Simon Willison's Weblog: w3c

1991-WWW-NeXT-Implementation on GitHub

2024-08-01T21:15:29+00:00

1991-WWW-NeXT-Implementation on GitHub

I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole today trying to answer that question about when World Wide Web Day was first celebrated. I found my way to www.w3.org/History/1991-WWW-NeXT/Implementation/ - an Apache directory listing of the source code for Tim Berners-Lee's original WorldWideWeb application for NeXT!

The code wasn't particularly easy to browse: clicking a .m file would trigger a download rather than showing the code in the browser, and there were no niceties like syntax highlighting.

So I decided to mirror that code to a new repository on GitHub. I grabbed the code using wget -r and was delighted to find that the last modified dates (from the early 1990s) were preserved ... which made me want to preserve them in the GitHub repo too.

I used Claude to write a Python script to back-date those commits, and wrote up what I learned in this new TIL: Back-dating Git commits based on file modification dates.

End result: I now have a repo with Tim's original code, plus commit dates that reflect when that code was last modified.

Tags: git, github, history, tim-berners-lee, w3c

Today's research challenge: why is August 1st "World Wide Web Day"?

2024-08-01T17:34:29+00:00

Today's research challenge: why is August 1st "World Wide Web Day"?

Here's a fun mystery. A bunch of publications will tell you that today, August 1st, is "World Wide Web Day"... but where did that idea come from?

It's not an official day marked by any national or international organization. It's not celebrated by CERN or the W3C.

The date August 1st doesn't appear to hold any specific significance in the history of the web. The first website was launched on August 6th 1991.

I posed the following three questions this morning on Mastodon:

Who first decided that August 1st should be "World Wide Web Day"?
Why did they pick that date?
When was the first World Wide Web Day celebrated?

Finding answers to these questions has proven stubbornly difficult. Searches on Google have proven futile, and illustrate the growing impact of LLM-generated slop on the web: they turn up dozens of articles celebrating the day, many from news publications playing the "write about what people might search for" game and many others that have distinctive ChatGPT vibes to them.

One early hint we've found is in the "Bylines 2010 Writer's Desk Calendar" by Snowflake Press, published in January 2009. Jessamyn West spotted that on the book's page in the Internet Archive, but it merely lists "World Wide Web Day" at the bottom of the July calendar page (clearly a printing mistake, the heading is meant to align with August 1st on the next page) without any hint as to the origin:

I found two earlier mentions from August 1st 2008 on Twitter, from @GabeMcCauley and from @iJess.

Our earliest news media reference, spotted by Hugo van Kemenade, is also from August 1st 2008: this opinion piece in the Attleboro Massachusetts Sun Chronicle, which has no byline so presumably was written by the paper's editorial board:

Today is World Wide Web Day, but who cares? We'd rather nap than surf. How about you? Better relax while you can: August presages the start of school, a new season of public meetings, worries about fuel costs, the rundown to the presidential election and local races.

So the mystery remains! Who decided that August 1st should be "World Wide Web Day", why that date and how did it spread so widely without leaving a clear origin story?

If your research skills are up to the challenge, join the challenge!

Tags: history, internet-archive, w3c, web, mastodon, slop

How did slashes become the standard path separators for URLs?

2012-02-10T14:51:00+00:00

My answer to How did slashes become the standard path separators for URLs? on Quora

I'm going to take an educated guess and say it's because of unix file system conventions. Early web servers mapped the URL to a path on disk inside the document root - this is still how most static sites work today.

Tags: internet, urls, w3c, quora

Some questions about the "blocking" of HTML5

2010-02-16T09:11:21+00:00

When people say that the publication of HTML5 "blocked" by Larry Masinter's "formal objection", what exactly do they mean?
Why does the private w3c-archive mailing list exist? Why can't anyone reveal what happens on there? What are the consequences for doing so? Who gets to be on that list in the first place?
Can anyone raise a "formal objection"?
Is anyone calling for the HTML Working Group to be "rechartered"? If so, what does that involve?
If there are concerns about the inclusion of Canvas 2D in the specification, why were these not resolved earlier?

Some background reading. I was planning to fill in answers as they arrive, but I screwed up the moderation of the comments and got flooded with detailed responses - I strongly recommend reading the comments.

Tags: adobe, html5, larry-masinter, w3c

The Widening HTML5 Chasm

2010-02-15T21:51:56+00:00

The Widening HTML5 Chasm

Simon St. Laurent’s commentary on the HTML5/Adobe situation. The most interesting piece I’ve read on it so far.

Tags: adobe, html5, simon-st-laurent, w3c, whatwg

Quoting Larry Masinter

2010-02-15T21:31:02+00:00

No part of HTML5 is, or was ever, "blocked" in the W3C HTML Working Group -- not HTML5, not Canvas 2D Graphics, not Microdata, not Video -- not by me, not by Adobe. Neither Adobe nor I oppose, are fighting, are trying to stop, slow down, hinder, oppose, or harm HTML5, Canvas 2D Graphics, Microdata, video in HTML, or any of the other significant features in HTML5. Claims otherwise are false. Any other disclaimers needed?

— Larry Masinter

Tags: adobe, canvas, html5, larry-masinter, w3c

Quoting Ian Hickson

2010-02-15T19:38:29+00:00

At this point all I could honestly tell you from the point of view of the editor of several of the HTML5 documents being held up is that the W3C have said they're won't publish without the objections being resolved, and that the objection is from Adobe. I can't even tell what I could do to resolve the objection. It seems to be entirely a process-based objection.

— Ian Hickson

Tags: adobe, canvas, hixie, html5, ian-hickson, process, w3c

An Unnofficial Q&A about the Discontinuation of the XHTML2 WG

2009-07-06T12:27:18+00:00

An Unnofficial Q&A about the Discontinuation of the XHTML2 WG

By Henri Sivonen.

Tags: faq, henri-sivonen, html, html2, html5, w3c, web-standards, xhtml

Quoting Alan Storm

2009-07-04T12:51:15+00:00

Yes, it'd be nice if everyone kept up to date on the progress of the various W3C working groups. They don't. There are a lot of people who asked what professional markup looked like and were told (right or wrong) that XHTML was the future. So they went ahead and learned XHTML, built their websites and chose watching a DVD or spending time with their kids over watching Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby do battle over Postel's Law. Now all of a sudden they're told XHTML is dead. Some wailing and gnashing of teeth is to be expected. What's needed is less "boy aren't I smarter than them" snideness, and more Hey, here's what's up.

— Alan Storm

Tags: alan-storm, html5, mark-pilgrim, postelslaw, sam-ruby, w3c, web-standards, xhtml, xhtml2

FAQs about the future of XHTML

2009-07-03T01:37:51+00:00

FAQs about the future of XHTML

The XHTML 2 Working Group charter will not be renewed after 2009—as far as the W3C are concerned, XHTML5 is the future of XHTML.

Tags: w3c, web-standards, xhtml, xhtml2, xhtml5

XHTML - myths and reality

2008-10-07T16:56:31+00:00

XHTML - myths and reality

Useful overview of XHTML from Tina Holmboe of the W3C’s XHTML Working Group, which suggests considering HTML 4.01 strict unless you need mixed namespaces for things like MathML. I’ve been storing this blog’s content as XHTML but serving as HTML for several years now.

Tags: html, mathml, namespaces, tinaholmboe, w3c, xhtml

querySelector and querySelectorAll

2008-02-08T11:21:03+00:00

querySelector and querySelectorAll

WebKit now supports the W3C Selectors API. Expect the various JavaScript libraries to add this as an optimisation to achieve massive speedups (Prototype are already working on it).

Tags: javascript, libraries, prototype-js, queryselector, safari, selectors, w3c, webkit

Cross-Site XMLHttpRequest

2008-01-09T23:57:00+00:00

Cross-Site XMLHttpRequest

“Firefox 3 implements the W3C Access Control working draft, which gives you the ability to do XMLHttpRequests to other web sites”—you can mark a document as available for cross-domain requests using either an Access-Control HTTP header or an XML processing instruction.

Via John Resig

Tags: accesscontrol, ajax, crossdomain, firefox, firefox3, http, javascript, john-resig, mozilla, w3c, xml, xmlhttprequest

The future of web standards

2007-12-17T13:16:43+00:00

The future of web standards

Nice analysis from James Bennett, who suggests that successful open source projects (Linux, Python, Perl etc) could be used as the model for a more effective standards process, and points out that Ian Hickson is something of a BDFL for the WHAT-WG.

Tags: bdfl, ian-hickson, james-bennett, linux, open-source, perl, python, standards, w3c, web-standards, whatwg

Quoting Alex Russell

2007-12-16T23:33:44+00:00

To get a better future, not only do we need a return to "the browser wars", we need to applaud and use the hell out of "non-standard" features until such time as there's a standard to cover equivalent functionality. Non-standard features are the future, and suggesting that they are somehow "bad" is to work against your own self-interest.

— Alex Russell

Tags: alex-russell, browserwars, css, standards, w3c

google-axsjax

2007-11-14T17:18:38+00:00

google-axsjax

“The AxsJAX framework can inject accessibility enhancements into existing Web 2.0 applications using any of several standard Web techniques”—including bookmarklets and Greasemonkey. The enhancements conform to W3C ARIA, supported by Firefox 2.0 and later.

Via Google Code Blog

Tags: accessibility, ajax, aria, axsjax, bookmarklets, firefox, google, greasemonkey, javascript, w3c

The CSS working group is irrelevant

2007-06-06T10:10:13+00:00

The CSS working group is irrelevant

“Someone really needs to do to CSS what the WHATWG has been doing to HTML”.

Tags: css, hixie, ian-hickson, stardands, w3c, whatwg

Problems with XHTML content type.

2007-05-30T14:13:00+00:00

My answer to Problems with XHTML content type. on Ask MetaFilter

The first question you should be asking is why you need XHTML - if you don't have a specific reason (the need for XML parsers to be able to consume your pages) you're much better off with HTML 4.01 for now, and HTML 5 in probably a year or so.

As for serving up XHTML, you need to check the browser's HTTP_ACCEPT header to decide whether or not to serve it (IE, including IE 7, can't handle it at all and will offer to download it).

< ?phpbr>
if ( stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT"],"application/xhtml+xml") ) {
  header("Content-type: application/xhtml+xml");
}
else {
  header("Content-type: text/html");
}
?>< />

Be warned: there are a TON of gotchas involved in serving using the application/xhtml+xml content type, especially relating to JavaScript. This article from 2003 is still very relevant.

Then at 15:07:

Forgot to mention: the best reason to use XHTML is if you want to embed SVG or MathML in your pages. Again, that trick won't work in any existing version of Internet Explorer.

Generally though it's best avoided. I served my personal site in XHTML with the correct content type for several years; it was a nuisance. The XML error model is fundamentally unsuited to the Web.

One of the reasons HTML 5 is so interesting is that it attempts to specify an error model that is as close as possible to the way actual browsers work today.

Tags: ask-metafilter, standards, w3c, xhtml

W3C Relaunches HTML Activity

2007-03-07T22:34:22+00:00

W3C Relaunches HTML Activity

“XHTML has proved valuable in other markets” == XHTML on the public Web has failed. Long live HTML!

Via The WHATWG Blog

Tags: html, w3c, xhtml

Tim Berners-Lee: Reinventing HTML

2006-10-28T00:27:55+00:00

Tim Berners-Lee: Reinventing HTML

“It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally.” W3C to work on HTML again.

Tags: html, html5, tim-berners-lee, w3c, web-standards

W3C Web APIs Working Group

2005-11-18T15:36:37+00:00

W3C Web APIs Working Group

A welcome addition.

Via planet::dojo

Tags: w3c, webapis

TBL on TLDs

2004-05-22T06:23:35+00:00

Tim Berners Lee (how many TLA celebrities is that now?): New Top Level Domains Considered Harmful. Read the whole thing - Tim blows the .xxx and .mobi proposals out of the water and takes a neat swipe at for-profit registrars in the process. Reading this, the main thing that struck me is how incredibly forward thinking TBL really is. People complain about the long duration of W3C processes and the futuristic nature of the semantic web but the W3C are trying to build technologies that will still be relevant ten or twenty years from now. When you consider the longevity of TCP/IP, this is a really smart strategy. It's a shame so many people involved with the web have trouble thinking past the next few months.

Tags: domains, tim-berners-lee, urls, w3c