Pixels Articles

Introduction
This is the first article in a series of articles that will be featured in the iWinkler magazine about the World Wide Web and how websites work. If you have always wondered how the internet started, what happens behind the scenes of a website and how to make the most out of a website, keep reading.

The Beginning of the Web and the W3C
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW or Web, for short). Up until then, the internet already existed (since 1950), but it was used only internally in large companies, schools and government agencies. Berners-Lee made it possible for the general public to use the internet through their personal computers by inventing a technology and a language that allowed anyone to communicate via the internet. In the beginning, websites were constructed using a very simple, user-friendly programming language called Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML). This language was written so that any computer user would be able to create their own websites. Websites were very simple, consisting of only text. At the time websites were not used for marketing or selling products, but soon companies discovered the value in having their products available for viewing on the Web. They could now share information about their products and services with anyone in the world. A natural transition from simple text to complex web sites with graphics and multiple pages occurred.

As a result of the new, and quite complex websites, Berners-Lee and some other developers saw the need for an organization to govern the Web. In 1994 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was created, with Berners-Lee as the director. The W3C began to establish web standards and guidelines starting in 1996 for website developers to use when creating websites. Nearly 100 such standards have been published, and are officially called W3C Recommendations. These recommendations, and many other publications are all available on the W3C website at www.w3.org, a website spanning over 2 million pages of content!

Growing Pains
There are basically two ways to build a website. One way, which is the most popular, is to use tables to lay out the content of a website. As a result of the rapid growth of the Web, developers used tables to lay out websites because there was no other way to do it at the time. The alternative to tables is to use a language called CSS to layout the content of the site. This language was developed by the W3C in 1996 specifically for this purpose, but because tables came first, CSS has always remained the less popular method. According to the W3C, using tables to lay out a website is improper and does not comply with the W3C Recommendations. This is because tables are intended to layout tabular data, not graphics and content. For more information about CSS and tables, please visit www.pixelsonline.ca and click on “CSS vs. Tables” on the right-hand side of the website under News and Articles.

A Brighter Future
As new developers come into the world of the Web, the old way of developing websites is becoming less popular. However, although it is nearly impossible to come to conclusive numbers, it is still quite clear that well over the majority of developers do not attempt to construct websites using the W3C Recommendations. Hope for a brighter future comes because of the recent awareness among internet browser developers. Companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla (the 3 top browser developers) are working on creating, or have already created, their browsers to comply fully with the W3C Recommendations. This is important because it will mean websites that are developed using tables for page layout will be discouraged by the browsers themselves, causing website developers to be encouraged to use CSS to layout their websites.

Practical Application
You may be asking yourself, “why should I care?”. Although it is not necessary for you to know all of the W3C Recommendations, it is important that you are aware of them when deciding on who should build your website. An example of this in another industry is the construction building codes. In order to save money and future problems, you will make sure that the contractor you hire complies with building codes. These building codes are put in place by authorities in the industry and are there for the protection of both the contractors and the building owners. The same is true with the W3C Recommendations.

See part 2 for further reading…