What is the internet? Perhaps a perplexing question that is asked by many. In the year 1983, ARPANET – which was the network that became the basis for the Internet and first conceptualized in 1969 by the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency, adopted the TCP/IP protocol and that is how the internet was born.
But it was not until 1991, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, did we get to see websites.
So to define the internet;
a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols.
– that is what the official definition says.
So, what was the first website – ever?
In the year 1991, when Tim Berners-Lee created the HTTP protocol, the first web page he published was a series of documents in folders that explained the concept of the World Wide Web. This can be seen on this link – http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
Browsers were simple back then, computers had smaller screens and few colors were supported. This website was built with only 18 HTML tags! Things started to change from then onwards and as the world wide web evolved, so did browsers and hardware.
The turn towards CSS
December 17, 1996 saw the initial release of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and with this came the ability to visually style the look and feel of website’s. In 1997, the CSS document was greatly improved and that lead to the showcase of more creative talent.
The evolution of web design
We got our hand on a great little infographic designed by KissMetrics that shows the evolution of web design in the past 2 decades. It’s a long way since 1991 and this extensively researched material will showcase the history of web design – its like being in a time machine.
Graphic courtesy KISSmetrics
