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The Internet is defined as a network of networks which data trafficking accordingly to the TCP/IP stack of protocols. Inside it the most-known resource certainly is the World Wide Web. As defined in W3C's website,
The World Wide Web ( WWW, or simply Web) is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI).
In other words, it is a virtual space that provides a number of resources accessed by identifiers. These resources are instances of hypermedia - as said Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.
However, the story begun at a little bit earlier. In 1945, Vannevar Bush authored the article "As We May Think" in which he first proposed his idea of the Memex machine. This machine was designed to help people sort through the enormous amount of published information. His article described a Memex as a "device in which an individual stores his books, records and communications and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory."
As we may see, this is about 30 years before the invention of the personal computer and about 50 years before the appearance of the World Wide Web. Bush's idea was originally a storage and retrieval device using microfilm and users are allowed to make links, or "associative trails," between documents. The machine was to extend the powers of human memory and association. Bush's article greatly influenced the creators of what we know as "hypertext" and how we use the Internet today. Ted Nelson created the term "hypertext" in 1967.
After 22 years later, a proposal for information management was appeared and referenced Nelson's "Getting it out of our system" work and established the basic concept of a system which is currently known as the World Wide Web. The proposal estimated 6 to 12 month to realize the first phase of the project with only two people. The work was started in October 1990, and the program "WorldWideWeb" first made available within CERN in December, and on the Internet at large in the summer of 1991. Tim Berners-Lee introduced this project to the world on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. In the post he said the project "aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere".
He originated the idea of sharing and organizing information from any computer system in any geographical location by using a system of hyperlinks (simple textual connections that "linked" one piece of content to the next) and established three key technology to manifest it:
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a way that computers could receive and retrieve Web pages,
HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the markup language behind every Web page,
URL (Uniform Resource Locator) system that gave every Web page its unique designation.
Web 1.0 was an early stage of the conceptual evolution of the World Wide Web. Its like external editing, where the content is prepared by the webmaster and users are simply acting as consumers of content. Thus, information is not dynamic, technically, Web 1.0 concentrated on presenting, not creating so that user-generated content was not available.
Web 1.0 pages are characterized by the following:
Static pages instead of dynamic HTML.
The use of framesets.
The use of tables to position and align elements on a page. These were often used in combination with "spacer" GIFs (1x1 pixel transparent images in the GIF format).
Proprietary HTML extensions, such as the <blink> and <marquee> tags (introduced during the first browser war).
Online guestbooks.
HTML forms sent via email.
The first webpage could be found in the following location: http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
While the first phase of Web 1.0 could be summarized by the following figure:
This results the birth of the first websites. A website is a collection of pages which contains images, videos and other asset that are hosted on the web server. The web servers consist of asset that are accessible via the Internet, cell phones or LAN. However, at this time websites are also referred to pages, because it may comprises different pages with different view and information. A webpage contains a written document in HTML, which is accessible and transported via Hypertext Transfer protocol (HTTP). The web page that is delivered to the user exactly as stored. The protocol transfers information from the web server to display it to the web browser. The webpage can be accessed through the uniform Resource Locator (URL), which is called the address. The URLs of webpages is usually organize in a hierarchy order, although the hyper link between them is a channel that helps the reader in the site structure and guide the reader’s navigation on the site, which is generally contain a HOME PAGE where all the pages are been linked to each other.
Naturally, this early solution became obsolete just in few years. The disadvantages, like the lack of interactivity and personalization made the move. New technologies are appeared and static pages are transformed to dynamic ones. The goal was to introduce some "minimal" services to the sites like searching, computing or communication. The most relevant keyword for them were: HTTP-POST, CGI (Common Gateway Interface), SSI (Server-side Include) and Perl.
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard method for web server software to delegate the generation of web content to executable files. Such files are known as CGI scripts or simply CGIs; they are usually written in a scripting language. Perl was the most common language to write CGI application , but CGI application can be written in any language that has a standard input, output, and environment variables - like PHP , Bourne Shell (U*IX) or C. An example of a CGI program is one implementing a wiki, where the user agent requests the name of an entry. The program retrieves the source of that entry's page (if one exists), transforms it into HTML, and sends the result. If the "Edit this page" link is clicked, the CGI populates an HTML text area or other editing control with the page's contents, and saves it back to the server when the user submits the form.
SSI (Server Side Includes) are directives that are placed in HTML pages, and evaluated on the server while the pages are being served. They let you add dynamically generated content to an existing HTML page, without having to serve the entire page via a CGI program, or other dynamic technology. We can imagine it as a simple programming language, but SSI supports only one type: text. Its control flow is rather simple as well, choice is supported, but loops are not natively supported and can only be done by recursion using include or using HTTP redirect. Apache, nginx, lighttpd and IIS are the four major web servers that support this language.
The second phase of Web 1.0 can be seen in the following figure:
The last step in this evolution is arrived when traditional services are appeared on the Web as online services. In that phase the data mostly originates from databases and complex computations are done in the server side. The result is a comprehensive application environment where not just simple interactions could be made but combined workflows are possible. At this point again new tools are appeared, like session handling what is mostly implemented by cookie handling. A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while the user is browsing that website. Every time the user loads the website, the browser sends the cookie back to the server to notify the website of the user's previous activity. Cookies are used in several ways to achieve better user experience, like personalization and maintaining user data through a workflow or in multiple visits. However, there is an other usage scenario for cookies: tracking. Tracking cookies may be used to track users' web browsing activity. By analyzing the log data collected in, it is then possible to find out which pages the user has visited, in what sequence, and for how long. This opened a new line of privacy handling on the Web. Advertising companies use third-party cookies to track a user across multiple sites. In particular, an advertising company can track a user across all pages where it has placed advertising images or web bugs. Knowledge of the pages visited by a user allows the advertising company to target advertisements to the user's presumed preferences. Nowadays, a new EU directive is in charge to protect users and websites meed to show what kind of data is collected and process by them.
However, cookies have some drawbacks as well. There are several methods for cookie theft and session hijacking. Where network traffic is not encrypted, attackers can therefore read the communications of other users on the network, including HTTP cookies as well as the entire contents of the conversations, for the purpose of a man-in-the-middle attack. An attacker could use intercepted cookies to impersonate a user and perform a malicious task. An other problem appeared with the cross-site scripting. If an attacker was able to insert a piece of script to a page on a site, and a victim’s browser was able to execute the script, the script could simply carry out the attack. This attack would use the victim’s browser to send HTTP requests to servers directly; therefore, the victim’s browser would submit all relevant cookies, including HttpOnly cookies, as well as Secure cookies.
Naturally, cookies at the first time were a wonderful solution to overcome of the stateless manner of the HTTP protocol. It made available to handle workflows, introduce shopping carts on websites and made authentication easier. Besides privacy concerns, cookies also have some technical drawbacks. In particular, they do not always accurately identify users, they can be used for security attacks, and they are often at odds with the Representational State Transfer (REST) software architectural style. This is why alternative solutions are appeared.
A more precise technique is based on embedding information into URLs. The query string part of the URL is the one that is typically used for this purpose but this solution also have some drawbacks - like sending the same URL twice could cause problems if the query string encodes preferences and it was change between the two (same URL) request.
Another form of session tracking is to use web forms with hidden fields. This technique is very similar to using URL query strings to hold the information and has many of the same advantages and drawbacks. Most forms are handled with HTTP POST, which causes the form information, including the hidden fields, to be appended as extra input that is neither part of the URL, nor of a cookie.
The HTTP protocol includes the basic access authentication and the digest access authentication protocols, which allow access to a web page only when the user has provided the correct username and password. If the server requires such credentials for granting access to a web page, the browser requests them from the user and, once obtained, the browser stores and sends them in every subsequent page request. This information can be used to track the user.
All of these could be imagined with the following figure:
This third phase made the Web as a dominant platform which worth the investment. Centralized software could reach millions of users with one simple installation without the update process's nightmare. Just a simple client is needed, a web browser only. Its based on simple solutions:
Core Web Features: HTML, HTTP, URI
Newer Technologies: XML, XHTML, CSS
Server-Side Scripting: ASP, PHP, JSP, CGI, PERL
Client-Side Scripting: JavaScript, VBScript, Flash
Downloadable Components: ActiveX/Java
This online presence could be used to made available several services, made effective advertisements and finally to make money. All the economics behind Web 1.0 was very simple: everything is based on the traffic, advertisements and the most simple one: Insanity. An Internet company's survival depended on expanding its customer base as rapidly as possible, even if it produced large annual losses. The mantra was very short: “Get large or get lost”. At the time of August 2000, nearly 20 million websites were online.
The Dotcom Bubble Burst: January 14, 2000
The dotcom bubble had been growing since 1997. The excitement surrounding the web caused share prices to soar. Cisco became the world’s largest company, worth $400 billion (now $100 billion). $1 billion per week of Venture Capital money flowed into Silicon Valley. AOL took over Time Warner for $200 billion.
In January 2000 it reached its peak when the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record level never reached before or since. On March 10 the NASDAQ Composite Index also reached an all-time high. Soon after, the markets began to crash and with it went many of the start up companies bankrolled during the dotcom boom. Between March and September 2000, the Bloomberg US Internet Index lost $1.755 trillion!
Where Web 1.0 went wrong was the misunderstood of the Web's dynamics. All of the development was relied on the old software business models, users were locked to APIs. Software was sold as an application and not as a service, so they were sold to the Head and not to the Tail as Web 2.0 solutions are do. The dynamics underlying the Web contains the Long Tail, the social data, the network effects and wisdom of the Crowds.