4 ms·

A lot of the churn is because the web is so young as an application platform. It’s been less than 20years since GMail which was probably the first thing that ev

A lot of the churn is because the web is so young as an application platform. It’s been less than 20years since GMail which was probably the first thing that even approximated an application on the web. Chrome was released in 2008 less than 10years ago, and it was the first time the web had a runtime engine which was perform at enough to even build an app.

bjelkeman-again 9y ago
There where webapps being built before gmail. We did Ajax-like things in 1999-2000. But gmail was possibly the first slick implementation.
- sorenjan 9y ago
  I remember how impressed I was when Google Maps was released. Instead of having to click on arrows to reload the page with a new map, you could just drag and it would automatically load new map tiles! Google Earth (the native application) is really old and abandoned by now, but its still better than the new "web" version that only works in Chrome.
u801e 9y ago
How did gmail back then differ from hotmail or Yahoo mail? I was using both in the late '90s/early '00s.
- dfox 9y ago
  Gmail was first massively used single page web application. Somewhat ironically it was built on top of technology meant for Outlook Web Access (ie. XMLHttpRequest as ActiveX component in IE and as an DOM extension in Gecko). AJAX is name that was conceived to describe that approach to webapps, with the somewhat funny fact, that google at the time described it as javascript (from time to time with the addendum: "done right")
  - vbezhenar 9y ago
    Funny thing about AJAX is that this acronym means nothing. Asynchronous JavaScript? Well, JavaScript was always asynchronous. And XML? What does it have with XML?
    - tmzt 9y ago
      XMLHttpRequest originally was intended for posting and getting XML which was automatically parsed and exposed on the response object. Now of course we are using more JSON and XMLHttpRequest is being replaced by Fetch API. AJAX means Asynchronous Javascript and XML.
camgunz 9y ago
20 years is forever. Nothing should be this bad after 20 years.
narrator 9y ago
Everybody here is too young to remember the era of the Microsoft monopoly and how much it sucked. The Web app era is much nicer. Besides Web Apps aren't bad compared to the 90s win32 api which was closed source and riddled with bugs and undocumented behavior.
astura 9y ago
There were plenty of webapps before Gmail. There was even plenty of other webmail services before Gmail and Gmail wasn't much different from the status quo. I've been using webmail since 1997 and even my University had a web interface (SquirrelMail) for those who preferred using the web interface (almost everyone). This was pre Gmail.
- basicplus2 9y ago
  Pine
- ProblemFactory 9y ago
  > Gmail wasn't much different from the status quo GMail was different because it offered an outlandish 1GB of mail space, when everywhere else you got 1-10MB mailboxes. Since it was launched on April 1st, most people did not believe it at first. And (at the time) huge space allowed users to keep and search all old email, instead of deleting old emails being a weekly chore.
  - astura 9y ago
    I meant from a UI/UX prospective.
- wpietri 9y ago
  Really? My recollection is that Gmail was substantially different in the extent to which it was an in-browser Javascript app built around server-side data requests. That's in contrast to something where applications were a series of mostly-static pages. At the time this change was known as AJAX, and GMail is listed as a pioneer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) Squirrelmail, by contrast, rendered a new page for most user actions. Especially the viewing of messages.
  - curun1r 9y ago
    My recollection was that Outlook's Web Access was the first. IIRC, it used what would become XMLHttpRequest when it was still internal to Microsoft, so it's the first of what we might consider to be modern web application. GP's 1997 seems right on, though, since that was the first release. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook_on_the_web#History_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook_on_the_web#History_2

bjelkeman-again 9y ago

There where webapps being built before gmail. We did Ajax-like things in 1999-2000. But gmail was possibly the first slick implementation.

sorenjan 9y ago
I remember how impressed I was when Google Maps was released. Instead of having to click on arrows to reload the page with a new map, you could just drag and it would automatically load new map tiles! Google Earth (the native application) is really old and abandoned by now, but its still better than the new "web" version that only works in Chrome.

u801e 9y ago

How did gmail back then differ from hotmail or Yahoo mail? I was using both in the late '90s/early '00s.

dfox 9y ago
Gmail was first massively used single page web application. Somewhat ironically it was built on top of technology meant for Outlook Web Access (ie. XMLHttpRequest as ActiveX component in IE and as an DOM extension in Gecko). AJAX is name that was conceived to describe that approach to webapps, with the somewhat funny fact, that google at the time described it as javascript (from time to time with the addendum: "done right")
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  Funny thing about AJAX is that this acronym means nothing. Asynchronous JavaScript? Well, JavaScript was always asynchronous. And XML? What does it have with XML?
  - tmzt 9y ago
    XMLHttpRequest originally was intended for posting and getting XML which was automatically parsed and exposed on the response object. Now of course we are using more JSON and XMLHttpRequest is being replaced by Fetch API. AJAX means Asynchronous Javascript and XML.

camgunz 9y ago

20 years is forever. Nothing should be this bad after 20 years.

narrator 9y ago

Everybody here is too young to remember the era of the Microsoft monopoly and how much it sucked. The Web app era is much nicer. Besides Web Apps aren't bad compared to the 90s win32 api which was closed source and riddled with bugs and undocumented behavior.

astura 9y ago

There were plenty of webapps before Gmail. There was even plenty of other webmail services before Gmail and Gmail wasn't much different from the status quo. I've been using webmail since 1997 and even my University had a web interface (SquirrelMail) for those who preferred using the web interface (almost everyone). This was pre Gmail.

basicplus2 9y ago
Pine
ProblemFactory 9y ago
> Gmail wasn't much different from the status quo GMail was different because it offered an outlandish 1GB of mail space, when everywhere else you got 1-10MB mailboxes. Since it was launched on April 1st, most people did not believe it at first. And (at the time) huge space allowed users to keep and search all old email, instead of deleting old emails being a weekly chore.
- astura 9y ago
  I meant from a UI/UX prospective.
wpietri 9y ago
Really? My recollection is that Gmail was substantially different in the extent to which it was an in-browser Javascript app built around server-side data requests. That's in contrast to something where applications were a series of mostly-static pages. At the time this change was known as AJAX, and GMail is listed as a pioneer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) Squirrelmail, by contrast, rendered a new page for most user actions. Especially the viewing of messages.
- curun1r 9y ago
  My recollection was that Outlook's Web Access was the first. IIRC, it used what would become XMLHttpRequest when it was still internal to Microsoft, so it's the first of what we might consider to be modern web application. GP's 1997 seems right on, though, since that was the first release. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook_on_the_web#History_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook_on_the_web#History_2