Jump to content

WorldWideWeb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the firstweb browser.For the distributed hypertext system, seeWorld Wide Web.
WorldWideWeb
Developer(s)Tim Berners-LeeforCERN
Initial release25 December 1990;33 years ago(1990-12-25)[1]
Final release
0.17Edit this on Wikidata / 1994;30 years ago(1994)
Repository
Written inObjective-C[1]
Operating systemNeXTSTEP[1]
Available inEnglish
TypeWeb browser,Webauthoring tool
LicensePublic-domain software
Websitew3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html

WorldWideWeb(later renamedNexusto avoid confusion between thesoftwareand the World Wide Web) is the firstweb browser[1]andweb pageeditor.[2]It was discontinued in 1994. It was the firstWYSIWYGHTML editor.

Thesource codewas released into thepublic domainon 30 April 1993.[3][4]Some of thecodestill resides onTim Berners-Lee'sNeXT Computerin theCERNmuseumand has not been recovered due to the computer's status as a historical artifact.[5]To coincide with the 20th anniversary of the research center giving the web to the world, a project began in 2013 at CERN to preserve this originalhardwareandsoftwareassociated with the birth of the Web.[6]

History[edit]

Tim Berners-Leewrote what would become known as WorldWideWeb on aNeXT Computer[4]during the second half of 1990, while working forCERN,a European nuclear research agency. The first edition was completed "some time before" 25 December 1990, according to Berners-Lee, after two months of development.[7]The browser was announced on thenewsgroupsand became available to the general public in August 1991.[7][8]By this time, several others, including Bernd Pollermann,Robert Cailliau,Jean-François Groff,[9]and visiting undergraduate studentNicola Pellow– who later wrote theLine Mode Browser– were involved in the project.[7]

Berners-Lee considered different names for his new application, includingThe Mine of InformationandThe Information Mesh,before publicly launching theWorldWideWebbrowser in 1991.[10]When a new version was released in 1994, it was renamedNexus Browser,in order to differentiate between the software (WorldWideWeb) and theWorld Wide Web.[11]

The team created so called "passive browsers" which do not have the ability to edit because it was hard toportthis feature from the NeXT system to otheroperating systems.Porting to theX Window Systemwas not possible as nobody on the team had experience with the X Window System.[2]

Berners-Lee and Groff later adapted many of WorldWideWeb's components into aC programming languageversion, creating thelibwwwAPI.[12]

A number of early browsers appeared, notablyViolaWWW.They were all eclipsed byMosaicin terms of popularity, which by 1993 had replaced the WorldWideWeb program. Those involved in its creation had moved on to other tasks, such as defining standards and guidelines for the further development of the World Wide Web (e.g.HTML,and variouscommunication protocols).[citation needed]

On 30 April 1993, the CERN directorate released the source code of WorldWideWeb into thepublic domain.Several versions of the software are still available on the web in various states.[13]Berners-Lee initially considered releasing it under theGNU General Public License,but after hearing rumors that companies might balk at the concept if any licensing issues were involved, he eventually opted to release it into thepublic domain.[14]In 2021,Sotheby'sheld an auction for anNFTof the WorldWideWebsource code.[15][16]

Features[edit]

Since WorldWideWeb was developed on and for theNeXTSTEPplatform, the program uses many of NeXTSTEP's components – WorldWideWeb'slayout enginewas built around NeXTSTEP's Textclass.[1]

WorldWideWeb is capable of displaying basicstyle sheets,[4]downloading and opening any file type with a MIME type that is also supported by the NeXT system (PostScript,[2][4]movies, and sounds[4]), browsingnewsgroups,andspellchecking.In earlier versions, images are displayed in separate windows, until NeXTSTEP's Text class gained support for Image objects.[4]WorldWideWeb is able to use different protocols:FTP,HTTP,NNTP,andlocal files.Later versions are able to display inline images.[1]

The browser is also aWYSIWYGeditor.[1][2]It allows the simultaneous editing and linking of many pages in different windows. The functions "Mark Selection", which creates an anchor, and "Link to Marked", which makes the selected text an anchor linking to the last marked anchor, allow the creation of links. Editing pages remotely is not possible, as theHTTP PUTmethodhad not yet been implemented during the period of the application's active development.[1]Files can be edited in a local file system which is in turn served onto the Web by an HTTP server.[citation needed]

WorldWideWeb's navigation panel contains Next and Previous buttons that automatically navigate to the next or previous link on the last page visited, similar toOpera's Rewind and Fast Forward buttons, orHyperCard;i.e., if one navigated to a page from a table of links, the Previous button would cause the browser to load the previous page linked in the table.[1]This is useful for web pages which contain lists of links. Many still do, but the user interface link-chaining was not adopted by other contemporary browser writers, and it only gained popularity later. An equivalent functionality is nowadays provided by connecting web pages with explicit navigation buttons repeated on each webpage among those links, or withtyped linksin the headers of the page. This places more of a burden on web site designers and developers, but allows them to control the presentation of the navigation links.[citation needed]

WorldWideWeb does not havebookmarksas they exist in later browsers, but a similar feature was provided: to save a link for later use, users could link to it from their own home page (start page). Users could create multiple home pages, similar to folders in modern web browsers' bookmarks.[2]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^abcdefghiBerners-Lee, Tim."The WorldWideWeb browser".World Wide Web Consortium.Retrieved23 July2010.
  2. ^abcdePetrie, Charles;Cailliau, Robert(November 1997)."Interview Robert Cailliau on the WWW Proposal:" How It Really Happened. "".Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.Archivedfrom the original on 6 January 2011.Retrieved18 August2010.
  3. ^"The document that officially put the World Wide Web into the public domain on 30 April 1993".CERN. 1993.Retrieved26 September2013.
  4. ^abcdefBerners-Lee, Tim."Frequently asked questions – What were the first WWW browsers?".World Wide Web Consortium.Retrieved22 July2010.
  5. ^"The birth of the Web | CERN".home.cern.Retrieved2019-07-21.
  6. ^Ghosh, Pallab(22 April 2013)."Cern re-creating first web page to revere early ideals".BBC News.Retrieved30 April2013.
  7. ^abcBerners-Lee, Tim(1993)."A Brief History of the Web".World Wide Web Consortium.Retrieved17 August2010.
  8. ^"A Little History of the World Wide Web".www.w3.org.Retrieved2020-02-03.
  9. ^Jean-François Groff."NeXT editor upgrade proposal".World Wide Web Consortium.Retrieved21 June2010.
  10. ^"Welcome to info.cern.ch".CERN.Retrieved25 July2010.
  11. ^Boulton, Jim."The Nexus Browser | Digital Archaeology".Retrieved2021-06-15.
  12. ^Stewart, Bill."Web Browser History".Living Internet.Retrieved2 June2010.
  13. ^"browsers.evolt.org".browsers.evolt.org.
  14. ^"History of Libwww"(PDF).p. 3. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 2009-09-16.Retrieved2007-02-14.
  15. ^"Source Code for the WWW | This Changed Everything: Source Code for WWW x Tim Berners-Lee, an NFT | 2021".
  16. ^"Tim Berners-Lee sells web source code NFT for $5.4m".30 June 2021.

External links[edit]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WorldWideWeb&oldid=1224778026"