Datasheet

Part I: Rich Internet Applications and the Flash Platform

means by which CERN’s visiting scientists could more easily and effectively exchange information,

even across otherwise-incompatible computer systems. The fruits of his labor, first used by

Berners-Lee and a colleague on Christmas Day of that year, was Hypertext Transfer Protocol

(HTTP), HTML, and the first browser/editor, which he dubbed WorldWideWeb.

Over the next several years, these three inventions were expanded upon by many other Web pio-

neers. However, the technologies would not see widespread use until 1994, the year the Netscape

Corporation released its Web browser, Navigator. Navigator was the first Web browser widely

available to the public. That year and the following saw the founding of such companies as Yahoo!

and Amazon and also the first hints of what the Web might become.

Unfortunately, those early days also saw the first hints of what in many ways remains the biggest

challenge facing Web developers around the world: browser incompatibility.

After Netscape rejected its licensing offers, Microsoft developed its own browser, Internet Explorer

(IE). Microsoft placed IE on the desktop of its soon-to-be ubiquitous Windows 9x operating sys-

tem. Microsoft and Netscape would battle for the next few years for market dominance in what has

become known as the Browser Wars.

This period marked a low point for Web developers, as both companies released version after ver-

sion of their browsers. With each new release there were features not supported by the other com-

pany’s browser. An early effort at providing basic animation on Web pages led Netscape to

introduce the ill-fated

blink tag. Microsoft responded with the equally ill-conceived marquee

tag. As neither browser supported the other’s innovation, neither tag took hold.

For some time during this period, Web design books and tutorials went so far as to advocate that

developers create two separate sites; one that would display correctly in Navigator, the other in IE.

Others focused on the non-too-reliable JavaScript solution of browser sniffing — using JavaScript to

attempt to determine the user’s browser and display browser-specific code.

All of the early versions of HTML shared one thing in common: a complete lack of capability to

provide any interactivity for the users. As the Web grew in popularity and profitability, companies

began demanding interactivity. This would include animation, games and ads or other areas of

pages that could meaningfully respond to users. All of those capabilities existed for the develop-

ment of desktop applications; why then, clients would ask, were they lacking on the Web?

Dynamic HTML

An early and for a time popular solution to this lack of interactivity was Dynamic HTML (DHTML).

DHTML pages contain basic HTML markup, which can then be manipulated at runtime with

JavaScript. DHTML offered designers a lot of freedom to create the kinds of interactivity their cli-

ents and bosses were demanding. For the first time, Web photo galleries could be created that

allowed users to simply move a mouse over a thumbnail of an image and have a larger version of

that image appear automatically.

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