10 Biggest Milestones in Web Development
Here’s a chronological list of the 10 most notable and groundbreaking web development milestones in the Internet’s history.
The web has moved from a simple protocol to transfer information and ideas to a highly-commercial and robust platform to spread and share those same ideas. Some believe the progression of the great World Wide Web to be a travesty, others a godsend. Regardless, the Internet has evolved over the past few decades, and is in many ways better for the web developer. New technologies have come about that have made web development much easier to get started in, and ultimately more fun.
1. Linus Torvalds Creates the Linux Kernel
When Linux Torvalds released Linux in 1991, it met with some harsh criticism from other UNIX systems developers. Some believed that it used the wrong computer architecture (32-bit), and was fundamentally flawed. Nevertheless, Torvalds developed his own kernel for UNIX, which eventually became the de facto web server software (not to mention a popular operating system for personal computers). Because Torvalds released the software under the GNU license, it was able to spread much quicker than under a closed proprietary license.
Linux is at the core of the Internet: It is the software that virtually every web host uses and supports, and it has a large, loyal and rabid following. It is the most popular example of open source software, and it makes web development possible for many.
2. The Mosaic Browser Launches
The Internet would be a much blander place without Mosaic, the first browser to really popularize the Internet. Upon its release in 1993, Mosaic was the first browser to support bookmarking, icons, a slick user interface (by 1993′s standards), and the biggest innovation yet: picture support. Up until that point in the Web’s history, images had to be downloaded. With the images being displayed inline, it completely changed Internet browsing, and greatly helped the Internet become more mainstream.
Mosaic completely changed how we transfer data on the Internet. Without it, web development as a whole would be a much, much different undertaking.
3. The W3C Released the CSS level 1 Recommendation
CSS has been around in computing since the 1970′s, through various different forms. It wasn’t until December of 1996 that a working group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the CSS level 1 Recommendation. Microsoft soon after launched Internet Explorer 3, which offered limited CSS support. The rest, as they say, is history.
I don’t need to go too deeply into the reasons why CSS has changed how the web has been developed. Instead of making hard-to-maintain inline style changes, CSS allows the web developer to simply call an external style sheet, and make a site-wide design change, in a matter of seconds. There’s no need to go back into each HTML page and look for stylistic elements that needs to be individually altered.
Thanks to CSS, website designs are now much easier to maintain and create (even with subtle changes in browser renderings).
4. The Open Source Movement Officially Starts
The Open Source Movement has been around, in one form or another, for a very, very long time. Believe it or not, the Web wasn’t created for commercial reasons. It was simply a way to exchange information. Once websites became avenues for profit, the free exchange that was once the WWW became more of a closed, commercial space. Many saw this as a negative, and still do today.
Thank goodness for the Open Source movement. The Internet itself was created with help from open source, and has roots dating back into the 1960′s. In 1998, major players met at Tim O’Reilly’s “Freeware Summit”, decided on the term “open source” and started the Open Source Initiative. Licensing was made to protect the developers and software, and at the same time allow other developers to freely distribute and modify the source code.
Open source now powers much of the “modern” web, in the form of software. WordPress, Firefox, PHP and Linux are just a few of the major players on the web that influence web development and browsing. Without the Open Source Initiative, software would be much more closed and we’d see less innovative solutions.
5. PHP is Released by Rasmus Lerdorf
Thanks to Open Source, dynamic languages like PHP are freely distributed amongst web developers. You’d be hard pressed to find a web host who didn’t have PHP installed. It’s the de facto language for programming on the web, and by far the most popular. The language is installed on more than 20 million websites and 1 million web servers.
When PHP was introduced in 1995 by Rasmus Lerdorf, it was quickly adopted by many as an excellent language for web programming. It runs on a web server, can be embedded in HTML, and works nicely with SQL databases. PHP quickly allowed developers to create and maintain complex, database-driven websites.
Many of the most popular sites on the Internet, (past and present), run on PHP. Facebook, Yahoo! and Wikipedia all run on PHP. Also, dozens of popular web software applications are built with PHP: WordPress, Drupal, phpBB and many, many other projects are powered by the handy language.
6. PayPal is Founded
Though often controversial, PayPal undoubtedly pioneered the process of transferring money online. Founded in 1998, PayPal was originally developed as a way to safely send money between the bidder and the seller on auction sites like eBay. PayPal became more and more popular with eBay users, and by February of 2000 PayPal had over 200,000 daily auctions on eBay. After eBay’s acquisition of PayPal, the the payment processing system started to allow for merchant accounts and usage of their API. This API allowed developers to easily process money transactions, and gave a fast and safe way for site visitors to pay for services and subscriptions.
PayPal has enabled developers a quick way to accept money for services they provide. Whether it’s a subscription service or a one-time fee, PayPal is generally what is used to process payments, due to their widespread popularity.
7. Firefox is Released
In 2003, Internet Explorer had a stranglehold on the web browser space. There was virtually no competition, as IE’s biggest competitor Netscape had fallen by the wayside. Microsoft’s web browser was enjoying a fat 94% share of the total web browser market. Consequently, the lack of competition left the IE project stagnant, and what used to be yearly updates on IE between versions 1-6, became a sleepy 5 year gap between IE 6 and IE 7′s release in 2006. What fueled a major spark in IE development in those later years was the creation of Mozilla’s open source web browser Firefox.
Firefox burst onto the scene with its initial release in 2003. The Firefox browser was addressing many of IE’s stale shortcomings. Tabbed browsing, spell-checking, live bookmarking, and many more features were included in the initial release, and early adopters loved the software. But even more importantly for web developers, Firefox was based on the Gecko rendering engine, which conformed to web standards.
Web standards help reduce the cost and complexity of web development. Consistent design currently means supporting a myriad of different browsers and their rendering “quirks”. Internet Explorer is notorious for not complying with web standards, making life much more difficult for designers and developers (as they still own a major share of the browser market). With Firefox becoming more popular and pushing new initiatives towards standards and compliance, the web will become a much better place to develop in.
8. Ruby on Rails Goes Mainstream
While some may not see this specific event as a major milestone in web development history, the rise of Ruby on Rails is extremely important because it symbolizes a broader shift in development that uses frameworks and the concept of agile software development to efficiently develop web sites.
David Heinemeier Hansson released Ruby on Rails (RoR) in 2004, and since then many web development frameworks centered around other languages like PHP and Python have been released. RoR is a model-view-controller framework, meaning that it uses scaffolding and other helpers to eliminate repetitive tasks in programming. By eliminating these monotonous coding tasks, the developer can have quicker turnaround times with projects.
Frameworks have sped up development times and shifted the way the web development is done. Since then major websites like Twitter have built complete web services using web frameworks. Ruby on Rails hit a major milestone when Apple’s operating system Leopard was shipped with RoR.
9. 37 Signals Release the Getting Real Ebook
37 Signals has been one of the most popular web development companies for the past five years. Not only do they build excellent products, they’re very outspoken thought-leaders on modern web development, specifically championing agile web development. Their flagship product Basecamp was built using the very first version of Ruby on Rails, and ultimately led to the framework’s conception in 2004. Their philosophies on web development have been a major component to their popularity among web developers, and their release of the Getting Real ebook in 2006 also popularized small, agile web development practices.
Web developers have since embraced agile web development practices, and the philosophies in the Getting Real ebook. Even large companies like Google and Microsoft have embraced the concepts of using smaller teams with quicker release cycles and less red tape to develop better web products.
10. Amazon Launches Cloud Storage and Serving
With Amazon’s launch of S3 and EC2 in 2006, the cloud storage and web services officially hit mainstream. Instead of adding costly instances of servers as websites grow, with Amazon startups only ever need to pay for the bandwidth they actually use. In theory, the service could scale infinitely in a matter of minutes, only paying “as you go”. Cloud web services created a much faster and cheaper alternative to traditional web servers.
Cloud services have since lowered the barrier of entry for web startups, in terms of both cost and speed. Unexpected bursts of traffic are no longer an issue with cloud computing, and downtime is all but eliminated. Cloud services have ensured that nearly any web developer can develop their idea without having to take funding or pay for expensive servers, allowing better web ideas to come into fruition.
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Glen Stansberry is a web developer and blogger who’s struggled more times than he’d wish to admit with CSS. You can read more tips on web development at his blog Web Jackalope.
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@Bill Doe ^^
I know what you mean, but i still feel Linux deserve’s its place on the list. The so called LAMP Environment has become the basis of most servers, and for that reason i will let it slide :] Agree with the SQL/Google/AJax parts
@javiercenteno – i agree.
Totally disagree with the last three…I understand your point on Rails, but I would say JavaScript frameworks are more important than Rails in that respect…however I do think this article will look great with your resume to 37S.
I must admit, the Ebook through me for a loop as well. Without doubt, AJAX development should be on that list.
Where’s the tut?
come on people, that’s just a list! just relax, it’s not the end of the world.
i read the 37 signals ebook. while it is a good read it shouldnt make this list at all. there are just way to many other major developments that deserve to be up there ahead of it.
Hey Guys,
Thanks for all the discussion! I agree, the list might seem a tad off for some (ie. Where’s Google?!) but I wanted to highlight more of the events that changed the web, not services.
For example, I’m seeing lots of disagreement with the 37 Signals ebook. While on the surface it may not have been that significant of an event, the ebook pushed agile web development into the forefront of the general web development public, and has since changed the way teams work on projects. Many of the major players have all started using this approach. Many of Google’s recent products are done by small teams, not large ones.
So, that’s the reasoning behind my choices. Granted, there could be many many other points on this list, but I had to pick 10 :)
Great discussion all! Keep it up.
Interesting article although some of your picks are a little suspect.
Surely the biggest omission is “Tim Berners-Lee develops the first web browser and HTTP server on NextStep.”
Without that there would be no web.
[)amien
@8. Ruby on Rails Goes Mainstream
I’m using rails always, from 2006 to now,, its a great revolution in web development!!!
@9. 37 Signals Release the Getting Real Ebook
OOOH, that book, i love it!!
it’s a great book gives you a great ideas and ways to build your own web application!!
I agree with a lot of these comments. I don’t think you can really narrow it down to only 10 milestones. And yeah, the last 3 really are debatable.
Seriously-
What the list should have been:
TCP/IP
Apache
Javascript
Google
Firefox
CSS
PHP
SQL
Macromedia (Adobe)
AJAX
Other things it could have included: Web Standards, W3C, Web Services, XML, Flash, and many other things more important than Ruby.
Dude, how in the hell did you miss Apache? Seriously…Apache is arguably #1 (Linux kernel my ass — BSD built the net…).
No offense man, but missing such a huge milestone in favor of saying Open Source three or four times is just wrong.
Adobe Flash Player & AIR, That changed the web!!!
This was a really good article, although, I feel that it missed a really major milestone…
XML!
Without XML we wouldn’t even have RSS. Almost every single website has it’s own RSS feed! It even gives AJAX it’s X. I don’t think XML is something that should just be looked over.
I love LINUX!!!!!!!
I fail to see how linux relates to web development.
Hey, what about Geocities?! Some of us “designed” our first site there; not to mention wrote our first JS “Welcome to my home page” pop-up script!
(Kidding!)
NETTUTS, how can you post such stupid articles full of advertisment? №9 is a bad joke.
You’re been voted!
Track back from http://webdevvote.com
I think the last 3 points of the article really missed the direction of the title. But anyway why don’t we write our own list or start a survey and summarizing this would be the most recent opinion of the web developers :)
r. Sandor
I don’t know why entire net has become a fanboy for 37S. I mean how the hell can No. 9 even be there in this list. So many places, 37S is mentioned unappropriately. Duno..if they pay up or something. But anyways, Apache should be there. No.9 killed my day off :(
9 and 10 don’t belong at all. I agree with john you shouldhave put apache in there, it’s the king of web servers!
Dude sure some of those are great achievements but there are much greater things.
Like IE for instance it is the one that really launched the web without it the web would have been for those few nerds.
The apache webserver should have been mentioned along with linux.
AJAX!!!! That is probably probably the biggest revolution as of late.
Cloud computing, not fully developed yet, but some companies implement it such as media temple and a few others that escape my mind at the moment.
And other milestones that I just can’t remember.
An ebook, ROR, and amazon s3 don’t belong.
Nice try!
Yeah, I think jQuery has as much right to be up there as ROR. But I do understand why ROR was chosen, but not sure if it is in the top 10 milestones in web history. Apache or even for us designers and developers to work locally XAMP or MAMP would have definitely been a better choice.
I agree that 9 should have been left out. That’s like saying MySpace was a major achievement. Writing a e-book is just an e-book. The World as a whole gained nothing from that achievement.
What about cable internet fiber optics and wifi leading to the death of 56k modems. That’s pretty huge and much more beneficial than an e-book!
I think the first 7 are great but the last three definitely need to be excluded and replaced with ones that actually made the WWW better for everyone.
lol. someone wrote a similiar post & got digged.
http://webjackalope.com/15-things-every-web-developers-should-be-thankful-for/ via
http://digg.com/programming/15_Things_Every_Web_Developer_Should_Be_Thankful_For
ops. my bad. it’s the same author XD
Huh last three arent… Well. As good as the first few.
Great article but some major milestone are missing. :(
Yes, what about Ajax! You should include the release of gmail cause, as most ajax books would agree, it officially sparked the move towards ajax and highly interactive web application.
this is wonderful topic …. i will put acopy of this topic on
my site here
http://www.as7ap4you.com
WordPress has GOT to get a mention in this list?!?!
Well compiled none-the-less!
Good job, you are collecting those milestones from time to time, i think its about time to showing them all here since its near end of the year
It’s a shame that Microsoft is rarely mentioned, as they’ve contributed greatly to modern day Web development.
As far as browser milestones are concerned, IE4′s release was far greater in importance than Firefox’s release. IE4 blew the doors wide open for DHTML development, and it sparked the realization that rich user experiences can be achieved on the Web.
Client/server communication (Ajax) wasn’t anything really new. Developers were doing it with hidden frames. But it was Microsoft’s creation of XMLHttpRequest that really opened the doors to modern, “Web 2.0″ Web development. Today, every browser vendor has an XMLHttpRequest object. It’s prevalent in most major Web sites and apps.
This article is strongly biased and even point #1 is debatable:
“Linux is at the core of the Internet: It is the software that virtually every web host uses and supports.”
Yeah right, ever heard of IIS?
You should be more open-minded, because linux is the most widely used doesn’t make it the core of the internets (the what?), and I won’t mention the other points other readers have already pinned (Rails, Ajax, IE, …)
There are many to the list
Can I put
Mashups
Google APIs
Wikipedia APis
Youtube
RSS/Atom
Pdf and Flash
………..
woow..learned a lot today.thnx
useful article.
where is C++?
Nice review of the history !
Hi,
Nice Post…
But you have missed Ajex…
It is also important part of this…
Good Post
http://www.plaveb.com/
Pretty much agree with everyone above, Linux and the last 3 shouldn’t be in there when Google/IE/Apache/Flash don’t get a mention.
The one on 37 Signals would struggle to be in a top 25 of my own.
Good article though, has sparked some nice debate :)
Hi,
this is a nice post.Good information for developer.
Most important thing is web accessibility. Fuck all that scripted bullshit, fancy effects are worth nothing compared to plattform independant, user friendly, handicapped-accessible websites.
Give Tim Berners Lee the credit he deserves!
i would give more credit to the poor IE than firefox,
even though firefox is more appealing to us developers!
the world still uses IE (statisticaly speaking)!!!
M.
i just had to say that i hate IE. Firefox rocks (and any other browser that follow web standars) ;P
The 37 Signals Ebook is awesome but really just a lot of common sense presented in a slick style.
Also question the Amazon inclusion just because they are “mainstream” (with freelance web designers?) there are plenty of players in that field.
The first seven were great though its always interesting to read a bit of history about the things we use every day.
Wow!! its such a great post i found. I feel that i lose many milestones. This is very useful article.
Great Post! Ajax development and Adobe Flash Player should be there in list.
Thanks for your information for Developers.