers, status codes, or support for any other file types. This aligned perfectly with the original purpose of the web: to link and serve static text-based documents.

HTML began as a very basic language with a small set of tags primarily for defining headings, paragraphs, and, most importantly, hyperlinks (<a>). This simplicity was key to its rapid adoption. The early web was built on these static pages, which were written by hand.

The release of the Mosaic browser in 1993, which could display images inline with text, sparked massive commercial and public interest. This growth necessitated formal standards. In 1994, Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to oversee the web’s development and create vendor-neutral standards, preventing fragmentation.

This led to more sophisticated versions of the core technologies. HTTP/1.0 (1996) introduced headers, status codes, and support for different content types, enabling more complex interactions. HTTP/1.1 (1997) further refined the protocol with critical performance features like persistent connections.

HTML evolved through versions, with HTML 4.01 becoming a major stable standard. Its development was eventually continued by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), which spearheaded the living standard known as HTML5. HTML5 dramatically expanded the language's capabilities, adding native support for audio, video, and semantic elements, transforming the web from a document platform into a full-fledged application platform.