History of the Web

History
Before the World Wide Web, the Internet really only provided screens full of text (and usually only in one font and font size). It was a good tool for exchanging information, but it was visually boring.

Companies like Compuserve and AOL began developing GUIs (or graphical user interfaces) to make the Web more appealing. GUI's added color and layout, but were still boring. The Internet might have been useful, but it wasn't good looking. The World Wide Web changed it's appearance, and also allowed pictures and sound to be displayed and exchanged. [4]

Building Blocks for the Web
Ted Nelson's project was put into place before the Web was created. It worked on the concept of Hypertext. You could click on something and it would take you somewhere else. The idea of clicking on a word or a picture to take you somewhere else was a basic foundation of the web.

Another important building block was the URL or. This allowed you a further option to find your way around by naming a site. Every site on the worldwide web has a unique URL (such as ).

The other feature was Hypertext Markup Language (html), the language that allowed pages to display different fonts and sizes, pictures, colors etc. Before HTML, there was no such standard, and the "GUI s” talked about before only belonged to different computers or different computer software. They could not be networked. [4]

Tim Berners Lee
Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He founded and directs the World Wide Constorium (W3C), which is the forum for technical development of the web. He spend time fighting for rights like privacy, freedom, and openness of the web. [3]

Today
In the beginning, the web was used for displaying information. Online shopping, and online purchase of goods, which is what is seen a lot now, came later. Amazon was the first large commercial site. Amazon saw that on line shopping was the way of the future, and chose the book market as a field where much could be achieved. Now, social networking sites are a on the rise.

The web has even taken filtering to another level; targeting information to specific users based on their previous searches. [5]