Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Parramatta Web Designer
Parramatta Shopify website design experts
Assessing Experience and Portfolio
When it comes to hiring a Parramatta web designer, assessing their experience and portfolio is more than just flipping through a bunch of digital pages! Best Parramatta Website Design NSW. You gotta dig deeper into what theyve done, how they did it, and why they chose to do it that way. So before you dive in with both feet (or should I say, both clicks), there are a few questions you might wanna ask.
First off, dont be afraid to inquire about their recent projects. Ask them to walk you through something theyre particularly proud of. The last thing you want is a designer whos stuck in their ways, still clinging to techniques from the dawn of the internet age. If they cant show you anything current or exciting, that could be a red flag.
Another thing you might consider asking is about their process. How do they approach a project? What tools do they use? It's important to know that they aren't just winging it and that they have a methodical way of working. This could mean the difference between a site thats functional and user-friendly or one thats a maze of confusing navigation.
Now, every web designer will have their own style, but its good to check if their work aligns with your brands aesthetic. So, while you're looking at their portfolio, ask yourself if the design elements resonate with what you're trying to achieve. And don't hesitate to voice this concern to the designer. It's okay to say, "Hmm, these designs are great, but they don't quite match the look and feel we're after."
Oh, and heres a kicker: ask about their failures. No designer is perfect, and it's refreshing to hear someone acknowledge when things didn't go as planned. The real test is how they handled those setbacks and what they learned from them. Avoid designers who shy away from discussing their mistakes, because it indicates a lack of self-reflection and growth.
Lastly, make sure to ask about references or case studies. It's one thing to see pretty pictures, but it's another to hear from actual clients about their experience working with the designer. This can provide insights into the designers communication skills, reliability, and attention to detail that you wouldnt get from a portfolio alone.
In the end, trust your gut! If something feels off or if you're not sure about their capabilities, don't force it. A bad hire can cost you more than just money; it can damage your reputation too. So take your time, and remember, a great web designer isn't just about looks; it's about substance and the ability to deliver on their promises.
Understanding Design Process and Methodology
When it comes to understanding the design process and methodology of a Parramatta web designer, its crucial to ask the right questions! You wouldn't want to hire someone who flies by the seat of their pants, right? First off, don't be afraid to inquire about their process. Ask them, how do they approach a project? Do they start with wireframes or jump straight into design? Understanding their process can give you a good indication of how organized and thoughtful they are.
Now, methodology is a whole other beast. Its about the tools and techniques they use to get the job done. But heres the thing, you want a designer who isnt stuck in their ways. So, ask them if they're open to new tools or trends? Do they keep up with the latest in web design or are they still stuck in the 90s? It's also worth asking if they have a particular methodology they follow, like Agile or Lean design. This can really help in understanding their approach to problem-solving and flexibility.
But hey, not all questions need to be about the technical stuff. It's important to get a feel for their personality and how they work with others. So, what's their communication style like? Do they keep you in the loop throughout the process or do they go dark for weeks at a time? And don't forget to ask about their availability. Can they meet your deadlines? Do they have a team that can pick up the slack if they're swamped?
Lastly, it's a good idea to ask for references or case studies. Seeing their previous work can give you a much clearer picture of their capabilities and how their designs have performed in the real world. But heres the kicker, don't just take their word for it. Reach out to their references and see what they have to say. It's the extra mile that can make all the difference.
So, when you're standing there, pen in hand, ready to ask those crucial questions, remember, you're not just hiring a designer, you're hiring someone who'll be a part of your team. You want to make sure they're not just technically skilled, but also a good fit for your business. And hey, if you find yourself feeling unsure, it's okay to take your time. A good designer won't mind waiting for the right partner to come along.
Evaluating Communication and Collaboration Skills
When youre on the hunt for a web designer in Parramatta, it's crucial to evaluate their communication and collaboration skills. You dont want to hire someone who cant get their ideas across clearly or work well with your team, right? So, asking the right questions can really make a difference!
First off, you might wanna ask about their previous experiences working with clients. Parramatta professional website design company Have they ever had to deal with difficult situations? (You know, like tight deadlines or changing requirements?) If they have, how did they handle it? A designer whos got solid communication skills will be able to explain their thought process and how they resolved issues. This also gives you a glimpse into their problem-solving abilities.
Next, it's also important to find out how they prefer to communicate. Do they mostly use email, or are they more into video calls? You wouldnt want to hire someone who only communicates through messages (which can lead to misunderstandings), so finding a designer who aligns with your preferred style is key. Plus, gauge how quickly they respond to your inquiries. If they're slow to reply, it might signal that they wont be easily reachable during the project!
Another thing to consider is how they handle feedback. You should ask them about a time they received criticism on their work. Did they take it personally, or did they embrace it? A good designer should be open to feedback and willing to make adjustments. Collaboration is all about give and take, after all!
Lastly, don't forget to assess their ability to work in a team. Ask if they've collaborated with developers, marketers, or even content creators in the past. If they've got experience working alongside others, thats a great sign that they can mesh well with your existing team.
In conclusion, hiring a web designer isn't just about their technical skills. It's about finding someone who can communicate effectively and collaborate seamlessly with you and your team! So, take the time to ask these questions, and you'll be more likely to find the right fit for your project. Good luck!
Discussing Pricing, Contracts, and Ongoing Support
When it comes to hiring a Parramatta web designer, discussing pricing, contracts, and ongoing support is crucial but often overlooked! You dont wanna end up feeling blindsided by hidden costs or unsure about what youre getting into. First off, lets talk about pricing. Now, I know everyone wants a steal, but be wary of those super low quotes. They might not cover everything you need, ya know? So, ask about a detailed breakdown of their fees. Are they charging per hour, or do they have a flat rate for the whole project? And, what happens if the scope changes?
Contracts are another biggie. Dont sign anything without reading it thoroughly. Its important to understand both parties responsibilities and what happens if something goes wrong. For instance, what if the project runs over schedule? Does the price increase? And, what about the intellectual property rights? You want to make sure that once the job is done, the website and all its assets belong to you, not the designer.
Then theres ongoing support. Websites arent like TV shows that wrap up after a season. They need maintenance, updates, and sometimes, a little love. Check if the designer offers maintenance packages or if they charge extra for things like bug fixes, security patches, or content updates. Also, find out their response time during emergencies. No one likes waiting days for a critical issue to get resolved.
Lastly, don't forget to ask about backups too! Losing your sites data can be a real nightmare.
Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Parramatta Web Designer - Parramatta Shopify website design experts
Parramatta Shopify website design experts
Parramatta professional website design company
Knowing that the designer has a solid backup plan can provide peace of mind and save you from potential headaches down the line.
So, yeah, all these questions might seem a bit much, but trust me, they can make a huge difference in your experience with the web designer. You dont wanna regret not asking them later on, right?
The World Wide Web ("WWW", "W3" or simply "the Web") is a global information medium that users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and Usenet do. The history of the Internet and the history of hypertext date back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN in 1989. He proposed a "universal linked information system" using several concepts and technologies, the most fundamental of which was the connections that existed between information.[1][2] He developed the first web server, the first web browser, and a document formatting protocol, called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). After publishing the markup language in 1991, and releasing the browser source code for public use in 1993, many other web browsers were soon developed, with Marc Andreessen's Mosaic (later Netscape Navigator) being particularly easy to use and install, and often credited with sparking the Internet boom of the 1990s. It was a graphical browser which ran on several popular office and home computers, bringing multimedia content to non-technical users by including images and text on the same page.
Websites for use by the general public began to emerge in 1993–94. This spurred competition in server and browser software, highlighted in the Browser wars which was initially dominated by Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Following the complete removal of commercial restrictions on Internet use by 1995, commercialization of the Web amidst macroeconomic factors led to the dot-com boom and bust in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The features of HTML evolved over time, leading to HTML version 2 in 1995, HTML3 and HTML4 in 1997, and HTML5 in 2014. The language was extended with advanced formatting in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and with programming capability by JavaScript. AJAX programming delivered dynamic content to users, which sparked a new era in Web design, styled Web 2.0. The use of social media, becoming commonplace in the 2010s, allowed users to compose multimedia content without programming skills, making the Web ubiquitous in everyday life.
In 1980, Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, built ENQUIRE, as a personal database of people and software models, but also as a way to experiment with hypertext; each new page of information in ENQUIRE had to be linked to another page.[6][7][8] When Berners-Lee built ENQUIRE, the ideas developed by Bush, Engelbart, and Nelson did not influence his work, since he was not aware of them. However, as Berners-Lee began to refine his ideas, the work of these predecessors would later help to confirm the legitimacy of his concept.[9][10]
Berners-Lee's contract in 1980 was from June to December, but in 1984 he returned to CERN in a permanent role, and considered its problems of information management: physicists from around the world needed to share data, yet they lacked common machines and any shared presentation software. Shortly after Berners-Lee's return to CERN, TCP/IP protocols were installed on Unix machines at the institution, turning it into the largest Internet site in Europe. In 1988, the first direct IP connection between Europe and North America was established and Berners-Lee began to openly discuss the possibility of a web-like system at CERN.[12] He was inspired by a book, Enquire Within upon Everything. Many online services existed before the creation of the World Wide Web, such as for example CompuServe, Usenet,[13]Internet Relay Chat,[14]Telnet[15] and bulletin board systems.[16] Before the internet, UUCP was used for online services such as e-mail,[17] and BITNET was also another popular network.[18]
The NeXT Computer used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN became the first Web server.The corridor where the World Wide Web was born, on the ground floor of building No. 1 at CERNWhere the WEB was born
While working at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee became frustrated with the inefficiencies and difficulties posed by finding information stored on different computers.[19] On 12 March 1989, he submitted a memorandum, titled "Information Management: A Proposal",[1][20] to the management at CERN. The proposal used the term "web" and was based on "a large hypertext database with typed links". It described a system called "Mesh" that referenced ENQUIRE, the database and software project he had built in 1980, with a more elaborate information management system based on links embedded as text: "Imagine, then, the references in this document all being associated with the network address of the thing to which they referred, so that while reading this document, you could skip to them with a click of the mouse." Such a system, he explained, could be referred to using one of the existing meanings of the word hypertext, a term that he says was coined in the 1950s. Berners-Lee notes the possibility of multimedia documents that include graphics, speech and video, which he terms hypermedia.[1][2]
Although the proposal attracted little interest, Berners-Lee was encouraged by his manager, Mike Sendall, to begin implementing his system on a newly acquired NeXT workstation. He considered several names, including Information Mesh, The Information Mine or Mine of Information, but settled on World Wide Web. Berners-Lee found an enthusiastic supporter in his colleague and fellow hypertext enthusiast Robert Cailliau who began to promote the proposed system throughout CERN. Berners-Lee and Cailliau pitched Berners-Lee's ideas to the European Conference on Hypertext Technology in September 1990, but found no vendors who could appreciate his vision.
Berners-Lee's breakthrough was to marry hypertext to the Internet. In his book Weaving The Web, he explains that he had repeatedly suggested to members of both technical communities that a marriage between the two technologies was possible. But, when no one took up his invitation, he finally assumed the project himself. In the process, he developed three essential technologies:
a system of globally unique identifiers for resources on the Web and elsewhere, the universal document identifier (UDI), later known as uniform resource locator (URL);
With help from Cailliau he published a more formal proposal on 12 November 1990 to build a "hypertext project" called WorldWideWeb (abbreviated "W3") as a "web" of "hypertext documents" to be viewed by "browsers" using a client–server architecture.[22][23] The proposal was modelled after the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) reader Dynatext by Electronic Book Technology, a spin-off from the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship at Brown University. The Dynatext system, licensed by CERN, was considered too expensive and had an inappropriate licensing policy for use in the general high energy physics community, namely a fee for each document and each document alteration.[citation needed]
At this point HTML and HTTP had already been in development for about two months and the first web server was about a month from completing its first successful test. Berners-Lee's proposal estimated that a read-only Web would be developed within three months and that it would take six months to achieve "the creation of new links and new material by readers, [so that] authorship becomes universal" as well as "the automatic notification of a reader when new material of interest to him/her has become available".
In January 1991, the first web servers outside CERN were switched on. On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee published a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the newsgroupalt.hypertext, inviting collaborators.[28]
Paul Kunz from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) visited CERN in September 1991, and was captivated by the Web. He brought the NeXT software back to SLAC, where librarian Louise Addis adapted it for the VM/CMS operating system on the IBM mainframe as a way to host the SPIRES-HEP database and display SLAC's catalog of online documents.[29][30][31][32] This was the first web server outside of Europe and the first in North America.[33]
The World Wide Web had several differences from other hypertext systems available at the time. The Web required only unidirectional links rather than bidirectional ones, making it possible for someone to link to another resource without action by the owner of that resource. It also significantly reduced the difficulty of implementing web servers and browsers (in comparison to earlier systems), but in turn, presented the chronic problem of link rot.
The WorldWideWeb browser only ran on NeXTSTEP operating system. This shortcoming was discussed in January 1992,[34] and alleviated in April 1992 by the release of Erwise, an application developed at the Helsinki University of Technology, and in May by ViolaWWW, created by Pei-Yuan Wei, which included advanced features such as embedded graphics, scripting, and animation. ViolaWWW was originally an application for HyperCard.[35] Both programs ran on the X Window System for Unix. In 1992, the first tests between browsers on different platforms were concluded successfully between buildings 513 and 31 in CERN, between browsers on the NexT station and the X11-ported Mosaic browser. ViolaWWW became the recommended browser at CERN. To encourage use within CERN, Bernd Pollermann put the CERN telephone directory on the web—previously users had to log onto the mainframe in order to look up phone numbers. The Web was successful at CERN and spread to other scientific and academic institutions.
Students at the University of Kansas adapted an existing text-only hypertext browser, Lynx, to access the web in 1992. Lynx was available on Unix and DOS, and some web designers, unimpressed with glossy graphical websites, held that a website not accessible through Lynx was not worth visiting.
In these earliest browsers, images opened in a separate "helper" application.
In the early 1990s, Internet-based projects such as Archie, Gopher, Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), and the FTP Archive list attempted to create ways to organize distributed data. Gopher was a document browsing system for the Internet, released in 1991 by the University of Minnesota. Invented by Mark P. McCahill, it became the first commonly used hypertext interface to the Internet. While Gopher menu items were examples of hypertext, they were not commonly perceived in that way[clarification needed]. In less than a year, there were hundreds of Gopher servers.[36] It offered a viable alternative to the World Wide Web in the early 1990s and the consensus was that Gopher would be the primary way that people would interact with the Internet.[37][38] However, in 1993, the University of Minnesota declared that Gopher was proprietary and would have to be licensed.[36]
In response, on 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone, with no fees due, and released their code into the public domain.[39] This made it possible to develop servers and clients independently and to add extensions without licensing restrictions.[citation needed] Coming two months after the announcement that the server implementation of the Gopher protocol was no longer free to use, this spurred the development of various browsers which precipitated a rapid shift away from Gopher.[40] By releasing Berners-Lee's invention for public use, CERN encouraged and enabled its widespread use.[41]
Early websites intermingled links for both the HTTP web protocol and the Gopher protocol, which provided access to content through hypertext menus presented as a file system rather than through HTML files. Early Web users would navigate either by bookmarking popular directory pages or by consulting updated lists such as the NCSA "What's New" page. Some sites were also indexed by WAIS, enabling users to submit full-text searches similar to the capability later provided by search engines.
After 1993 the World Wide Web saw many advances to indexing and ease of access through search engines, which often neglected Gopher and Gopherspace. As its popularity increased through ease of use, incentives for commercial investment in the Web also grew. By the middle of 1994, the Web was outcompeting Gopher and the other browsing systems for the Internet.[42]
Before the release of Mosaic in 1993, graphics were not commonly mixed with text in web pages, and the Web was less popular than older protocols such as Gopher and WAIS. Mosaic could display inline images[49] and submit forms[50][51] for Windows, Macintosh and X-Windows. NCSA also developed HTTPd, a Unix web server that used the Common Gateway Interface to process forms and Server Side Includes for dynamic content. Both the client and server were free to use with no restrictions.[52] Mosaic was an immediate hit;[53] its graphical user interface allowed the Web to become by far the most popular protocol on the Internet. Within a year, web traffic surpassed Gopher's.[36]Wired declared that Mosaic made non-Internet online services obsolete,[54] and the Web became the preferred interface for accessing the Internet.[citation needed]
The World Wide Web enabled the spread of information over the Internet through an easy-to-use and flexible format. It thus played an important role in popularising use of the Internet.[55] Although the two terms are sometimes conflated in popular use, World Wide Web is not synonymous with Internet.[56] The Web is an information space containing hyperlinked documents and other resources, identified by their URIs.[57] It is implemented as both client and server software using Internet protocols such as TCP/IP and HTTP.
In keeping with its origins at CERN, early adopters of the Web were primarily university-based scientific departments or physics laboratories such as SLAC and Fermilab. By January 1993 there were fifty web servers across the world.[58] By October 1993 there were over five hundred servers online, including some notable websites.[59]
Practical media distribution and streaming media over the Web was made possible by advances in data compression, due to the impractically high bandwidth requirements of uncompressed media. Following the introduction of the Web, several media formats based on discrete cosine transform (DCT) were introduced for practical media distribution and streaming over the Web, including the MPEGvideo format in 1991 and the JPEGimage format in 1992. The high level of image compression made JPEG a good format for compensating slow Internet access speeds, typical in the age of dial-up Internet access. JPEG became the most widely used image format for the World Wide Web. A DCT variation, the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) algorithm, led to the development of MP3, which was introduced in 1991 and became the first popular audio format on the Web.
In 1992 the Computing and Networking Department of CERN, headed by David Williams, withdrew support of Berners-Lee's work. A two-page email sent by Williams stated that the work of Berners-Lee, with the goal of creating a facility to exchange information such as results and comments from CERN experiments to the scientific community, was not the core activity of CERN and was a misallocation of CERN's IT resources. Following this decision, Tim Berners-Lee left CERN for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he continued to develop HTTP.[citation needed]
The first Microsoft Windows browser was Cello, written by Thomas R. Bruce for the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School to provide legal information, since access to Windows was more widespread amongst lawyers than access to Unix. Cello was released in June 1993.
The rate of web site deployment increased sharply around the world, and fostered development of international standards for protocols and content formatting.[60] Berners-Lee continued to stay involved in guiding web standards, such as the markup languages to compose web pages, and he advocated his vision of a Semantic Web (sometimes known as Web 3.0) based around machine-readability and interoperability standards.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee after he left the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in September/October 1994 in order to create open standards for the Web.[61] It was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS) with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which had pioneered the Internet. A year later, a second site was founded at INRIA (a French national computer research lab) with support from the European Commission; and in 1996, a third continental site was created in Japan at Keio University.
W3C comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made the Web available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The W3C decided that its standards must be based on royalty-free technology, so they can be easily adopted by anyone. Netscape and Microsoft, in the middle of a browser war, ignored the W3C and added elements to HTML ad hoc (e.g., blink and marquee). Finally, in 1995, Netscape and Microsoft came to their senses and agreed to abide by the W3C's standard.[62]
The W3C published the standard for HTML 4 in 1997, which included Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), giving designers more control over the appearance of web pages without the need for additional HTML tags. The W3C could not enforce compliance so none of the browsers were fully compliant. This frustrated web designers who formed the Web Standards Project (WaSP) in 1998 with the goal of cajoling compliance with standards.[63]A List Apart and CSS Zen Garden were influential websites that promoted good design and adherence to standards.[64] Nevertheless, AOL halted development of Netscape[65] and Microsoft was slow to update IE.[66]Mozilla and Apple both released browsers that aimed to be more standards compliant (Firefox and Safari), but were unable to dislodge IE as the dominant browser.
As the Web grew in the mid-1990s, web directories and primitive search engines were created to index pages and allow people to find things. Commercial use restrictions on the Internet were lifted in 1995 when NSFNET was shut down.
In the US, the online service America Online (AOL) offered their users a connection to the Internet via their own internal browser, using a dial-up Internet connection. In January 1994, Yahoo! was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo, then students at Stanford University. Yahoo! Directory became the first popular web directory. Yahoo! Search, launched the same year, was the first popular search engine on the World Wide Web. Yahoo! became the quintessential example of a first mover on the Web.
By 1994, Marc Andreessen's Netscape Navigator superseded Mosaic in popularity, holding the position for some time. Bill Gates outlined Microsoft's strategy to dominate the Internet in his Tidal Wave memo in 1995.[67] With the release of Windows 95 and the popular Internet Explorer browser, many public companies began to develop a Web presence. At first, people mainly anticipated the possibilities of free publishing and instant worldwide information. By the late 1990s, the directory model had given way to search engines, corresponding with the rise of Google Search, which developed new approaches to relevancy ranking. Directory features, while still commonly available, became after-thoughts to search engines.
Netscape had a very successful IPO valuing the company at $2.9 billion despite the lack of profits and triggering the dot-com bubble.[68] Increasing familiarity with the Web led to the growth of direct Web-based commerce (e-commerce) and instantaneous group communications worldwide. Many dot-com companies, displaying products on hypertext webpages, were added into the Web. Over the next 5 years, over a trillion dollars was raised to fund thousands of startups consisting of little more than a website.
During the dot-com boom, many companies vied to create a dominant web portal in the belief that such a website would best be able to attract a large audience that in turn would attract online advertising revenue. While most of these portals offered a search engine, they were not interested in encouraging users to find other websites and leave the portal and instead concentrated on "sticky" content.[69] In contrast, Google was a stripped-down search engine that delivered superior results.[70] It was a hit with users who switched from portals to Google. Furthermore, with AdWords, Google had an effective business model.[71][72]
AOL bought Netscape in 1998.[73] In spite of their early success, Netscape was unable to fend off Microsoft.[74]Internet Explorer and a variety of other browsers almost completely replaced it.
Faster broadband internet connections replaced many dial-up connections from the beginning of the 2000s.
With the bursting of the dot-com bubble, many web portals either scaled back operations, floundered,[75] or shut down entirely.[76][77][78] AOL disbanded Netscape in 2003.[79]
Web server software was developed to allow computers to act as web servers. The first web servers supported only static files, such as HTML (and images), but now they commonly allow embedding of server side applications. Web framework software enabled building and deploying web applications. Content management systems (CMS) were developed to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation. Many of them were built on top of separate content management frameworks.
After Robert McCool joined Netscape, development on the NCSA HTTPd server languished. In 1995, Brian Behlendorf and Cliff Skolnick created a mailing list to coordinate efforts to fix bugs and make improvements to HTTPd.[80] They called their version of HTTPd, Apache.[81] Apache quickly became the dominant server on the Web.[82] After adding support for modules, Apache was able to allow developers to handle web requests with a variety of languages including Perl, PHP and Python. Together with Linux and MySQL, it became known as the LAMP platform.
After graduating from UIUC, Andreessen and Jim Clark, former CEO of Silicon Graphics, met and formed Mosaic Communications Corporation in April 1994 to develop the Mosaic Netscape browser commercially. The company later changed its name to Netscape, and the browser was developed further as Netscape Navigator, which soon became the dominant web client. They also released the Netsite Commerce web server which could handle SSL requests, thus enabling e-commerce on the Web.[83] SSL became the standard method to encrypt web traffic. Navigator 1.0 also introduced cookies, but Netscape did not publicize this feature. Netscape followed up with Navigator 2 in 1995 introducing frames, Java applets and JavaScript. In 1998, Netscape made Navigator open source and launched Mozilla.[84]
Microsoft licensed Mosaic from Spyglass and released Internet Explorer 1.0 that year and IE2 later the same year. IE2 added features pioneered at Netscape such as cookies, SSL, and JavaScript. The browser wars became a competition for dominance when Explorer was bundled with Windows.[85][86] This led to the United States v. Microsoft Corporation antitrust lawsuit.
IE3, released in 1996, added support for Java applets, ActiveX, and CSS. At this point, Microsoft began bundling IE with Windows. IE3 managed to increase Microsoft's share of the browser market from under 10% to over 20%.[87]IE4, released the following year, introduced Dynamic HTML setting the stage for the Web 2.0 revolution. By 1998, IE was able to capture the majority of the desktop browser market.[74] It would be the dominant browser for the next fourteen years.
Google released their Chrome browser in 2008 with the first JITJavaScript engine, V8. Chrome overtook IE to become the dominant desktop browser in four years,[88] and overtook Safari to become the dominant mobile browser in two.[89] At the same time, Google open sourced Chrome's codebase as Chromium.[90]
Ryan Dahl used Chromium's V8 engine in 2009 to power an event drivenruntime system, Node.js, which allowed JavaScript code to be used on servers as well as browsers. This led to the development of new software stacks such as MEAN. Thanks to frameworks such as Electron, developers can bundle up node applications as standalone desktop applications such as Slack.
Acer and Samsung began selling Chromebooks, cheap laptops running ChromeOS capable of running web apps, in 2011. Over the next decade, more companies offered Chromebooks. Chromebooks outsold MacOS devices in 2020 to become the second most popular OS in the world.[91]
Web 1.0 is a retronym referring to the first stage of the World Wide Web's evolution, from roughly 1989 to 2004. According to Graham Cormode and Balachander Krishnamurthy, "content creators were few in Web 1.0 with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content".[92]Personal web pages were common, consisting mainly of static pages hosted on ISP-run web servers, or on free web hosting services such as Tripod and the now-defunct GeoCities.[93][94]
Some common design elements of a Web 1.0 site include:[95]
The use of HTML 3.2-era elements such as frames and tables to position and align elements on a page. These were often used in combination with spacer GIFs. Frames are web pages embedded into other web pages, and spacer GIFs were transparent images used to force the content in the page to be displayed a certain way.
HTML forms sent via email. Support for server side scripting was rare on shared servers during this period. To provide a feedback mechanism for web site visitors, mailto forms were used. A user would fill in a form, and upon clicking the form's submit button, their email client would launch and attempt to send an email containing the form's details. The popularity and complications of the mailto protocol led browser developers to incorporate email clients into their browsers.[97]
Terry Flew, in his third edition of New Media, described the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 as a
"move from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from publishing to participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content management systems to links based on "tagging" website content using keywords (folksonomy)."
Flew believed these factors formed the trends that resulted in the onset of the Web 2.0 "craze".[98]
Web pages were initially conceived as structured documents based upon HTML. They could include images, video, and other content, although the use of media was initially relatively limited and the content was mainly static. By the mid-2000s, new approaches to sharing and exchanging content, such as blogs and RSS, rapidly gained acceptance on the Web. The video-sharing website YouTube launched the concept of user-generated content.[99] As new technologies made it easier to create websites that behaved dynamically, the Web attained greater ease of use and gained a sense of interactivity which ushered in a period of rapid popularization. This new era also brought into existence social networking websites, such as Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, and photo- and video-sharing websites such as Flickr and, later, Instagram which gained users rapidly and became a central part of youth culture. Wikipedia's user-edited content quickly displaced the professionally-written Microsoft Encarta.[100] The popularity of these sites, combined with developments in the technology that enabled them, and the increasing availability and affordability of high-speed connections made video content far more common on all kinds of websites. This new media-rich model for information exchange, featuring user-generated and user-edited websites, was dubbed Web 2.0, a term coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci[101] and popularized in 2004 at the Web 2.0 Conference. The Web 2.0 boom drew investment from companies worldwide and saw many new service-oriented startups catering to a newly "democratized" Web.[102][103][104][105][106][107]
JavaScript made the development of interactive web applications possible. Web pages could run JavaScript and respond to user input, but they could not interact with the network. Browsers could submit data to servers via forms and receive new pages, but this was slow compared to traditional desktop applications. Developers that wanted to offer sophisticated applications over the Web used Java or nonstandard solutions such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft's ActiveX.
Microsoft added a little-noticed feature called XMLHttpRequest to Internet Explorer in 1999, which enabled a web page to communicate with the server while remaining visible. Developers at Oddpost used this feature in 2002 to create the first Ajax application, a webmail client that performed as well as a desktop application.[108] Ajax apps were revolutionary. Web pages evolved beyond static documents to full-blown applications. Websites began offering APIs in addition to webpages. Developers created a plethora of Ajax apps including widgets, mashups and new types of social apps. Analysts called it Web 2.0.[109]
The use of social media on the Web has become ubiquitous in everyday life.[113][114] The 2010s also saw the rise of streaming services, such as Netflix.
In spite of the success of Web 2.0 applications, the W3C forged ahead with their plan to replace HTML with XHTML and represent all data in XML. In 2004, representatives from Mozilla, Opera, and Apple formed an opposing group, the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), dedicated to improving HTML while maintaining backward compatibility.[115] For the next several years, websites did not transition their content to XHTML; browser vendors did not adopt XHTML2; and developers eschewed XML in favor of JSON.[116] By 2007, the W3C conceded and announced they were restarting work on HTML[117] and in 2009, they officially abandoned XHTML.[118] In 2019, the W3C ceded control of the HTML specification, now called the HTML Living Standard, to WHATWG.[119]
Microsoft rewrote their Edge browser in 2021 to use Chromium as its code base in order to be more compatible with Chrome.[120]
Early attempts to allow wireless devices to access the Web used simplified formats such as i-mode and WAP. Apple introduced the first smartphone in 2007 with a full-featured browser. Other companies followed suit and in 2011, smartphone sales overtook PCs.[123] Since 2016, most visitors access websites with mobile devices[124] which led to the adoption of responsive web design.
Apple, Mozilla, and Google have taken different approaches to integrating smartphones with modern web apps. Apple initially promoted web apps for the iPhone, but then encouraged developers to make native apps.[125] Mozilla announced Web APIs in 2011 to allow webapps to access hardware features such as audio, camera or GPS.[126] Frameworks such as Cordova and Ionic allow developers to build hybrid apps. Mozilla released a mobile OS designed to run web apps in 2012,[127] but discontinued it in 2015.[128]
The extension of the Web to facilitate data exchange was explored as an approach to create a Semantic Web (sometimes called Web 3.0). This involved using machine-readable information and interoperability standards to enable context-understanding programs to intelligently select information for users.[131] Continued extension of the Web has focused on connecting devices to the Internet, coined Intelligent Device Management. As Internet connectivity becomes ubiquitous, manufacturers have started to leverage the expanded computing power of their devices to enhance their usability and capability. Through Internet connectivity, manufacturers are now able to interact with the devices they have sold and shipped to their customers, and customers are able to interact with the manufacturer (and other providers) to access a lot of new content.[132]
This phenomenon has led to the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT),[133] where modern devices are connected through sensors, software, and other technologies that exchange information with other devices and systems on the Internet. This creates an environment where data can be collected and analyzed instantly, providing better insights and improving the decision-making process. Additionally, the integration of AI with IoT devices continues to improve their capabilities, allowing them to predict customer needs and perform tasks, increasing efficiency and user satisfaction.
The next generation of the Web is often termed Web 4.0, but its definition is not clear. According to some sources, it is a Web that involves artificial intelligence,[135] the internet of things, pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing and the Web of Things among other concepts.[136] According to the European Union, Web 4.0 is "the expected fourth generation of the World Wide Web. Using advanced artificial and ambient intelligence, the internet of things, trusted blockchain transactions, virtual worlds and XR capabilities, digital and real objects and environments are fully integrated and communicate with each other, enabling truly intuitive, immersive experiences, seamlessly blending the physical and digital worlds".[137]
Historiography of the Web poses specific challenges, including disposable data, missing links, lost content and archived websites, which have consequences for web historians. Sites such as the Internet Archive aim to preserve content.[138][139]
^Tim Berners-Lee (1999). Weaving the Web. Internet Archive. HarperSanFrancisco. pp. 5–6. ISBN978-0-06-251586-5. Unbeknownst to me at that early stage in my thinking, several people had hit upon similar concepts, which were never implemented.
^Rutter, Dorian (2005). From Diversity to Convergence: British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995(PDF) (Computer Science thesis). The University of Warwick. Archived(PDF) from the original on 10 October 2022. Retrieved 27 December 2022. When Berners-Lee developed his Enquire hypertext system during 1980, the ideas explored by Bush, Engelbart, and Nelson did not influence his work, as he was not aware of them. However, as Berners-Lee began to refine his ideas, the work of these predecessors would later confirm the legitimacy of his system.
^Raggett, Dave; Jenny Lam; Ian Alexander (April 1996). HTML 3: Electronic Publishing on the World Wide Web. Harlow, England; Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley. p. 21. ISBN9780201876932.
^Hoffman, Jay (April 1991). "What the Web Could Have Been". The History of the Web. Jay Hoffman. Archived from the original on 22 February 2022. Retrieved 22 February 2022.
^"The Early World Wide Web at SLAC". The Early World Wide Web at SLAC: Documentation of the Early Web at SLAC. Archived from the original on 24 November 2005. Retrieved 25 November 2005.
^Hoffman, Jay (21 April 1993). "The Origin of the IMG Tag". The History of the Web. Archived from the original on 13 February 2022. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
^Wilson, Brian. "Mosaic". Index D O T Html. Brian Wilson. Archived from the original on 1 February 2022. Retrieved 15 February 2022.
^Clarke, Roger. "The Birth of Web Commerce". Roger Clarke's Web-Site. XAMAX. Archived from the original on 15 February 2022. Retrieved 15 February 2022.
^Catalano, Charles S. (15 October 2007). "Megaphones to the Internet and the World: The Role of Blogs in Corporate Communications". International Journal of Strategic Communication. 1 (4): 247–262. doi:10.1080/15531180701623627. S2CID143156963.
^Hoffman, Jay (10 January 1997). "The HTML Tags Everybody Hated". The History of the Web. Jay Hoffman. Archived from the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 15 February 2022.
^Hoffman, Jay (23 May 2003). "Year of A List Apart". The History of the Web. Jay Hoffman. Archived from the original on 19 February 2022. Retrieved 19 February 2022.
^"Tim Berners-Lee's original World Wide Web browser". Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. With recent phenomena like blogs and wikis, the Web is beginning to develop the kind of collaborative nature that its inventor envisaged from the start.
^Target, Sinclair. "The Rise and Rise of JSON". twobithistory.org. Sinclair Target. Archived from the original on 19 January 2022. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
Berners-Lee, Tim; Fischetti, Mark (1999). Weaving the Web : the original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN0-06-251586-1. OCLC41238513.
Brügger, Niels (2017). Web 25 : histories from the first 25 years of the World Wide Web. New York, NY. ISBN978-1-4331-3269-8. OCLC976036138.cite book: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Gillies, James; Cailliau, Robert (2000). How the Web was born : the story of the World Wide Web. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-286207-3. OCLC43377073.
Herman, Andrew; Swiss, Thomas (2000). The World Wide Web and contemporary cultural theory. New York: Routledge. ISBN0-415-92501-0. OCLC44446371.
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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. As of May 2025,[update] W3C has 350 members.[4] The organization has been led by CEO Seth Dobbs since October 2023.[5] W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.
The organization tries to foster compatibility and agreement among industry members in the adoption of new standards defined by the W3C. Incompatible versions of HTML are offered by different vendors, causing inconsistency in how web pages are displayed. The consortium tries to get all those vendors to implement a set of core principles and components that are chosen by the consortium.
It was originally intended that CERN host the European branch of W3C; however, CERN wished to focus on particle physics, not information technology. In April 1995, the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation became the European host of W3C, with Keio University Research Institute at SFC becoming the Asian host in September 1996.[9] Starting in 1997, W3C created regional offices around the world. As of September 2009, it had eighteen World Offices covering Australia, the Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg), Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and, as of 2016, the United Kingdom and Ireland.[10]
In October 2012, W3C convened a community of major web players and publishers to establish a MediaWiki wiki that seeks to document open web standards called the WebPlatform and WebPlatform Docs.
In 2022 the W3C WebFonts Working Group won an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for standardizing font technology for custom downloadable fonts and typography for web and TV devices.[12]
On 1 January 2023, it reformed as a public-interest 501(c)(3)non-profit organization.[13][14] In October 2023, Seth Dobbs was named as the organization's chief executive officer.[5]
W3C develops technical specifications for HTML5, CSS, SVG, WOFF, the Semantic Web stack, XML, and other technologies.[15] Sometimes, when a specification becomes too large, it is split into independent modules that can mature at their own pace. Subsequent editions of a module or specification are known as levels and are denoted by the first integer in the title (e.g. CSS3 = Level 3). Subsequent revisions on each level are denoted by an integer following a decimal point (for example, CSS2.1 = Revision 1).
The W3C standard formation process is defined within the W3C process document, outlining four maturity levels through which each new standard or recommendation must progress.[16]
After enough content has been gathered from 'editor drafts' and discussion, it may be published as a working draft (WD) for review by the community. A WD document is the first form of a standard that is publicly available. Commentary by virtually anyone is accepted, though no promises are made with regard to action on any particular element commented upon.[16]
At this stage, the standard document may have significant differences from its final form. As such, anyone who implements WD standards should be ready to significantly modify their implementations as the standard matures.[16]
A candidate recommendation is a version of a more mature standard than the WD. At this point, the group responsible for the standard is satisfied that the standard meets its goal. The purpose of the CR is to elicit aid from the development community on how implementable the standard is.[16]
The standard document may change further, but significant features are mostly decided at this point. The design of those features can still change due to feedback from implementors.[16]
A proposed recommendation is the version of a standard that has passed the prior two levels. The users of the standard provide input. At this stage, the document is submitted to the W3C Advisory Council for final approval.[16]
While this step is important, it rarely causes any significant changes to a standard as it passes to the next phase.[16]
This is the most mature stage of development. At this point, the standard has undergone extensive review and testing, under both theoretical and practical conditions. The standard is now endorsed by the W3C, indicating its readiness for deployment to the public, and encouraging more widespread support among implementors and authors.[16]
Recommendations can sometimes be implemented incorrectly, partially, or not at all, but many standards define two or more levels of conformance that developers must follow if they wish to label their product as W3C-compliant.[16]
A recommendation may be updated or extended by separately-published, non-technical errata or editor drafts until sufficient substantial edits accumulate for producing a new edition or level of the recommendation. Additionally, the W3C publishes various kinds of informative notes which are to be used as references.[16]
Unlike the Internet Society and other international standards bodies, the W3C does not have a certification program. The W3C has decided, for now, that it is not suitable to start such a program, owing to the risk of creating more drawbacks for the community than benefits.[16]
The W3C has a staff team of 70–80 worldwide as of 2015[update].[19] W3C is run by a management team which allocates resources and designs strategy, led by CEO Jeffrey Jaffe[20] (as of March 2010), former CTO of Novell. It also includes an advisory board that supports strategy and legal matters and helps resolve conflicts.[21][22] The majority of standardization work is done by external experts in the W3C's various working groups.[23]
The Consortium is governed by its membership. The list of members is available to the public.[2] Members include businesses, nonprofit organizations, universities, governmental entities, and individuals.[24]
Membership requirements are transparent except for one requirement: An application for membership must be reviewed and approved by the W3C. Many guidelines and requirements are stated in detail, but there is no final guideline about the process or standards by which membership might be finally approved or denied.[25]
The cost of membership is given on a sliding scale, depending on the character of the organization applying and the country in which it is located.[26] Countries are categorized by the World Bank's most recent grouping by gross national income per capita.[27]
In 2012 and 2013, the W3C started considering adding DRM-specific Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) to HTML5, which was criticised as being against the openness, interoperability, and vendor neutrality that distinguished websites built using only W3C standards from those requiring proprietary plug-ins like Flash.[28][29][30][31][32] On 18 September 2017, the W3C published the EME specification as a recommendation, leading to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's resignation from W3C.[33][34] As feared by the opponents of EME, as of 2020[update], none of the widely used Content Decryption Modules used with EME are available for licensing without a per-browser licensing fee.[35][36]
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