Web Versions

The Web has versions? Yes, believe it or not.

When you create a webpage your using HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to tell a browser how to display the text and images to your visitors.  You can learn more about its history and creation on Wikipedia which has a pretty complete entry for HTML.

Basically HTML had its prototypes developed at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1980. Physicist Tim Berners-Lee has been credited with starting the whole thing off. By 1989, he began work on a browser technology to easily display the evolved versions of his prototype language and HTML was developed. Berners-Lee and CERN data systems engineer Robert Cailliau collaborated on a joint request for funding, but the project was not formally adopted by CERN. The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called “HTML Tags”, first mentioned on the Internet by Berners-Lee in late 1991.

HTML started the world on its internet craze and it has evolved into many versions and spinoffs since its early days. Oversight of HTML versions has been managed by W3C who sets standards for the language. At the time of this writing, the current evolution is HTML5. But other languages based on these earlier versions have also been created. Dynamic HTML, XHTML, and SHTML are some of the first and common variations.

As the web grew so did its technology. As technology developed so did the language and need for more robust options.

Web 1.0
These initial early stages of the conceptual World Wide Web, centered around a top-down approach to the use of the web and its user interface. Users could only view webpages but not contribute to the content of the webpages. They were used solely to distribute information, share data through file downloads, but that was about it.  Learn more about Web 1.0 on Wikipedia.

As more and more companies got on board and saw the power behind the internet, they started driving the need for more robust frameworks and languages to back them up.

Web 2.0
Introducing the new expanded web. Web 2.0 describes World Wide Web sites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier Web sites. Although Web 2.0 suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the way Web pages are made and used. Web 2.0 includes social networking sites, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, video sharing sites, hosted services, Web applications, and mashups. Learn more about Web 2.0 on Wikipedia.

Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0 and HTML
Some of the changes between the old and the new haven’t been all good, in my humble opinion. The more you add to commands, the more confusing you’re making them out to be. I much prefer “simple stupid”. But some changes have been beneficial.

In standard HTML <B> is a tag used to bold your text. Makes sense. If you want to highlight a Certain Title by making it bold, you’d code it like this:  <B>Certain Title</B>.

In Web 2.0, you’ll see that command spelled out, not as “bold” but as <Strong>. The <I> tag obviously is for italic, has been updated to <EM> for Emphasizing text. You can make up your own mind which is better.

As tools have been retired, redeveloped, updated or replaced, the Web 2.0 language has worked its way into the presentation of web pages. What you see when you browse through websites are the Presentation portion of content. Behind that presentation or visual look, is the source or text of the page. The code that tells the browser how to display the content to you the visitor.

As a visitor, you don’t really care which version of code is being used or how it’s being created. With even more robust programming languages like Java, Java Scripting, CSS, Perl, and the hundreds of others, there are many ways to create a webpage, but they all generate HTML code to tell a browser how to display content.

I began my internet technology career back in the very early days of the 1990s. I’m much more familiar with the Web 1.0 version of HTML from memory and experience. There are times when I need to look up the syntax of a command in today’s Web 2.0 version. But this kind of thing is expected in the information technology world. When you can’t figure out how to do something you want to do, always start with a search for the syntax first and you’ll probably find it.

What is lacking sometimes are clear examples. You can find a lot of reference pages that talk about the Tags and their Parameters, but not how they might fit together. Here in these HTML tutorials, I’ll try to share both information about the tags, what they do and show examples of their use. Both for Web 1.0 and 2.0.

For instance:
Let’s say we want to display a line, in italic and bold, to highlight the text as a quote. Here’s what we want to say:  “Be Inspired To Dance YOUR Dance!” ~ ©2014 Springwolf

When you see them side by side, it doesn’t look all that hard does it? So let’s get to it. Return to the Web Tutorial menu.

  © 1997-2014 Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D., Springwolf’s Creations. All Rights Reserved.