Web 1.0 was way more powerful than you know.
Only one side of Web 1.0 shown by blogs on Internet, let's reveal it's another side
Almost everywhere on the internet, web 1.0 is represented poorly, here you will see the real strength of web 1.0.
Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means.
This was said by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the original web known as the World Wide Web, during an interview with developerWorks on August 22, 2006.
On June 27, 2006, the term Web 2.0 was officially registered to be used in live events. But Tim Berners-Lee was not ready to accept that his original web idea could be versioned based on some technologies that people started to use on top of his original web.
According to Tim Berner-Lee, the idea of the original web was the interaction between people. That was what it was designed to be a collaborative space where people can interact. And all the web standards which are being currently used on top of Web 1.0 could not replace the underlying protocol i.e. HTTP.
What do you think, discovering the abilities of the original web should be marked as a newer version of the web?
Let's figure it out by arising some more questions and observing their answers.
Did only static websites were built during the web 1.0 era?
Of course not. A static website means the web page is read-only, contents/data is not coming from a database but instead coming from a hardcoded HTML file, web page content is not updating upon user interaction and the website cannot interact with other websites. All points which lead to marking a website as static was already overcome by the original web, web 1.0.
Let's break down all the points and observe what technologies were used during web 1.0 to overcome the problems. Usually, web 1.0 is considered to have :
Read-only pages
What enables a user to write their information into the website's database?
A server-side script or language is used to handle user inputs which further could be saved in a database. It means users could write/participate in the website databases by submitting their information.
Server-side scripts like PHP, ASP, JSP, etc were already been used on websites during web 1.0 to enable website read-write functionality in pages. For instance, Amazon.com has allowed users to write reviews and consumer guides since its launch in 1995.
Conclusion: Web 1.0 wasn't read-only.
No databases
Another misconception is that if pages are read-only then users cannot write anything and nothing is saved, so there is no database. But, this is not true. Databases are even older than the internet or the web and exists since the 1960s.
In 1979, RSI introduced Oracle V2 (Version 2) as the first commercially available SQL-based RDBMS, a landmark event in the history of relational databases followed by DB2, SAP Sysbase ASE, and Informix and in 1985 released a client-server model.
In 1992, Microsoft Access was released. The great boom came in the database world when an open-source database MYSQL was released in 1995 which made a high fall in the use of high-cost DBs provided by big companies like Microsoft and Oracle.
One of the earliest examples of a database-driven website was the Online Encyclopedia, developed by Paul J.F. Laux and Bernard J. Jansen in 1996. It used MySQL database.
Conclusion: Web 1.0 was using databases.
Static user interface
Since developers were new to this web world, most of the websites were built with static content which displays information only. But, this was during only the beginning phase of the web and very soon Javascript adapted to the market. In 1995, NetScape home page was built using JavaScript to create interactive effects such as drop-down menus and image rollovers. In 1996 NetScape developed "JavaScript Test Pages" to demonstrate and showcase its capabilities. And after that several websites were built using JavaScript including online stores, forums and news websites.
Conclusion: Web 1.0 wasn't static only.
Distribution of web content
Simply, it refers to consuming one website's data on another or exposing a website's data to be used on another website. Today this is very common and can be achieved very easily through APIs. But was it possible during web 1.0?
During the early stages of the web, syndication was used to distribute news articles and other types of written content. One of the first syndication formats was the Rich Site Summary (RSS) format which allowed website owners to publish summaries of their content in a standardized format that could be easily consumed by other websites or users via RSS reader.
Other popular syndication formats included Atom and XHTML Friends Network (XFN). These formats were used to syndicate a wide range of content, including blog posts. news articles and other types of written content.
Other than syndication, APIs were also introduced during web 1.0 and dominated by three companies: Salesforce, eBay and Amazon.
Salesforce officially launched its API on February 7, 2000. This introduced an enterprise-class, web-based, Salesforce automation: “Internet as a Service.” XML APIs.
On November 20, 2000, eBay launched the eBay Application Program Interface (API) along with the eBay Developers Program.
On July 16, 2002, Amazon launched Amazon.com Web Services. This allowed developers to incorporate Amazon.com content and features into their websites, and let third-party sites search and display products from Amazon.com in an XML format.
Conclusion: Web 1.0 was capable of web content distribution.
Now, I hope you can answer the first question asked above.
The question:
What do you think, discovering the abilities of the original web should be marked as a newer version of the web?
Before making your thought, let's imagine Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web as our planet 'Earth'. Since the creation of the earth and the stabilization of human civilization, we have discovered so many things and so many things are yet to discover. So, after several discoveries or after several decades, should we call Earth as Earth 2.0 or Earth ultra max pro or something else like that? This seems funny :D and this is what Tim Berners-Lee was trying to make people aware of and was not interested in versioning of the original web.
Tim Berners-Lee's vision was beyond web 2.0. In 1999, he coined the term "Semantic web" which is often referred to as Web 3.0 nowadays.
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