5 ms·

WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project (1990)

132 points by marban 4y ago

thrown_22 4y ago
One thing I've noticed more and more is that I've been trained to _not_ click links in a page but search for the same thing in google. Hyperlinks are now the navigation bar inside a website and little else. Checking the last 10 pages I have opened the majority of them from reputable sites either don't have links or don't have useful links. It's kind of bizarre that the main selling feature of HTML is basically lost today.
- pbreit 4y ago
  Also the primary input to Google PageRank.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    Page rank hasn't been used as the google algorithm for over 15 years now.
- foobarbecue 4y ago
  I keep reading this but can't quite parse it. What do you mean by "Hyperlinks are now the navigation bar inside a website and little else"? Do you mean "URLs are shown in browser navigation bars but people do not click hyperlinks in websites"?
  - sirmarksalot 4y ago
    Meaning that the main viable use case for them now is intra-site navigation, i.e. the menu bar at the top of the page.
    - blowski 4y ago
      So the observation here is that Tim Berners Lee's original vision was all these documents that would be linking to each other, across different hosts. But today's websites are mostly silos that only link inwards. Have I got that right?
      - jbverschoor 4y ago
        In the paar online text would be filled with more links and references. Wikipedia is still like that. The normal use case are navigation, and call to action. The web has become a kiosk with virtual magazines screaming for attention Commented with an application distribution platform (html/js) We used to have applications and protocols. Now we have something similar to a mainframe, but the client app is distributed over and over again. Forum? NNTP Chat? IRC Dole transfer? FTP Status updates? Finger
- julienreszka 4y ago
  What?
- czx4f4bd 4y ago
  I think you touch on a valid point about changes in the way content is presented online, but I also think you're really underselling just how utterly transformative the Web has been. Like, you say you don't click links because you use Google instead... but Google search returns links. It could not even function without links. Keyword search is even one of the listed goals in the proposal, because prior to the Web, there was no singular place to find and retrieve information like that: > At CERN, a variety of data is already available: reports, experiment data, personnel data, electronic mail address lists, computer documentation, experiment documentation, and many other sets of data are spinning around on computer discs continuously. It is however impossible to "jump" from one set to another in an automatic way [...] Usually, you will have to use a different lookup-method on a different computer with a different user interface. Once you have located information, it is hard to keep a link to it or to make a private note about it that you will later be able to find quickly. That's how utterly different the world was without the Web. You couldn't open ten pages from different sources in one application and then Google for something in a new tab. Every single way of accessing information would've been its own distinct application, without much overlap or interoperability between them. Any attempt to build a search engine like Google or a content aggregator like HN would've been stymied by the sheer variety of formats and standards for presenting information.
  - a9h74j 4y ago
    > At CERN, a variety of data is already available This proposal was more CERN-focussed than I had imagined. That said, my search came up negative on each of 'math', 'formula' and 'equation'. Was this a strategic omission to make the project more tractable? I would not be surprised had the proposal been directed to a non-science community, but at CERN?
    - czx4f4bd 4y ago
      I think it was just too early in the project for that. Images were still considered a nice-to-have and (as far as I can tell) HTML hadn't even been proposed yet. It mentions the potential for a markup language, but it also says that they don't want to force users to adopt any particular markup language and mentions word processed documents as a potential node format. Perhaps the assumption was that specialized formatting requirements would be handled by specialized document formats, with markup pages acting as glue for listing and navigating between those formats (similar to how most browsers now have built-in PDF readers).
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  IMO Google has been slowly condensing/removing the address bar in Chrome so people think Google Search == web, and I think your anecdote shows that it's working.
- layer8 4y ago
  > I've been trained to _not_ click links in a page You don’t click links on the Google results page?
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    I wish google had clean links on their result page, so I could right-click and copy URL cleanly. But no, it is a tracker link
    - layer8 4y ago
      Yeah, that’s annoying, but there’s browser extensions like ClearURLs to care of that.
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        Another part of the training I'm talking about. You need an add-on to get basic functionality from the 90s back.
      - kzrdude 4y ago
        Thanks that's a good tip, seems to be a good addon for firefox. Annoyingly looks like that addon also has some scope creep (default domain blocking, why, I have ad blockers for that?)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- flomo 4y ago
  Replying to say that I just noticed this today, and decided it was a negative tendency. I was reading a history article on The Athletic and was wondering about some things. Only after mulling a bit, I noticed they were links to some good youtube videos.
ipython 4y ago
Ah. A project that actually changed the world for the better. Breath of fresh air after all the coverage on FTX.
- imiric 4y ago
  And yet it never completed the planned second phase, "allowing the users to add new material". I think this was a crucial misstep of the early days, when the main focus was to build the best browser. This made the web entirely consumer focused from the start, which gave way for silos and advertisers to take over. Imagine how different the modern web would've been if consuming content was as easy as publishing it, from the very beginning. There would've likely been tools built to give users control of the data they share publicly, and we could've ended up with a pull model, where companies _request_ access to user data, instead of there being massive central hubs everyone visits, that profit by tracking users, hoarding their data, and selling it on shady gray markets. There have been some attempts over the years to do this. Most notably Opera with Unite in 2009, which failed miserably, and more recently the fediverse, which has yet to gain mainstream traction. I don't think that the technology is the problem in either case. It's just that the consumer web has so much momentum now, that there are no supporting services to allow the tech to propagate (e.g. most people still have asymmetrical internet connections, or NAT'd routers, which makes sharing difficult). And the UX needs to be on par with modern web browsers, which is a tall order, given the few decades of head start browsers have had. I think we're just too late for that original vision to happen, but it's great reading that it was planned from the very beginning.
  - ipython 4y ago
    Au contraire. The early web was chock full of original user content. People with shell access published all sorts of stuff in their Unix home public_html directory. Those who did not had geocities accounts. Today, it’s easier than ever to publish. Anyone who wants to create content can do so.
    - imiric 4y ago
      > People with shell access published all sorts of stuff in their Unix home public_html directory. Those who did not had geocities accounts. Exactly my point. Only technical users knew how to publish, and those who didn't had to use 3rd party publishers. Which is still the case today. What I'm talking about is making publishing web content as easy as consuming it. Publishing without a 3rd party to generate and host the content is still as difficult as ever. The modern web is entirely consumer focused, where large companies have stepped in to fill the gap of facilitating non-technical users to publish content. Imagine if we had a tool to do that that was as ubiquitous as the web browser is today. From these early design documents, it's clear that was the intention, but for some reason, it never gained traction.
russellbeattie 4y ago
(Self promotion, sorry, but relevant.) I believe that the time has finally come to fulfill TBL's "Phase 2" so I created a prototype a few weeks ago. It's just an HTML editor made to create HTML Documents. Not web sites, not landing pages, not designs, not mockups, not apps, not games, just HTML based rich text documents with links and media you can edit and save locally. https://www.hypertext.plus https://www.hypertext.plus
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/why-is-markdown-popular.html https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/why-is-markdown-p... > Why don’t we have an HTML-based rich text standard yet? > I have zero idea. In fact, we seem to be getting farther away from one as Markdown popularity surges. > The other day I read a blog post by the folks at Mozilla - who are supposed to be the standard bearers of, um, web standards, and was truly shocked that they decided to convert all their documentation to Markdown last year. What?? In fact, they stopped using HTML in order to do it. Yep, I am baffled by this too. Glad to see that I am not the only one ! I am aware of at least one document editor project that at least tries to have a working round trip conversion to HTML : https://texmacs.org/tmweb/help/faq.en.html https://texmacs.org/tmweb/help/faq.en.html (But I am afraid that it will never work as well as an editor that treats HTML as the first class document type...) https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/the-decades-long-html-bundle-quagmire.html https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/the-decades-long-... > But most importantly, since my goal was to replace Markdown as a simple, easily manageable rich text document format, trying to also tackle the bundling issue was besides the point. Markdown doesn't include files, doesn't care about them and will never have them. There's no reason for an HTML Document standard to deal with encapsulated files either, as essential as it might first seem. > All that said, I'm sure someone, somewhere might wonder why my Hypertext editor doesn't have some sort of option to save as a zipped file format of some sort, I thought I'd share what I discovered reading up on the topic. Then maybe someone can get the W3C, Mozilla, Google and Apple to finally make up their minds and decide on a standard that we can use in the future. (I won't hold my breath. Yeah, sigh... Still, bundling is kind of essential - most documents will want to have at least some multimedia, and you generally do NOT want to have them get split into multiple files ! As you say I still don't understand why Firefox, instead of a separate folder for the non-HTML content, does not "throw a bunch of files into a zip and call it a day?", especially when ePub does that already !
OnlyMortal 4y ago
Looks at SGML renderers of the day I used to work on a Mac C/68k SGML editor. It was used for data capture of European Patents. ResEdit UI - god help us. Combine those files with an example “Steven’s” TCP server and a client that renders, you have Web 1.0. Technically, it was nothing novel - but it was given away for free. There were many hypertext systems at that time that were proprietary.
dusted 4y ago
> 4 software engineers and a programmer Interesting, I wonder what the exact distinction was at the time, in that particular context.. Since these days.. Well, my title is that of a sweng but I certainly spend a good amount of time programming.
- recuter 4y ago
  4 people to debate the merits of LED vs CFL, one to screw it in (probably an incandescent when research money starts running low). Same as today.
  - gala8y 4y ago
    How many people do they need to change a lightbulb at CERN? > 4 software engineers and a programmer >> 4 people to debate the merits of LED vs CFL, one to screw it in (probably an incandescent when research money starts running low). Same as today.
- z3t4 4y ago
  Early on an engineer wrote the code on a paper and a programmer then entered it into a computer. But as this is in the era of personal computers I'm also interested in the distinction.
zozbot234 4y ago
What's this Hyper-Text stuff all about? Is this supposed to be about some weird decentralized version of Obsidian and other knowledge management apps? It all seems really hacky and clunky, because of this silly one-size-fits-all and decentralization stuff they keep harping about. Though the proposals at the end about providing an automated 'view' over existing databases are intriguing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
quesera 4y ago
As reviewed on USENET at the time: > No federation. Less readers than alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork. Lame.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
teleforce 4y ago
It's just amazing how far the Internet and its killer applications have come, and for some people it's all happening within one's lifespan. The 1st gen killer app: Telnet to remotely access time-sharing systems on expensive workstations. The 2nd gen killer app: Email to substitute snail mails. The 3rd gen killer app: Web based distributed documents to allow collaboration between researchers and collaborators in different countries. The 4th gen killer app: Instant messaging and VoIP to allow real-time global communication between anyone connected to the Internet. The 5th gen killer app: Video conference to allow cloud based virtual meeting and distance learning especially during pandemic. The 6th gen app: Still brewing but I think it'll be local-first applications to enable seamless collaboration and participation for everyone including those with unreliable intermittent Internet, minimum bandwidth and high delay connection [1]. [1]Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/
retreatguru 4y ago
Potentially, HyperText provides a single user-interface to many large classes of stored information such as reports, notes, data-bases, computer documentation and on-line systems help. Insightful understatement of the century.

132 points by marban 4y ago

One thing I've noticed more and more is that I've been trained to _not_ click links in a page but search for the same thing in google. Hyperlinks are now the navigation bar inside a website and little else. Checking the last 10 pages I have opened the majority of them from reputable sites either don't have links or don't have useful links. It's kind of bizarre that the main selling feature of HTML is basically lost today.

pbreit 4y ago
Also the primary input to Google PageRank.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Page rank hasn't been used as the google algorithm for over 15 years now.
foobarbecue 4y ago
I keep reading this but can't quite parse it. What do you mean by "Hyperlinks are now the navigation bar inside a website and little else"? Do you mean "URLs are shown in browser navigation bars but people do not click hyperlinks in websites"?
- sirmarksalot 4y ago
  Meaning that the main viable use case for them now is intra-site navigation, i.e. the menu bar at the top of the page.
  - blowski 4y ago
    So the observation here is that Tim Berners Lee's original vision was all these documents that would be linking to each other, across different hosts. But today's websites are mostly silos that only link inwards. Have I got that right?
    - jbverschoor 4y ago
      In the paar online text would be filled with more links and references. Wikipedia is still like that. The normal use case are navigation, and call to action. The web has become a kiosk with virtual magazines screaming for attention Commented with an application distribution platform (html/js) We used to have applications and protocols. Now we have something similar to a mainframe, but the client app is distributed over and over again. Forum? NNTP Chat? IRC Dole transfer? FTP Status updates? Finger
julienreszka 4y ago
What?
czx4f4bd 4y ago
I think you touch on a valid point about changes in the way content is presented online, but I also think you're really underselling just how utterly transformative the Web has been. Like, you say you don't click links because you use Google instead... but Google search returns links. It could not even function without links. Keyword search is even one of the listed goals in the proposal, because prior to the Web, there was no singular place to find and retrieve information like that: > At CERN, a variety of data is already available: reports, experiment data, personnel data, electronic mail address lists, computer documentation, experiment documentation, and many other sets of data are spinning around on computer discs continuously. It is however impossible to "jump" from one set to another in an automatic way [...] Usually, you will have to use a different lookup-method on a different computer with a different user interface. Once you have located information, it is hard to keep a link to it or to make a private note about it that you will later be able to find quickly. That's how utterly different the world was without the Web. You couldn't open ten pages from different sources in one application and then Google for something in a new tab. Every single way of accessing information would've been its own distinct application, without much overlap or interoperability between them. Any attempt to build a search engine like Google or a content aggregator like HN would've been stymied by the sheer variety of formats and standards for presenting information.
- a9h74j 4y ago
  > At CERN, a variety of data is already available This proposal was more CERN-focussed than I had imagined. That said, my search came up negative on each of 'math', 'formula' and 'equation'. Was this a strategic omission to make the project more tractable? I would not be surprised had the proposal been directed to a non-science community, but at CERN?
  - czx4f4bd 4y ago
    I think it was just too early in the project for that. Images were still considered a nice-to-have and (as far as I can tell) HTML hadn't even been proposed yet. It mentions the potential for a markup language, but it also says that they don't want to force users to adopt any particular markup language and mentions word processed documents as a potential node format. Perhaps the assumption was that specialized formatting requirements would be handled by specialized document formats, with markup pages acting as glue for listing and navigating between those formats (similar to how most browsers now have built-in PDF readers).
candiddevmike 4y ago
IMO Google has been slowly condensing/removing the address bar in Chrome so people think Google Search == web, and I think your anecdote shows that it's working.
layer8 4y ago
> I've been trained to _not_ click links in a page You don’t click links on the Google results page?
- kzrdude 4y ago
  I wish google had clean links on their result page, so I could right-click and copy URL cleanly. But no, it is a tracker link
  - layer8 4y ago
    Yeah, that’s annoying, but there’s browser extensions like ClearURLs to care of that.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      Another part of the training I'm talking about. You need an add-on to get basic functionality from the 90s back.
    - kzrdude 4y ago
      Thanks that's a good tip, seems to be a good addon for firefox. Annoyingly looks like that addon also has some scope creep (default domain blocking, why, I have ad blockers for that?)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
flomo 4y ago
Replying to say that I just noticed this today, and decided it was a negative tendency. I was reading a history article on The Athletic and was wondering about some things. Only after mulling a bit, I noticed they were links to some good youtube videos.

ipython 4y ago

Ah. A project that actually changed the world for the better. Breath of fresh air after all the coverage on FTX.

imiric 4y ago
And yet it never completed the planned second phase, "allowing the users to add new material". I think this was a crucial misstep of the early days, when the main focus was to build the best browser. This made the web entirely consumer focused from the start, which gave way for silos and advertisers to take over. Imagine how different the modern web would've been if consuming content was as easy as publishing it, from the very beginning. There would've likely been tools built to give users control of the data they share publicly, and we could've ended up with a pull model, where companies _request_ access to user data, instead of there being massive central hubs everyone visits, that profit by tracking users, hoarding their data, and selling it on shady gray markets. There have been some attempts over the years to do this. Most notably Opera with Unite in 2009, which failed miserably, and more recently the fediverse, which has yet to gain mainstream traction. I don't think that the technology is the problem in either case. It's just that the consumer web has so much momentum now, that there are no supporting services to allow the tech to propagate (e.g. most people still have asymmetrical internet connections, or NAT'd routers, which makes sharing difficult). And the UX needs to be on par with modern web browsers, which is a tall order, given the few decades of head start browsers have had. I think we're just too late for that original vision to happen, but it's great reading that it was planned from the very beginning.
- ipython 4y ago
  Au contraire. The early web was chock full of original user content. People with shell access published all sorts of stuff in their Unix home public_html directory. Those who did not had geocities accounts. Today, it’s easier than ever to publish. Anyone who wants to create content can do so.
  - imiric 4y ago
    > People with shell access published all sorts of stuff in their Unix home public_html directory. Those who did not had geocities accounts. Exactly my point. Only technical users knew how to publish, and those who didn't had to use 3rd party publishers. Which is still the case today. What I'm talking about is making publishing web content as easy as consuming it. Publishing without a 3rd party to generate and host the content is still as difficult as ever. The modern web is entirely consumer focused, where large companies have stepped in to fill the gap of facilitating non-technical users to publish content. Imagine if we had a tool to do that that was as ubiquitous as the web browser is today. From these early design documents, it's clear that was the intention, but for some reason, it never gained traction.

russellbeattie 4y ago

(Self promotion, sorry, but relevant.) I believe that the time has finally come to fulfill TBL's "Phase 2" so I created a prototype a few weeks ago. It's just an HTML editor made to create HTML Documents. Not web sites, not landing pages, not designs, not mockups, not apps, not games, just HTML based rich text documents with links and media you can edit and save locally. https://www.hypertext.plus https://www.hypertext.plus

BlueTemplar 4y ago
https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/why-is-markdown-popular.html https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/why-is-markdown-p... > Why don’t we have an HTML-based rich text standard yet? > I have zero idea. In fact, we seem to be getting farther away from one as Markdown popularity surges. > The other day I read a blog post by the folks at Mozilla - who are supposed to be the standard bearers of, um, web standards, and was truly shocked that they decided to convert all their documentation to Markdown last year. What?? In fact, they stopped using HTML in order to do it. Yep, I am baffled by this too. Glad to see that I am not the only one ! I am aware of at least one document editor project that at least tries to have a working round trip conversion to HTML : https://texmacs.org/tmweb/help/faq.en.html https://texmacs.org/tmweb/help/faq.en.html (But I am afraid that it will never work as well as an editor that treats HTML as the first class document type...) https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/the-decades-long-html-bundle-quagmire.html https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/the-decades-long-... > But most importantly, since my goal was to replace Markdown as a simple, easily manageable rich text document format, trying to also tackle the bundling issue was besides the point. Markdown doesn't include files, doesn't care about them and will never have them. There's no reason for an HTML Document standard to deal with encapsulated files either, as essential as it might first seem. > All that said, I'm sure someone, somewhere might wonder why my Hypertext editor doesn't have some sort of option to save as a zipped file format of some sort, I thought I'd share what I discovered reading up on the topic. Then maybe someone can get the W3C, Mozilla, Google and Apple to finally make up their minds and decide on a standard that we can use in the future. (I won't hold my breath. Yeah, sigh... Still, bundling is kind of essential - most documents will want to have at least some multimedia, and you generally do NOT want to have them get split into multiple files ! As you say I still don't understand why Firefox, instead of a separate folder for the non-HTML content, does not "throw a bunch of files into a zip and call it a day?", especially when ePub does that already !

OnlyMortal 4y ago

Looks at SGML renderers of the day I used to work on a Mac C/68k SGML editor. It was used for data capture of European Patents. ResEdit UI - god help us. Combine those files with an example “Steven’s” TCP server and a client that renders, you have Web 1.0. Technically, it was nothing novel - but it was given away for free. There were many hypertext systems at that time that were proprietary.

dusted 4y ago

> 4 software engineers and a programmer Interesting, I wonder what the exact distinction was at the time, in that particular context.. Since these days.. Well, my title is that of a sweng but I certainly spend a good amount of time programming.

recuter 4y ago
4 people to debate the merits of LED vs CFL, one to screw it in (probably an incandescent when research money starts running low). Same as today.
- gala8y 4y ago
  How many people do they need to change a lightbulb at CERN? > 4 software engineers and a programmer >> 4 people to debate the merits of LED vs CFL, one to screw it in (probably an incandescent when research money starts running low). Same as today.
z3t4 4y ago
Early on an engineer wrote the code on a paper and a programmer then entered it into a computer. But as this is in the era of personal computers I'm also interested in the distinction.

zozbot234 4y ago

What's this Hyper-Text stuff all about? Is this supposed to be about some weird decentralized version of Obsidian and other knowledge management apps? It all seems really hacky and clunky, because of this silly one-size-fits-all and decentralization stuff they keep harping about. Though the proposals at the end about providing an automated 'view' over existing databases are intriguing.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

quesera 4y ago

As reviewed on USENET at the time: > No federation. Less readers than alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork. Lame.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

teleforce 4y ago

It's just amazing how far the Internet and its killer applications have come, and for some people it's all happening within one's lifespan. The 1st gen killer app: Telnet to remotely access time-sharing systems on expensive workstations. The 2nd gen killer app: Email to substitute snail mails. The 3rd gen killer app: Web based distributed documents to allow collaboration between researchers and collaborators in different countries. The 4th gen killer app: Instant messaging and VoIP to allow real-time global communication between anyone connected to the Internet. The 5th gen killer app: Video conference to allow cloud based virtual meeting and distance learning especially during pandemic. The 6th gen app: Still brewing but I think it'll be local-first applications to enable seamless collaboration and participation for everyone including those with unreliable intermittent Internet, minimum bandwidth and high delay connection [1]. [1]Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/

retreatguru 4y ago

Potentially, HyperText provides a single user-interface to many large classes of stored information such as reports, notes, data-bases, computer documentation and on-line systems help. Insightful understatement of the century.