Tim Berners-Lee’s Announcement of the WWW, 25 years ago

In article <1991Aug…@ardor.enet.dec.com> kan…@ardor.enet.dec.com (Nari
Kannan) writes:
>
>    Is anyone reading this newsgroup aware of research or development efforts
in
> the
>    following areas:
>

>     1. Hypertext links enabling retrieval from multiple heterogeneous sources
of
> information?The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any
information anywhere. The address format includes an access method
(=namespace), and for most name spaces a hostname and some sort of path.

We have a prototype hypertext editor for the NeXT, and a browser for line mode
terminals which runs on almost anything. These can access files either locally,
NFS mounted, or via anonymous FTP. They can also go out using a simple protocol
(HTTP) to a server which interprets some other data and returns equivalent
hypertext files. For example, we have a server running on our mainframe
http://cernvm.cern.ch/ in WWW syntax) which makes all the CERN computer
center documentation available. The HTTP protocol allows for a keyword search
on an index, which generates a list of matching documents as annother virtual
hypertext document.

If you’re interested in using the code, mail me.  It’s very prototype, but
available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch. It’s copyright CERN but free
distribution and use is not normally a problem.

The NeXTstep editor can also browse news. If you are using it to read this,
then click on this: <http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html> to find
out more about the project. We haven’t put the news access into the line mode
browser yet.

We also have code for a hypertext server. You can use this to make files
available (like anonymous FTP but faster because it only uses one connection).
You can also hack it to take a hypertext address and generate a virtual
hypertext document from any other data you have – database, live data etc. It’s
just a question of generating plain text or SGML (ugh! but standard) mark-up on
the fly. The browsers then parse it on the fly.

The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data,
news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other
areas, and having gateway servers for other data.  Collaborators welcome! I’ll
post a short summary as a separate article.
Tim Berners-Lee                                ti…@info.cern.ch
World Wide Web project                        Tel: +41(22)767 3755
CERN                                        Fax: +41(22)767 7155
1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland                 (usual disclaimer)

Is the web dying? The state of affairs in 2016

  • Ads only take up 9% of the surface of the average webpage in the US
  • But the time needed to load ads represents over 50% of the total load time of page
  • On average, 53 third-parties are involved behind the scenes of a page, syncing data, cookies, etc.

.. On the mobile web if we add this up to slow connections, latency and slower cpu’s, a full page refresh on each click, it’s just not going to work.

.. Our performance measurement models need to get updated, many companies are still too focused on total page load time as the main performance metric. We need to look at first meaningful paint and time to interactive as our main metrics. These are the ones that have the most impact on user experience.
Also runtime performance is still mostly ignored, the fluidity of animations and scroll is of major importance.

  • .. Focus on the user; the end goal isn’t to make your site perform fast on any specific device, it’s to ultimately make users happy.
  • Respond to users immediately; acknowledge user input in under 100ms.
  • Render each frame in under 16ms and aim for consistency; users notice ‘jank’.

.. In the launch of instant articles, Facebook stated that, on average, a link to an external website on your newsfeed, takes 8s to load.

Is this a statement saying that we as developers can’t do web performance right? Is the future of publishing in this platforms?

.. And universal links are a way to link directly to a web app without going through the web.