Dot-com
Internet history during the dot-com era, from the 1990s through to the first few years of the 2000s.
Note: some of these articles were migrated from my previous website, Web Development History (WDH), which was active during 2021. Check the timeline for a chronological list of WDH posts.
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1997: JavaScript Grows Up and Developers Push the Boundaries
Pointy-headed technical analysis of JavaScript was not what was required in 1997. Developers of that era needed practical guidance and code samples.
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1995: PHP Quietly Launches as a CGI Scripts Toolset
If CGI scripts were the start of interactive programming on the web, then Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools) was the natural next step — at least on the server-side.
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1993: CGI Scripts and Early Server-Side Web Programming
A couple of years before JavaScript was invented, a specification called the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) enabled an early form of interactivity for web pages.
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1997: Netscape Crossware vs the Windows Web
After Microsoft upped the ante in the browser market in 1996 by integrating Internet Explorer 3.0 into Windows, Netscape began the new year with a renewed focus on the open web.
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1996: Microsoft Activates the Internet With ActiveX & JScript
In March 1996, Bill Gates announced a set of internet technologies called ActiveX. It was the moment web companies had feared — Microsoft was embedding the Internet into Windows.
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1996: Netscape Lays the Groundwork For Web Applications
Netscape Navigator 3.0 was a 'universal client' to help expand what HTML could do. But Netscape was also looking to broaden its product offering with a suite of tools it called Netscape Communicator.
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1996: JavaScript Annoyances and Meeting the DOM
Other than homepages sprinkled with little animations, scrolling text, and embedded digital clocks, adventurous corporate webmasters began to experiment with JavaScript in early 1996.
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1995: The Birth of JavaScript
JavaScript was invented in a two-week flurry in May 1995 by Brendan Eich, a newly hired developer at browser company Netscape. The idea was to extend the early Web beyond the limits of HTML.
