How Web Design and Writing Websites Came to Be
Web design and writing websites’ content is only about 30 years old with the first website being in August of 1981. So much has happened since then. Not only in terms of technology but also marketing and a general impact on most of our lives. More importantly, the internet has created thousands of jobs that did not exist 10 or so years ago. There are not only academic degrees but career paths for SEO marketing, inbound marketing, freelance writing, blogging, social media, video, and of course web design and writing websites’ content.
In the Beginning there was. . .
The internet, for reliability reasons, was initially used by the military, scientists, educators, doctors and the government. The internet provided transfer of information within the group. Many of us can still remember when the internet required a computer, a modem and a telephone line.
- People used dial-up Internet access with speeds of 28.8Kbps to 33.6Kbps. Later, the 56Kbps modems came onto the scene.
- Screen resolution was a whopping 640px by 480px.
- There were only 100,000 websites on the Internet.
- HTML 2.0 was published and web standards were born.
- Table layouts were widely used and CSS browser support was sketchy.
The Father of the World Wide Web
The real vision and execution for the World Wide Web came about in 1980 when Tim Berners Lee was working on a project known as ‘Enquire’. Enquire was a simple database of people and software who were working at the same place as Berners Lee. It was during this project that he experimented with hypertext. The Berners Lee Enquire system used hyperlinks on each page of the database, each page referencing other relevant pages within the system. Tim’s boss liked his idea and encouraged him to implement it in their next project. This new system was given a few different names such as TIM (The Information Mine) which was turned down as it abbreviated Tim’s initials. After a few suggestions, only one name that stuck; the World Wide Web.
Browsers
In the 1990s Mosaic was introduced to the public, which was a free browser program. Mosaic was the first commercial browser that allowed the public access to online content. It was designed by Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina, and originally ran on the Unix system. By 1994 the Mosaic web browser became available to other OS such as Mac, Windows and Amiga OS.
After Mosaic, the Netscape web browser soon followed, the browser was released on November of 1994. It wasn’t long before it became the leading browser on the web. It began creating its own tags, and the World Wide Web followed suit.
W3C is created
The Hypertext concept was created by Ted Nelson during the 60s, but it was used only several decades after. In 1994. HTML was the only coding language for web design and there wasn’t much freedom when it came to design.
Because of this, early web designers and writing website’s content could only create simple layouts, text, tables and links with little or no graphics.
The W3C or World Wide Web Consortium was created to prevent large companies from monopolizing web design code. If only one company is able to control web coding and design, the story of internet and web design would have been different. Until now, W3C is still responsible for governing the coding techniques, rules and guidelines up to this day. The W3C also updates web designers to any changes they will make. It is important for designers to follow the guidelines set by the body so that the site will work cohesively in search engines and browsers without errors.
Time Lines
There are several infographics that have been developed showing the time line for the past 30 years. They can be found with the following links:
http://visual.ly/history-web-design
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/28241
http://www.dexmedia.com/blog/history-of-web-design-infographic/
When designing websites and writing websites’ content, we have only scratched the surface of what the internet and the world wide web will become.