People always ask me how multimedia fits in with the WWW.
Well, it is the next logical progression in this amazing
phenomenon we call the Internet, which didn't actually
exist (as we know it) 12 or so years ago. The damn thing
wasn't even invented until 1989... here's a crash history.
Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the Web. In 1989, Tim
was working in a computing services section of CERN when he
came up with the concept (web); at the time he had no idea
that it would be implemented on such an enormous scale.
Particle physics research often involves collaboration
among institutes from all over the world. Tim had the idea
of enabling researchers from remote sites in the world to
organize and pool together information. But far from simply
making available a large number of research documents as
files that could be downloaded to individual computers; he
suggested that you could actually link the text in the
files themselves.
In other words, there could be cross-references from one
research paper to another. This would mean that while
reading one research paper, you could quickly display part
of another paper that holds directly relevant text or
diagrams. Documentation of a scientific and mathematical
nature would thus be represented as a 'web' of information
held in electronic form on computers across the world.
This, Tim thought, could be done by using some form of
hypertext, some way of linking documents together by using
buttons on the screen, which you simply clicked on to jump
from one paper to another.
Tim's simple but effective idea turned out to be the
greatest communication device of humanity even if it was
not supported by big companies and manufacturers. For
instance, Hewlett-Packard, in common with many other large
computer companies, was quite unconvinced that the Internet
would be a success; indeed, the need for a global hypertext
system simply passed them by. For many large corporations,
the question of whether or not any money could be made from
the Web was unclear from the outset.
Later, especially after Mosaic, the first web browser was
released; the competition between the companies became more
obvious. The later version of Mosaic in competition with
the Microsoft Internet Explorer added new features to the
HTML language like n-compass and active-x controls
respectively. Meanwhile, the World Wide Web Consortium was
formed to fulfill the potential of the Web through the
development of open standards. They had a strong interest
in HTML. Just as an orchestra insisting on the best
musicians, the consortium recruited many of the best-known
names in the Web community headed up by Tim Berners-Lee.
During 1995, all kinds of new HTML tags emerged. Some, like
the BGCOLOR attribute of the BODY element and FONT FACE,
which control stylistic aspects of a document, found
themselves in the black books of the academic engineering
community. "You're not supposed to be able to do things
like that in HTML," they would protest. In the end, the
technology of web was for the pure purpose of science and
technology. It was not supposed to turn into a multimedia
"tool". It was their belief that such things as text color,
background texture, font size and font face were definitely
outside the scope of a language when their only intent was
to specify how a document would be organized.
While the W3 Consortium was working on already the HTML 3,
the web design was benefiting the competition between the
Netscape and IE. Even for the good intentions of the
consortium, the big corporations insisted on creating their
own derivatives for HTML. This was creating many
compatibility problems. Finally, following the success of
the November, 1995 meeting, the World Wide Web Consortium
formed the HTML Editorial Review Board to help with the
standardization process. This board consisted of
representatives from IBM, Microsoft, Netscape, Novell,
Softquad and the W3 Consortium, and did its business via
telephone conference and email exchanges, meeting
approximately once every three months. Its aim was to
collaborate and agree upon a common standard for HTML, thus
putting an end to the era when browsers each implemented a
different subset of the language. The bad fairy of
incompatibility was to be banished from the HTML kingdom
forever, or one could hope so, perhaps.
The incompatibility was not banished but was at least
minimized. However, HTML kept on growing and the last
versions like the dynamic HTML, like HTML 4.0 brought new
colors and usages for this language. Especially after the
edition of style sheets, it became extremely difficult to
standardize the view of a web page depending on the browser
you use.
As you can see, HTML was written for the pure purpose of
information sharing but turned into a mass communication
mechanism. It was supposed to be an organizational
language, and yet became a multimedia source where you can
edit the layout and add images, sound and many other
multimedia files. We can blame the evolution process of
this language for the non-standardized nature of it.
----------------------------------------------------
Dave Foster owns and operates the "Solo Profits" blog and
podcast, guiding individual entrepreneurs and home-based
business owners to online success using audio, video and
multimedia techniques. Dave also explores the virgin
territory of multimedia psychology and how to present your
message effectively through these new communications
channels. Want to discover more? Go To ==>>
http://www.soloprofits.com
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