The History of the Web

Permalinks are commonplace on the web. But it took the rise of blogging to codify them, and bring them out into the world. And it all started with a single exchange of blogs.

Blogging is so fundamentally native to the web that twenty years of commoditization has left it relatively untouched. We share information, freely.

I had a chance to go on Igalia Chats and walk through the history of Shadow DOM with Eric Meyer, Brian Kardell, and Jeremy Keith. It was a fun, and pretty light discussion, but I learned a ton.

In 1998, Bruce and Susan Abelson launched Open Diary. Building on personal site builders like Geocities, Angelfire, and Tripod, Open […]

I’m reflecting on a lot of really interesting responses I got last month to my article about feeling lonely on the web. And maybe now, I’m feeling a bit less so. So thank you to everyone who responded.

Something like a channel changer, for the web. That’s what the idea was at first. But it led to a whole new path of discovery that even the site’s creators couldn’t have predicted.

If the web is participatory, and I really think it is, then how come blogging can feel so lonely?

Twenty years ago, Kevin Kelly wrote an absolutely seminal piece for Wired. This week is a great opportunity to look back at it.

In the early 1990s, three companies pioneered online transactions, facing challenges of security and user accessibility. They are hardly known today.

By the end of 1995, the web moved outward and into the hands of everyone.

With search getting worse by the day, maybe it’s time we rebounded in the other direction. The long forgotten directory.

In 1995, a new industry was born, and design became a true practice.