There were few web applications back in 1996. I can only think of two major ones: Lotus had a webmail product called cc:Mail and eBay just started offering onli

There were few web applications back in 1996. I can only think of two major ones: Lotus had a webmail product called cc:Mail and eBay just started offering online auctions. Back then, you wouldn't use PHP, CSS, Javascript, XMLHttpRequest or Flash. They didn't exist or hadn't matured yet. Most likely, you would've used a Java based solution, such as NeXT WebObjects. That's what e-commerce businesses did back then. However, you wouldn't have developed the product on your own. You would've needed a team and plenty of funding, in part because WebObjects came with a $50,000 price tag. I encourage you to read this WebObjects advertorial from april 1997, courtesy of the Wayback Machine. It's a good illustration of what was considered modern web development: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19970412201603/http://www.next.com/WebObjects/Overview.html http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19970412201603/http://www.n...