CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Dynamic Web Content The World Wide Web is a constantly evolving network that has already traveled far beyond its conception in the early 1990s, when it was created to solve a specific problem. State-of-the-art experiments at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics—now best known as the operator of the Large Hadron Collider) were producing incredible amounts of data—so much that the data was proving unwieldy to distribute to the participating scientists who were spread out across the world. At this time, the Internet was already in place, with several hundred thousand computers connected to it, so Tim. | CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Dynamic Web Content The World Wide Web is a constantly evolving network that has already traveled far beyond its conception in the early 1990s when it was created to solve a specific problem. State-of-the-art experiments at CERN the European Laboratory for Particle Physics now best known as the operator of the Large Hadron Collider were producing incredible amounts of data so much that the data was proving unwieldy to distribute to the participating scientists who were spread out across the world. At this time the Internet was already in place with several hundred thousand computers connected to it so Tim Berners-Lee a CERN fellow devised a method of navigating between them using a hyperlinking framework which came to be known as Hyper Text Transfer Protocol or HTTP. He also created a markup language called HTML or Hyper Text Markup Language. To bring these together he wrote the first web browser and web server tools that we now take for granted. But back then the concept was revolutionary. The most connectivity so far experienced by at-home modem users was dialing up and connecting to a bulletin board that was hosted by a single computer where you could communicate and swap data only with other users of that service. Consequently you needed to be a member of many bulletin board systems in order to effectively communicate electronically with your colleagues and friends. But Berners-Lee changed all that with one fell swoop and by the mid 1990s there were three major graphical web browsers competing for the attention of five million users. It soon became obvious though that something was missing. Yes pages of text and graphics with hyperlinks to take you to other pages was a brilliant concept but the results didn t reflect the instantaneous potential of computers and the Internet to meet the particular needs of each user with dynamically changing content. Using the Web was a very dry and plain experience even if we did now have scrolling .
