Story of Internet III: The "X factor" of the New Web!

Last updated on: March 15, 2010 at 12:21 pm by Desh Kapoor

Story of Internet III: The "X factor" of the New Web! 2010-03-15T12:21:16-05:00 Desh Kapoor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A world where all contributed was conceived as more dynamic than where one held the key and others were just onlookers. This required a radically new architecture as well. If the site owner had to share her platform for an unframed creativity to be unleashed, frames of the past had to be done away with. That is what happened.

Earliest net experience was defined by web sites that were static and definitive. There were wars and arguments on how to define each element called tags in new language would work. As the dust settled on the new technology direction in the discussion list between Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreesen, text and images were shared with the world from a single server.

By early 1990s, various sites appeared. Static, unchanging but interesting and informative nevertheless. People were using services to create their own web pages at geocities.com and sharing their thoughts with the world creating a large reservoir of resources.

The new world, however, where everyone had a voice had to find ways to give the sites two main ingredients: Dynamic Updates and Interactive Content. The existing frames, HTML, and static pages were not enough. A new way of doing things was brought in. Good old HTML acquired an X-factor and was now known as XHTML. That X-factor was XML (Extensible Markup Language) – a new language that helped to differentiate the content from its layout and formatting (via the style sheets). Now every page needn’t be built individually. Dynamic page generation was made possible by the combination of XHTML and CSS (cascading style sheets).

XML came with a syntax that freed information from the restrictions of peculiarities of various applications, users, and machines. Now, information was portable and dynamic. Not only could information be created dynamically, but it could also be shared dynamically between completely unrelated environments when it used XML formats called RSS -which has meant different things in different lives [Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91); RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0); Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)].

What used to be simple hand-built and styled pages gave way to weblogs or blogs. What was best shared via emails was now shared via auto-updated RSS feeds from those blogs and other dynamically created web site content.

This solved one piece of the data creation and dissemination challenge. The other challenge was creating an experience that was rich, interactive and real time. The technologies of the past era were controlled and tied to the one serving the information, so data and its dissemination was heavily tied to server-side. Control is also a euphemism for restriction and delay. In the new world where the consumer was an ally, this control had to be let go.

A step in that process was to create a way to not let the data exchange between the user and the site database be a prisoner of time. This was solved by divorcing the processing from transmission of data. Parts of data processing were moved to the user side which made the interaction faster.

This new framework was called AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML).

Over time most words in the acronym lost their capital status and several other formats found acceptance as ways to accomplish what this initial cocktail of Javascript and XML (XML for exchanging, transforming and displaying the data, XMLHttpRequest for the new way to communicate data, and Javascript for bringing it all together).

All the pieces in place –dynamic information creation mechanism, information dissemination, universal formatting of sites, and interactive data communication techniques -the full power of Web 2.0 was finally available to the world.

Beauty of this world was that no matter which silo you lived in, you could be linked to the global community freely and perpetually.

Technology

Previous Post

March 15, 2010

LeT has 320 global targets; 20 of them are in India: Top US official

Next Post

March 15, 2010 Tarbela Dam & Karkoram Highway Threatened in Pakistan

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Aarti Achievement and Leadership AfPak Africa Annual and Year-end Asia Audio Australia Behavioural Sciences Bhagwad Gita Bhagwad Gita Blogging Blogs Business Business Intelligence Business Strategy Cannes Careers Chanakya China Conservation Corruption Creative Daily Links Desh Poems Development & Welfare Devotional Audio Devotional Songs Drama Earth Economics Education Entertainment Environment Europe Everyday Quotes Featured Articles Featured Songs Finance Flickr Pictures Food Geo-Political Global Warming Globalization Health & Medicine Hinduism Historic History Humour India Indian Culture Indian music Indian Weddings Israel Issues Legal Link Love Minorities Misc Motivation and Personal Development Movie Lists Movie Reviews Movies Mumbai terror attacks Natural Disasters Nature News Outsourcing Pakistan Parenting Personal Philosophy Poetry Politics Poverty Quotes Recipe Regular Blog Post Relationships Religion Religious/Spiritual Audio Sciences Showcase Slideshow South Asia Special Stories Spiritual Quotes Spirituality Sports Stories Strategy Technology Technology Terrorism Travel Uncategorized US Video Women Women_s Rights Worship Yoga

Select a Month December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 June 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 September 2014 August 2014 January 2014 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who suggested throwing Moses into the Nile as a baby?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Miriam Pharaoh Pharaoh's daughter A Hebrew midwife