4 ms·

I've always equated "web" with HTTP, but is it correct to define it more broadly, inclusive of things like GOPHER? Basically anything with hypertext?

icedchai 6y ago
No, he's confused. I was an early Internet user (starting in 1990) and nobody referred to it as the "web" before HTTP and the first web browser were available. Gopher was probably dominant until 1993 or so when the first versions of Mosaic were available. I remember installing a version, probably in early 1994, on my Amiga and configuring SLIP to a local ISP at 9600 baud. It was truly amazing at the time.
- rurban 6y ago
  I'm certainly not confused. I had the very first private "homepage" on our university Graz Hyper-G server before the WWW existed as such. Before the word homepage even existed. Maybe landing page or so. Or default index. I was an early usenet user in the mid 80ies, and browsed the "web", as it was called, before HTTP existed. Prof Maurer was my neighbor. I browsed via our own client and via Emacs, which had multimedia extensions. Didn't know about Project Xanadu then, which existed much earlier. CERN was major gopher center then, but mostly the internet was a web of ftp, email and usenet. The CERN gopher was far behind our services, and the early WWW servers and clients ditto. We had a VR walkthrough client on the web, before the WWW had videos. It was at CERN that I gave a public conference talk, a CAD conference, about the Internet as we knew it in the early 90ies. The CERN had an extremely annoying and broken Novell network. It felt years behind our big university networks. It was truly amazing already before the WWW existed. But the WWW made that available to the common folks, not just to a few privileged. Just that you didn't knew it, didn't mean it didn't exist. CERN needed a multimedia web to share CAD drawings with annotations, descriptions and links, which exceeded ftp and README. I was one of the worldwide leading CAD experts then. We shared our CAD drawings and knowledge on our Hyper-G web, and had a HTTP bridge. Hyper-G was created as multimedia teaching device, to present enriched hypertext to students. Also via modem dialup, the mupid, similar to the other huge internet community in France, which was a successful BBS-like community, country-wide. Much more advanced than anywhere else. Everybody had it. Then eventually we got annoyed in our walled garden and broke out to the free WWW. Mosaic, Netscape, Apache. The French ditto. And the BBS and Fidonet users elsewhere. This was called the WWW then, worldwide, not our little university or country webs anymore.
  - icedchai 6y ago
    I believe all of this, but sorry, it wasn't called the web until HTTP and the first web browser arrived.

icedchai 6y ago

No, he's confused. I was an early Internet user (starting in 1990) and nobody referred to it as the "web" before HTTP and the first web browser were available. Gopher was probably dominant until 1993 or so when the first versions of Mosaic were available. I remember installing a version, probably in early 1994, on my Amiga and configuring SLIP to a local ISP at 9600 baud. It was truly amazing at the time.

rurban 6y ago
I'm certainly not confused. I had the very first private "homepage" on our university Graz Hyper-G server before the WWW existed as such. Before the word homepage even existed. Maybe landing page or so. Or default index. I was an early usenet user in the mid 80ies, and browsed the "web", as it was called, before HTTP existed. Prof Maurer was my neighbor. I browsed via our own client and via Emacs, which had multimedia extensions. Didn't know about Project Xanadu then, which existed much earlier. CERN was major gopher center then, but mostly the internet was a web of ftp, email and usenet. The CERN gopher was far behind our services, and the early WWW servers and clients ditto. We had a VR walkthrough client on the web, before the WWW had videos. It was at CERN that I gave a public conference talk, a CAD conference, about the Internet as we knew it in the early 90ies. The CERN had an extremely annoying and broken Novell network. It felt years behind our big university networks. It was truly amazing already before the WWW existed. But the WWW made that available to the common folks, not just to a few privileged. Just that you didn't knew it, didn't mean it didn't exist. CERN needed a multimedia web to share CAD drawings with annotations, descriptions and links, which exceeded ftp and README. I was one of the worldwide leading CAD experts then. We shared our CAD drawings and knowledge on our Hyper-G web, and had a HTTP bridge. Hyper-G was created as multimedia teaching device, to present enriched hypertext to students. Also via modem dialup, the mupid, similar to the other huge internet community in France, which was a successful BBS-like community, country-wide. Much more advanced than anywhere else. Everybody had it. Then eventually we got annoyed in our walled garden and broke out to the free WWW. Mosaic, Netscape, Apache. The French ditto. And the BBS and Fidonet users elsewhere. This was called the WWW then, worldwide, not our little university or country webs anymore.
- icedchai 6y ago
  I believe all of this, but sorry, it wasn't called the web until HTTP and the first web browser arrived.