The History of the Web

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What Happens When You Enter a URL In Your Browser of Choice

Published: April 15, 2019

There’s this scene in the second season of The Crown (if you watch enough old movies, you’ll see the same kind […]

Code

What Does AJAX Even Stand For?

Published: March 4, 2019

The term AJAX may have not been coined until 2005, but it’s origin stretches all the way back to the early 2000’s, when browsers provided developers with the glue between clients and servers.

Significant Websites

How to Use the Web To Show the Truth

Published: February 18, 2019

Ushahidi is a platform that uses the democratizing power of the web to open access to citizen journalists on the ground and shine a light where the truth is hidden.

Code

Comparing the “Why” of Single Page App Frameworks

Published: January 22, 2019

The web is filled with rundowns of this JavaScript framework versus that one. But we don’t often take the time to understand why they were built in the first place.

Standards

An Early History of Web Accessibility

Published: January 14, 2019

Accessibility is one of the foundational principles of the World Wide Web. Fighting to preserve that principle are the creators behind the most powerful tools, some of which still exist today.

Significant Websites

Finding Our Digital Identities: A History of Social Media

Published: November 12, 2018

Benjamin Sun and Omar Wasow met for the first time in 1999. They had both recently struck out on the […]

Significant Websites

The Books That Shaped How We Learn About the Web

Published: October 22, 2018

It might seem strange to talk about books on the web, but when designers first turned to books for a way to learn about the web, Lynda Weinman and Jennifer Robbins showed them the way.

Significant Websites

Dreaming Big on the Open Web

Published: October 1, 2018

The web has always belonged to all of us. That is to say its protocols and underlying technology are products […]

Significant Websites

The Online World of High Taste and Rock Music

Published: September 10, 2018

This is a small chunk of history of rock music on the web. It begins in Santa Cruz. Michael Goldberg […]

The Network

Your Privacy Policy Doesn’t Mean A Thing; Regulating Privacy on the Web

Published: September 4, 2018

In the beginning, the web had no memory. When you followed a link to a new page, everything you did […]

Standards

Getting to the Picture Element

Published: August 20, 2018

The story of how responsive images made its way into the browser doubles as an inside look at the standards […]

Significant Websites

Salon, Slate, and a History of the Tricky Business of Publishing Online

Published: August 6, 2018

In the first few years of the web’s spread to ubiquity, traditional news publishers moved online. But a new kind of publisher was also born, one that was native to the web, with a whole new set of rules.

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The History of the Web is a project by Jay Hoffmann. Get in touch or Follow me on Mastodon.