10 Years of the World Wide Web 525
NCSA Mosaic was first released ten years ago today (oh, I guess you could mark time from the 1.0 release, but who's counting), marking the first milestone in the evolution of the graphical World Wide Web. HTTP was originally developed between 1989-1991, but didn't take off until there was a useful browser which could display inline images. You can still download old versions of Mosaic from browsers.evolt.org. So, all you folks who think you have a real handle on technological progress: what will information-access-over-electronic-networks look like in 2013?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
The DOM. Basically, the browser itself is now scriptable and the page can interact via Javascript or anything else aware of the DOM. Although a result of evolving document standards, that's actually a browser feature since the processing for it has to be done locally.
We also have the mobile browsers on phones/PDAs with auto-resizing etc.
Beyond that, I'd pretty much agree with you. If it's not broken...
Cheers,
Ian
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget Forms. Forms are what really changed the web into an application base rather than a hypertext document reader.
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:2, Interesting)
Even down to the spinning globe that Mosaic had, plus the very useful "clone window" button.
I think the innovations have happened at the back-end: the move away from static content to dynamically generated on-the-fly content.
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of the "improvements" (I use the term loosely) are in the form of supported formats/scripts, plugins, handling of international character sets, etc...
AND a ton of CRAP. BUT- just for fun, have you tried surfing using Lynx lately? It just doesn't fly anymore. Just like if you tried the original Mosaic, you'd lose quite a bit (or at least lots of pages would work).
But yeah, as far as design, and apparent usability to the user, the browser hasn't changed much.
LosT
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Interesting)
I use it quite a bit for network programming because it is easier to control than a normal browser in that it doesn't do *anything* automatically - it won't even follow redirects unless you allow it explicitly. This is a very useful feature if you are trying to closely follow interactions with a web site.
I agree with you in that Lynx just doesn't cut the mustard for ordinary surfing (that's not really what it's designed to do). I just don't want folks to get the idea that it's outdated or otherwise useless.
I love lynx.
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:4, Insightful)
Only when we're desperate do we resort to Opera, and only when completely desperate (need to view a flash) do we crank up Netscape 4.7.
I use the internet as a library, a resource for information. 99% of the sites I go to can be browsed perfectly as plain text. Keeps it quick, keeps it easy.
So it may not be powered flight any more, but text-mode browsing is still a nice glide most of the time.
YAW.
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd write this off as a troll, but it's modded insightful so I'll debate.
CSS is an incredibly useful thing. Though it is only for decoration, it's still nice to be able to change fonts on all pages of a website with just a few keystrokes. Sure you could use PHP variables for the same purpose, but why when it's already built in?
I'll admit that frames are usually used poorly, and in such cases take away from a website. However, in some scenarios it's incredibly useful. When I'm working with a database, I often need to switch between tables for whatever reason. The frame on the left side of the window saves lots of time that would be otherwise spent scrolling.
Basically, I'd hate to get rid of features such as CSS and frames, as that would make things I do much harder.
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:2, Insightful)
Innovation is wonderful, it is also VERY expensive. Why reinvent the wheel? Its a tried and true way of doing things. If you are going to innovate, make it worth while.
Just my humble opinion,
SirLantos
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:2)
Keyword based bookmarks - Epiphany. Very few people have tried this yet, because Ephy isn't stable, but they look like a pretty interesting departure from the normal heirarchy based bookmarks
Autocomplete? Perhaps not that innovative, but still.
Innovations I like (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Innovations I like (Score:4, Interesting)
I live and dye by mine. I cannot stand switching to other browsers and catching myself doing a mouse gesture that does nothing. I find it really helpful when doing research and I am hopping from one page to another. Very nice addition to your list cuz that is just what I was thinking of.
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
I could go on, but you get the point. Browsers have progressed tremendously in the last 10 years, but mostly in ways that are not immediately visible to a layman - the progress has mostly been in enabling support for various things, although significant progress has also been made in design and usability.
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Funny)
That's progress for you.
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mot an unmixed blessing...
The document object modelGood point.
PNG supportNot exactly a major achievement.
Frames supportActually, I think frames were one of the worst things that got done to the HTML standard, the concept bends the web paradigm.
Embedable multimediaIf you mean Flash, then I really disagree. Flash is the worst thing to happen to the web. Flash entirely breaks the web paradigm.
If you mean embedable movies (and stuff), I'm not convinced I agree here either, it restricts the user with respect to the applications they use and alot of teh time make it frustratingly hard to actually download the content ratehr than watch it "online".
Plugin supportTrue, alhtough haven't Microsoft now gotten rid of this in their latest generation of browsers? Don't know for sure as I haven't used IE in several years.
CookiesCookies were a half decent idea, we needed to do something to get persistant states, but they've been used for evil and now must die.
HTTPS SupportHardly an inovation, enrypting something isn't innovative.
Cascading Style SheetsThe best thing to the web in years, just wish all the browsers would finally support it in the same way.
XHTML TranslationsHmm...
XML SupportWell, okay, but its not really fully supported yet, is it?
ThemesHo hum...
Integrated Mail and NewsBad, clunky and graphical. Why would you want to read news or mail inside a GUI? They're fundamentally text based media?
Personally my life has become much easier now my mail server auto-rejects all HTML formatted email before I see it. HTML email is an abomination...
(imperfect) W3C Standards supportSurely that shoul have been at the top of the list? Standards support should come before everything else. If we don't have standards, its bloody hard for software to tak to other bits of software, let alone to humans.
Browsers have progressed tremendously in the last 10 years, but mostly in ways that are not immediately visible to a layman...
I think what people are commenting on is that its been fairly slow incremental change, the sort of paradigm shifts that occured early on in teh webs life haven't occured again. For instance I'm sure alot of people (including me) are wondering why the Semantic Web never really took off...
That said the - the progress has mostly been in enabling support for various things, although significant progress has also been made in design and usability.
Right, incremental changes. I think that the GRID might shake things up a bit in the next couple of years, although since I'm working of GRID-enabled stuff I might have a somewhat skewed view of whats going on...
Al.Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:3, Interesting)
GRID? More info please.
The GRID? Hmm, its sort of, well, its something like...
To be honest nobody is really sure what it is yet. In academia is sort of viewed as the next generation internet, some people are deploying hardware (mostly the particle physicists to cope with their anticipated huge bandwidth needs) the rest of us are writing software to do distributed computing. You know the sort of thing, your data is spread across a bunch of machines in the States and the Caymen Islands (for instance) an
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the majority of users are still stuck on small-pipe modems in 10 years, most web content will look much like it does now. If instead most users have at least cable/dsl bandwidth (or more, insert your fave buzzword here), then web site designers will be more likely to create content that takes advantage of higher bandwidth. When high-bandwidth is
Three views of the Web in 2013 (Score:3, Insightful)
One - A task force to regulate web use is created in the face of "international terrorism" and "protecting children" that tries to limit use of the worst porn and shady financial transactions. This system is easily abused is constantly fought over in Congress as the religious Republicans try to use it to apply Christian morality to the nation and the socialist (non-moderate) Democrats try to build it into a system laden with "po
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:3, Insightful)
The significant point is that the whole of the Net has never undergone a paradigm shift. Take the browser (Ok, things get more user-friendly, the stuff on the web gets more colourful as u get more bandwidth, but what else did u expect?) or the protocols - there has been no rev
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, you just said it:
We are still using a fairly simple protocol like TCP and an even more simple protocol like HTTP on top for most of our file transfers.
It's because rather than depsite that that the Internet has grown into such a behemoth.
Simple protocols like TCP/IP and HTTP are easy to implement, can be implemented on a wide range of devices, and don't break very easily (most of the time these protocols are 'broken', it is due to poor implementation rather than the design of the protocol itself.)
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Obviously plagarized (Score:3, Informative)
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
> stayed pretty much unchanged in over 20 years. People keep talking
> about new 3D OS's and stuff but the fact is that that most of the design
> in current OS's is excellent and needs no improvement, browsers included.
Bah, I declare shenanigans on that. There's tons of room for improvement in the windows ui for both power users and normal people.
The Start Menu needs a complete overhaul. It's not intuitive once you open up the "Programs" list. Currently, if you want to find a mail program, you'd have to search through each container, since each container typically refers to a company. Want to write a composition (high school term meaning "text file")? What is your choice of programs for that? Where are they located? Well, on my machine, two of them are in "Accessories" (NotePad and WordPad), one is in "EditPad Lite", one is under "OpenOffice.org 1.0" and one is at the bottom of the list, not in any particular container. That's really inconsistant, and it would confuse users who weren't already totally used to it.
The intuitive way would be to categorize programs. That's how they do it in linux. It's how I categorize my programs in Windows 2000 (though I have to manually hack stuff around, and that breaks the uninstallers a little). Yeah, it's not always easy to put everything into unique categories, but it's a heck of a lot easier than having a flat list of mixed between company names and program names. All the programs for the above task are under either "Applications -> Text Editors" (for simple text editors) or "Office -> Wordprocessors" (for more complex editors). I don't have to hunt through my entire list of programs to find something that does what I want, and I don't have to rely on some default link button on my application bar in the hopes that it'll take me to the best program.
I also like having every executable in the path. This may be a bit power-userish, but it's sometimes a lot faster and easier to hit "ALT-F2" (to bring up the "Run" dialog) and type in "opera" than wasting time reaching for the mouse and hunting out where the link to the program is. I wish that I could type Win-R and "opera" on this Win2k machine, but it would simply take forever to put every single applicable directory into the file path.
Meh, there's a lot of things that could change to substantially improve the usability of the interface for normal users. People still don't understand the difference between a button (one click to run this program) and an icon (two clicks to run this program, unless you have it configured for one click, but then get ready to confuse people who actually got used to double clicking, because they double click everything, even web links!). Many people still don't understand that you can open more than one program without needing to close the current program. These things are not obvious to most people because the system does not make it easy enough to understand. Heck, it was probably a huge mistake to put both the current task list and the shortcut icons on the same bar. If the taskbar were just a vanilla taskbar, then maybe the masses would have taken to the concept of "if I see a name on this bar, that means that the program/application with this name is doing something even though I can't see it". But now, if a button is on the bar, it might be a task that's running, it might be a launchable program that's not running, it might be in that bizarre in-between realm of the system tray, or it might make that list pop up with the "Settings" and the "Programs" and the list of fifteen AOL and MSN related buttons above the "Programs" thing.
Heck, I'm not even touching the power user stuff, like mouse gestures and virtual desktops and soforth. The reason why people don't move to newer interfaces isn't because the interface is excellent. It's because these people spent a decade struggling
Re:10 years... So similiar... (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft did _announce_ Windows 1.0 almost twenty years ago (fall 1983). They shipped no product until nearly a year later. And Windows 1.0 is not at all "pretty much unchanged in over 20 years." For example, overlapping windows was a pretty big change.
Apple had a shipping product in January 1983, the LISA. And anothe shipping product, the Macintosh, which Microsoft had to license in 1985, before Microsoft could come up with a usable product.
want to see? (Score:3, Interesting)
2013 (Score:5, Funny)
So, all you folks who think you have a real handle on technological progress: what will information-access-over-electronic-networks look like in 2013?
I do not know and will not know. I will be in jail for stealing AOL/TW revenue by using an illegal 3D pop-up-down-sideways blocker.
I predict... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I predict... (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, this can be quite wrong. With quantumcomputing becoming clearer and closer, we might be facing (what was it?) 16 positions in stead of just 'on' and 'off'.
What if Netscape won? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What if Netscape won? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What if Netscape won? (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
The War Does Wage On (Score:3, Insightful)
For me, I think this is because of a lack of additional features being added to IE. If IE had tabbed browsing, helpful searching features, and good pop-up blocking/whitelisting, I'd probably still be using it. Of course, supporting anything open source and not-Microsoft is always a g
Re:What if Netscape won? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What if Netscape won? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, the author states that we'd all be using on-line apps instead of an OS. That is more BS. Until everyone has broadband, it is more efficient to use programs that load off-line.
Re:What if Netscape won? (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about it. if netscape had won, crushing IE and becoming dominat, what would stop them from switching back to a for pay software company, actually making money of their product...
And people don't like to pay for new versions too often... so, there'd be fewer innovations, far less growth of the product... just patches.
Oh sure, there'd be better adherance to standards, but think of the loss the OSS community would suffer it it hadn't been for the development of Mozilla, born from netscapes collapse.
Mozilla is one of those projects that affects the most number of people... and promotes at least some awareness of the choice that OSS brings to the table... (Linux, while a great bringer of zealots, just doesn't quite cut it with most folks.. getting closer though, getting a lot closer)
ah well, just pulling "what if's" out of my ass here... I could be compleatly wrong.
MOSAIC! (Score:2, Funny)
Then...it got MUCH better...
I found p0rn....
Re:MOSAIC! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MOSAIC! (Score:2, Funny)
Web browsing in 2013 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Web browsing in 2013 (Score:5, Funny)
Well, sure, if you're still using that lousy broadband cable connection. What kind of ancient equipment would you be using? Everyone will be on fiber by then, Luddite!
Also, the psychic popup ads will be a real pain....
Nah, you won't even notice them. You'll be programmed to not notice them.
In fact, you never read this message.
in stead of it being all porno (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, a man can dream, cant he?
In 10 more years? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In 10 more years? (Score:2)
Classifications that define something obvious. Oh. http://company.WEB. Well, why didn't you SAY it was a web page.
nongraphical too (Score:5, Informative)
My NeXT was running web clients in 1991 or 1992. Not much to see, if you didn't put it up.
Mosaic was a milestone, but it didn't mark the start line.
Re:nongraphical too (Score:5, Funny)
You had it lucky. Where I was stationed, we didn't have any newfangled interactive terminals. We had to punch our URLs onto cards and mail them to headquarters, then wait weeks for the next supply drop to bring our web page printouts and beef jerkey.
2013 (Score:5, Interesting)
Also spam will acount for 99% of all email which will all be in XHTML v9.0 and people will still be trying to get FP on slashdot
Rus
Re:2013 (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, that'd be great! It would be like whack-a-mole with salespeople... pop-up stoppers would no longer come from websites but hardware stores...
Phil
It will look... (Score:3, Funny)
And then... (Score:2)
Re:And then... (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't work in IE, works in Moz though...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Ahh, I remember the begining.... (Score:3, Funny)
i'd have to say.. (Score:3, Interesting)
To the 2003 web surfer, I'd have to guess it's going to be strangley, deafeningly mute of spam and popups and junk in general. And if you casually leaned over and asked the 2013 web surfer where the spam went, I bet they'd go "the whuh?" I'll leave it wide open how I'm supposing something like that could happen...
For 2013? (Score:2, Funny)
support the community that supports you!! (Score:2, Offtopic)
I thought the web was a fad (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody else see "fad" technologies out there now? Anybody have a guess as to which ones will stick?
2013? (Score:5, Insightful)
Television
The FUTURE by a pessimist (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Retinal scan, thumb print and DNA test required for authentication.
2) Registration and tracking in national and international databases of governments and corporations. This tracks your access point and methods as well as the data you access and networks traversed.
3) Pay per microsecond based on access to copyright data and use of copyright and patented technologies.
4) All govenments, corporations and point of sale terminals are based on the technology.
5) Hardware locked sof
The Semantic Web (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I won't say for sure, but I think there is a strong chance that the same man largely responsible for the last ten years could play a role in the evolution over the next ten years as well...
The Semantic Web [scientificamerican.com].
Mosiac, Netscape, and the W3 (Score:4, Interesting)
The first graphical browser I ever used was Mosaic, followed shortly thereafter by Netscape 1.0. This was before the W3 was founded, back in 1993. It's amazing how little the browsers supported back then. No backgrounds, no text colors, no tables, pages looked awful! I remember how blown away I was at the release of Netscape 2.0, which had background support, a stop button, <sub> and <sup> support, LiveScript (which became JavaScript)...and of course the dreaded blink tag.
Although the general look and feel of the browser has not radically changed in a decade or so, the technologies that browsers support have changed drastically. At this point though, I'm just happy I can browse without using IE. I kind of miss the old days, before popups, before animated gifs, before flash & shockwave.
pricepoints (Score:2)
Triv
2013 (Score:2, Funny)
We'll still be using the web to find out the release date for "Duke Nukem Forever".
Gimme karma, bitches.
Mosaic was my first (nostalgia) (Score:2)
It is interesting to think back to that time and compare it to where we are today. In some ways things have improved and changed dramatically, and in some ways, things are still the same. I am very encouraged by the progress made during the last 10 or so years and I am greatly interested in what the next 10
Web/Gopher dead-tree directories (Score:5, Interesting)
As useful as the Web has become, I still feel a bit nostalgic for the days when it was ruled by educational institutions, geeks, government agencies and porn. Life without banners....ahhh :)
More of the same at this rate... (Score:4, Insightful)
We should be using the web more as a resource for storing and retrieving data. Graphics and pretty page layouts are nice and all but if I could, I'd abolish most of it and just look for a summary of the info with a little link saying "Want to know more? Click here..."
Blarg.
It's the data.
It's all about the data.
Information wants to be in your pants.
In Soviet Russia, the pants are in the hot grits.
Bleh.
Bah! It's just Gopher with pictures. (Score:3, Interesting)
12 Years of the World Wide Web (Score:5, Informative)
Bonzi Buddy (Score:2)
Our children will just seem to pop up out of nowhere, and will all be very friendly and knowledgable. They will even keep track of the places you go, and the things you like.
Ah, love.
In the year 2000… (Score:4, Funny)
YAY!!! (Score:2, Funny)
In 10 years ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In 10 years ... (Score:3, Funny)
A troll would be:
In French, it's pronounced "we surrender" "we surrender" "we surrender"
Now THAT'S a troll!
C'mon mods, get with it!
Long term pronunciation change? (Score:4, Funny)
The real question is wether the prounciation of the letter will change in common usage. As noted elsewhere, 'w' is the only 3 syllable letter in the english language, all others are single syllable. In fact all other letters are pronounced as vowel-consonent or consonent-vowel. Since 'you' is already a letter, and w's now look more like double v's than double u's, my guess is that 'dub' and eventually 'duh' will replace 'double you' in the long term. The advent of the 9 syllable 3 letter acronym as a catalyst for this change in pronunciation can bee seen already.
So my prediction for 10 years from now? The whole world changes to a environmentalist green paradise with no machines or computers or internet. The only lasting remains? The pronunciation of the letter 'w' in the english language has changed to 'duh'. This is to remind us all how stupid the dot-com boom was.
ooooohh! I know! I know! (Score:5, Funny)
It will look like CowboyNeal!!
Starting on patent (Score:2)
I still smile... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I remember how excited everybody got with the introducion of the <CENTER> tag
Every damn page became centered overnight.
And the day the <BLINK> tag first made an entry, I wanted to go shoot a large hoarde of web "designers".
Each time a new advance was made, there was always a bunch of people who never learnt the rule - "Just because you can doesn't mean you should".
I think they design Flash web sites now.
My prediction is that they'll still be doing whatever the equivalent is in 2013 :)
.02
cLive ;-)
CERN WWW (Score:4, Informative)
In the interests of Internet history, I'd like to see www. It should be able to run fine on a Linux system, as it's a simple line-based program. However, I haven't been able to find a copy, as browsers.evolt.org doesn't go back that far. Does anyone have the source?
In 2013... (Score:2)
Wow been that long? (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember when nobody had pop-up ads, and when the banner ad thing first started. Remember the original link exchange rings? Also remember what kind of sites had them? No reputable site would dare have a banner on it!
The no frames movement? Hey that one actually succeeded more or less! Of course it helped that frames where outdated by tables and eventually style sheets of various forms, lol!
I remember when the "Next Big Thing" was VRML. I also remember how buggy the VRML players where. It was crazy, the Japanese did have a few good VRML attractions though.
Best of all I remember being able to do a web search for *COUGH* not so legal *COUGH* applications and not coming up with a ton of porn sites! Heya imagine that! lol
Of course I also remember doing insanely complicated regular expression searches just to FIND any data. Search engines sucked to such a large degree back then it wasn't even funny. And there also was not nearly so much information on the Internet, though there tended to be a lot more net culture history around. Anybody else here remember the BERMs VS Nerds thing that was the hot debate topic for the longest time?
I remember the original incarnation of weird.com [weird.com] and of givememoney.com (now a squatters domain)
Send your Cash, Check, or Valuables to:
Some Homeless Guy New York New York. . .
*sigh*
Geocities used to be the somewhat lame but legit web host with domain names that where far to long. Crosswinds.net was the little known quality free hosting service. Tripod.com was the somewhat smaller competitor to Geocities.
And Gamespy used to be an APPLICATION not some huge multinational corporation. Hehehehe. Damn that is funny, looking at how far Gamespy has come, LOL! I never even really did like their product! Oh well, hehe. Hey Fragmaster, you rock!
Jeez, then the
But. . .
*sigh*
Same old web, just a ton more banner ads. But hey, now there is a banner ad size standardization group! Some days I think that is all the web ended up getting out of the
first chatroom (Score:4, Interesting)
for me it was like suddenly a moment of transcendance when I first realized what the internet was capable of, and that I could actually directly talk to multiple people all over the world.
I remember emailing random people just because it was so cool and easy. (Now I'd be arrested for spamming...)
I wonder what our kids will think of it, having always had it...
I'll tell you what innovation we will see. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has left IE virtually unchanged for quite a while, because they don't need put any effort into it anymore. They have a 70-80% market share that isn't going anywhere quickly so why bother?
IE does not has not moved an inch standards wise since IE 4, so "new" things like XHTML are not supported and only work because IE will support virtually any markup. Just try using a correct XHTML MIME type, or using XHTML DOM (which is read-only in XHTML) or CSS (changes to case rules in XHTML) in IE and it will fail. Mozilla and Opera (and no doubt Konq also) do all the above just fine.
Maybe they will do tabbed browsing to stop people saying it is behind for features, maybe they will gruddingly to pop-up blockers, or maybe they will just keep the ad revenue from MSN.
Until MS update IE the web stays looking just as it does now for 70-80% of users, however innovative the rest of the world gets.
What I Think Will Happen To Browsers By 2013. (Score:5, Interesting)
My thought is, the conventional web browser will eventually be replaced by something I like to refer to as a "metabrowser"... In other words, we don't really actively *surf* anymore, but rather, we swim through a series of content-rich pages generated by the browser itself, based on information transparently gathered from actual sources behind the scenes, and appearing in a format that I like to see things in. I don't want to see something prepared in a format someone else likes. I want to see it how I like it.
How is this going to be accomplished? Well, take Google as a crude engine model. For any particular subject you search for on Google, the top 5 or so pages that Google suggests to you carry (on average) about 40% of the total information payload you're looking for. The sort of searches you embark on have usually been done by hundreds of people before you. If there was a way to earmark at-a-glance how useful a particular piece of information is, then you could begin ranking specific *reigons* of content, not simply the pages themselves. Think of a browser with a highlighter pen. Wherever you go, you can use the highlighter pen to say "this is useful, the rest is crap", and that annotation (as well as the aggregate of other peoples annotations) are stored along with the document. When viewed from this perspective, irrelevant information falls into obscurity while important information rises to the top.
A metabrowser's task is to compile only that *useful* information, based on those annotations made by others in the past, combined with your own preferences. Think of it as a P2P utility for search parameters. What worked for you is shared amongst thousands of other people. Its not so much the page itself anymore, but what hotspots of that page are useful. Web browsers in 2003 are just machines for extracting the ore out of a mine. I want a device that extracts ore, refines it, and poops out a gold brick within 10 seconds.
I also see the possibility of "temporal browsing", i.e. you can see what Slashdot looks like today, yesterday, or back on February 19th '06 if you want. Why not? So much data just spills into oblivion for no reason, why not find a way to keep it around? Why not store webpage content the same way frames of a movie are stored, simply as a delta of the last keyframe?
I want to be able to "drill down" in a webpage to find the origin of a particular piece of information. I don't want to take 31337 h4x0r b0y's word for it.
Massive amounts of content are meaningless without a proper way of indexing it all. We need to build bindings. Everywhere.
Yes, brilliant, wasn't it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some other examples: look at Visicalc. All the important ideas were already there. (Well, OK, a few more of them fell into place with Context MBA...)
Or, for that matter, the graphic user interface as it existed in the 1984 Mac.
Or, how about adventure games? Not to knock, say, Myst, but Crowther and Woods' original Colossal Cave really gave us an excellent, totally complete, well-implemented example of the genre right out of the starting gate.
Donning my asbesto suit, I think Microsoft Word falls in the same category. The sad part is that this product has not only not improved, in many ways it has slightly deteriorated... Microsoft has not been a good steward of its own innovation.
All of these examples make me realize just how LONG it's really been since I've experienced the "Wow!" of new possibilities opening up in front of me...
Re:Yes, brilliant, wasn't it? (Score:3, Interesting)
But Wordstar, and Wordperfect, and Wang word processing before that (which was arguably superior to either of them) all fell into the same mould: they were designed for fixed-pitch, monospaced, daisywheel output. And it would be better to describe them as having an integrated full-screen text editor than as having a WYSIWYG display. I was never a Wordstar
It's got to be said (Score:3, Insightful)
The future will look like... (Score:3, Funny)
Be afraid...
10 Years From Now... (Score:3, Insightful)
2. More of our lives will be stored and recorded on computers, both at home and on the Web. How we sort this out will define how much privacy we have in the future. If we allow corporations or the government to give us an easy, convenient (or invisible) way of storing our preferences and historical files on their servers, we will sacrifice a significant amount of privacy. If we want privacy, we'll need to find a way (and a will) to store and protect our personal data on our personal computers and still have it accessable remotely for use.
3. We will be forced to have a "digital identity" to participate in the mainstream cyberworld in much the same way that you need a picture ID to buy beer. There will still be places that will allow anonymity, but commercial and other "official" transactions will increasingly require something like PKI based on common standards. Of course, dependency on this raises the spectre of identity theft (or erasure) at a level never seen to date, so we must ensure that we still have "human" ways of verifying who we are.
4. Either:
a. Microsoft will have taken over the Internet and are our bases will belong to them, or...
b. Microsoft will have been made obsolete by open standards and formats.
Pick one. I know my preference.
What's a "browser"? (Score:3, Funny)
Trying 66.35.250.150...
Connected to slashdot.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0
Moasic was 'the next NCSA Telnet' (Score:3, Interesting)
At the time, NCSA Telnet had been the Center's big contribution to the Internet and a huge one at that. In the mid-'80s before NCSA Telnet, no one had dreamed of using a PC or Mac to directly access resources (like supercomputers) on the 'Net... It just wasn't done. MIT's PC/IP came out about the same time but I don't think it saw nearly same distribution as NCSA Telnet in the early years... NCSA Telnet was the client almost everyone used on "little machines."
Now ten years later, how many folks know what NCSA Telnet was, let alone recall it's impact? Talk about differences in scale...
--zawada
Coincidence? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that a cool coincidence or what? Must be something special about March 14th.
Here's an interesting site [scopesys.com] of other events that happened today in history. Among them I found the following interesting:
TODAY IS ALSO THE RIAA's BIRTHDAY!! HOW SCARRY!!
1958 RIAA (Recording Industry Association of American)is created and certifies 1st gold record (Perry Como's Catch A Falling Star)
1950 FBI's "10 Most Wanted Fugitives" program begins
1967 JFK's body moved from temporary grave to a permanent memorial
1971 The Rolling Stones leave England for France to escape taxes
1995 1st time 13 people in space
1997 President Clinton trips & tears up his knee requiring surgery
The child has grown (Score:4, Interesting)
It could grow in width, reaching everywhere with appliances, internet enabled dispositives, ipv6 addresses even for your pencil, all enabled to access by voice, touch(for screens and things like that) and maybe more. I don't think that in 10 year we'll have holographic screens for clocks, a la Final Fantasy or Spy Kids 2, but is a nice goal.
It could grow in depth. Have a big amount of content, but is still far from having "everything" know by man, in every language, in every media.
And it could grow mature in other ways, being more self consistent, more consolidated. I think that will not be so far something that give a consolidated view of the web, something like data warehousing do for complex databases, but for the more complex database of all.
Directories like yahoo did a first step, so the same did the first search engines. Google advanced a bit more, consilidating a bit the web giving weight to more linked things. But there still a lot of work to do in that direction, something that answer my mostly free form questions not giving me a collection of links that could talk about what I'm searching for, but an answer, something really like the old oracle, but for now and mostly for real.
The last part is what I see more probable for the next years, still a lot needs to be developed, but there is a more or less clear path to reach it, search engines already have a big chunk of the www to start, and some legislation maybe will be needed (extractind data from web pages for that of things will be very similar to screen scraping).
Of course, all of this could happen if nothing avoid this, like war, global economic problems, patents and IP in general don't put obstacles, famine, diseases, extintion levels events or Microsoft.
Remembering the very first time you saw Mosaic... (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually remember that at one point it was possible to view *ALL* the websites on the planet (tell that to the younger generation today!), and how every single day was very exciting to discover new things (the birth of yahoo, altavista, ebay, and amazon come to mind).
That day I saw mosaic is on my list of days I could never forget, like the challenger explossion, the berlin wall coming down, the wall trade center attacks, and recently the columbia tragedy...
MOSAIC was NOT 1st (Score:3, Interesting)
MOSAIC was promoted as the 1st graphical browser but that is factually wrong. I wasnt even the first major browser. Mosaic came years after the WWW
Re:Yes ... and what do we have to show for it? (Score:2)
It appears I have something I never would have had before the web:
Karma that is "EXX-cellent"
*pronouced with my miserable Mr. Burns accent*
Re:Still using it...? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Mosaic was originally free software.
2) A company (Mosaic Spyglass?) was formed to make it into a commercial product.
3) Microsoft, desperate for a browser, licensed Mosaic from that company, on terms that required a certain percentage of the amount made by Microsoft from each browser sale.
4) Microsoft then turned around and gave away the browser, Mosaic's lawyers all slapped their foreheads in collective shock, and Mosaic Spyglass never saw a red cent from the Borg.
Re:I remember this... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Opportunities Lost..... (Score:3, Insightful)
The culture on the net (including the various lists in which I participated) was so strongly counter to the use of the net for business (e.g., people on the Pink Floyd discussion list got flamed for selling things like used albums and paraphernalia to each o