Welcome to the Internet!

Web 1.0

to begin with our journey back to the older internet:

browsers

the world wide web was invented a long time ago, as in 36 years ago, and needed a way to be interpreted on a screen. this interpreter came in 1990, being named the WorldWideWeb, and later Nexus to avoid confusion between the world-wide network and the browser. this browser was very basic, as by that time, there was no advanced html, css, or even javascript. it was just HTML 1.0. things didn't really start picking up however until the introduction of NCSA Mosaic in 1993. this browser is what created the ticket to infinity; the infinity of what we know as the internet today. Mosaic was widely accessible to computers at the time (that had access to internet), also meaning that the newly-birthed internet was available to the eyes of the public, which fittingly led to the internet boom of the 1990s. Mosaic drove the website number from 26 in 1992 to over 10,000 by 1995, paving the way for future development of the world-wide network. additionally, this kickstarted the competition between browsers. alternative text-based browsers like Lynx were developed, but weren't that popular: only more tech-savvy people really used them. the first competitor to Mosaic that made a dent in the '90s browser market was Netscape Navigator, which further rocketed the boom of the internet to greater heights. Netscape's popularity was secured primarily by its advertisement; modem providers, magazine publishers, and a lot of other things made Netscape known in the guise of the masses. what especially helped consolidate the accretion of Netscape was its inclusion of css, and later on, javascript, along with the links to personal websites. a key feature of Netscape was its 'on-the-fly' loading, which showed elements on screen as the webpage downloaded. this concept has been rooted through time; it can be seen practically everywhere today. however, as opposed to fairly protecting its popularity, Netscape focused on bending the web to its will, and invading the privacy of its users. as Netscape grew larger, other companies began to peer towards its incessant growth: Microsoft wanted a piece of the browser market share pie. just like Netscape, Microsoft's Internet Explorer licensced Mosaic's source code, although was started later in 1994, as IE 1.0. this was bundled with one of Microsoft's add-on packs for Windows 95; in the Internet Jumpstart Kit. later on, most notably with IE versions 2 and 3, IE was pre-installed with Windows, which bolstered its market share, along with making a name for itself in what we know today as the Browser Wars. this got Microsoft in trouble, though: by bundling it in with Windows, royalties for the licensing of Mosaic's source code didn't have to be paid, leading to the IE antitrust lawsuit, which resulted in a $8 million settlement. competition between the two titans also brought vanities for the content of the intersticed web: examples such as the 'best viewed with' 88x31 buttons satisfy this statement. when IE claimed the majority of the market share at the time, it had practically matched Netscape in feature availability. as a consequence, Netscape began to be used exponentially less - leaving most of the glutton and space to Microsoft and IE. this loss was also the birth of a new competitor, a challenger whose name was Mozilla: changed to Pheonix, then again changed to Mozilla Firefox, which is its steadfast name to this day. shifting back to IE, it could be argued that its popularity was credited its friendliness to new users of the world-wide-interwebs. it could also be attributed to the grandeur of its reach out towards other companies: a popular instance of this may be with Apple and Microsoft, where both parties signed a deal where Apple would have money, but agreed to make IE its default browser (which also added to Netscape's downfall). throughout the following years, IE kept a foothold over pretty much every other competitor of the age, even with Firefox beginning to make a name for itself. at the dusk of the 90s, it was clear that IE still dominated the market, more so with all of its features that were introduced, in Internet Explorer 5, and were useful to establishments like large companies. overall, some of the inclusions in these old browsers are still present today, like JScript, which was Microsoft's competitor to Netscape's (old) JavaScript: JScript was renamed JavaScript and has stayed rooted in the world wide internet, being used pretty much in every website today, where special interaction is required.

personal websites/web culture

back in the era of the old web, web culture was vastly different than it is now. there was no extensive HTML or CSS, it was very basic. such limitations however brought life to a cornerstone in the history of the wide-webbed internet: in the form of personal websites. these websites were hosted on web hosts like Geocities and Angelfire: altogether compiling an effectively endless site of exploration to the visage of visitors. in the case of Geocities, people's websites were organised into vast areas, named after the many attractions in America, like Silicon Valley and Area 51. this was the breeding ground for many faction-like websites, proudly disseminating their popularity into the depths of geocities, but also with websites which were made with the purpose of just having your own little place on the internet. due to the hardware and software limitations around this time, deep content was not entirely possible to create: atleast not to the degree like it is today, with sites like Neocities (and my own! :D). very simple and endearing webpages were developed with geocities, all with several and possibly differing reasons in mind. additionally, websites needed to be small; the fastest modems at the time were only 56k(bps), and elements needed to be loaded quickly - each website owner got 2 megabytes to work with. JPEGs and GIFs were smattered amidst sites, timeless engravings were enamelled into the soul of every page, all compounding to a perfect, light florid aroma which encompassed the netscape of geocities. some artifacts are still present in the interludes of the present internet, antiquated but preserved from an older age.