browsers
once upon a time, the world was dark. the internet had been invented, used by colleges and universities to exchange data and peer-reviewed articles, and mainly for military-related purposes. then mysteriously, the internet was opened to the public, and internet access providers took over, but didn't do much other than sell access to the internet. but some programmers off in some research institute, if I remember correctly, had a much more exciting idea for the internet. they created a new kind of program they called a browser. before the browser, a good website looked like a collection of typewritten pages, and that was wonderful. if you knew the right URLs, you could read about oil exploration in the Sudan, or physics experiments in Antarctica, or the latest scandals in hockey. browsers transformed the internet. you could receive and see pictures! within minutes, it seemed like, you could receive and see animations. videos became available. streaming fonts. suddenly the internet was exciting, and people kept finding ways to make it more exciting, and some of us old fuddy-duddies were left behind, still learning how to make text flow around a picture. or how to make a webpage show up on screens of different resolutions. despite us old fuddy-duddies, browsers transformed the internet from images of typewritten pages to what we know today. Viva browsers! Bravo browser programmers! thank you for bringing electricity to a cave-dweller's world!
No comments:
Post a Comment