WebFund 2024F Lecture 1: Difference between revisions
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==Video== | |||
Video from the lecture given on September 5, 2024 is now available: | |||
* [https://homeostasis.scs.carleton.ca/~soma/webfund-2024f/lectures/comp2406-2024f-lec01-20240905.m4v video] | |||
* [https://homeostasis.scs.carleton.ca/~soma/webfund-2024f/lectures/comp2406-2024f-lec01-20240905.cc.vtt auto-generated captions] | |||
==Notes== | |||
<pre> | |||
Fundamentals of Web Applications - Fall 2024 | |||
-------------------------------------------- | |||
What is the web? | |||
- the web is not the Internet | |||
- Internet started in the early 1970's | |||
- the web is from the early 1990's | |||
The Internet was created to allow computers to be shared | |||
- computers were very expensive | |||
- justification: sharing would reduce costs | |||
The world wide web was just an application running on the Internet | |||
- for creating hypertext, i.e., linked documents | |||
- for sharing information (i.e., between scientists) | |||
Not the first hypertext system | |||
- Memex | |||
- Xanadu | |||
- Gopher, WAIS | |||
Big enabler of the rise of the web - PC's got powerful enough to join the Internet | |||
- could run UNIX-like operating systems (modern OSs) | |||
- important because you need to do networking and UI at the same time | |||
Needed because for the web to take off, it had to be easy to create web servers! | |||
Before the web, the Internet was largely "academic" | |||
(companies were on it, but wasn't really used for business except email) | |||
The web made the Internet interesting to the general population | |||
- easy to use! | |||
Remember that there were easy-to-use online systems, but they were commercial | |||
- CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL | |||
- had proprietary hypertext systems | |||
- some had e-commerce | |||
- also BBSs | |||
The web has to be understood as an evolved system | |||
- pieces were designed, but the whole grew organically | |||
- means that there are lots of...rough spots | |||
The web is all about compatibility | |||
- so things can be accessed anywhere | |||
- old stuff still works | |||
So mistakes of the past in general can't be fixed | |||
- but there are exceptions | |||
HTTP - hypertext transfer protocol | |||
- requests & responses | |||
- as part of each request, there are key/value pairs containing various bits of info | |||
- requested language, etc | |||
- one field contains the page that sent us to this request | |||
- known as "Referer" | |||
Be aware of this, try to accept it rather than get frustrated (then you'll just be frustrated with web apps forever) | |||
But some things are weird for good reason | |||
- for example, why can't you precisely control the layout of a web page?! | |||
- because the web was designed to adapt to different | |||
screen sizes and different web browsers, | |||
potentially ones that accommodate differently-abled | |||
individuals | |||
- but people fight against this, and so we get lots of pages that are not accessible, break on different screens, but still aren't pixel-perfect | |||
</pre> | |||
Latest revision as of 18:35, 10 September 2024
Video
Video from the lecture given on September 5, 2024 is now available:
Notes
Fundamentals of Web Applications - Fall 2024
--------------------------------------------
What is the web?
- the web is not the Internet
- Internet started in the early 1970's
- the web is from the early 1990's
The Internet was created to allow computers to be shared
- computers were very expensive
- justification: sharing would reduce costs
The world wide web was just an application running on the Internet
- for creating hypertext, i.e., linked documents
- for sharing information (i.e., between scientists)
Not the first hypertext system
- Memex
- Xanadu
- Gopher, WAIS
Big enabler of the rise of the web - PC's got powerful enough to join the Internet
- could run UNIX-like operating systems (modern OSs)
- important because you need to do networking and UI at the same time
Needed because for the web to take off, it had to be easy to create web servers!
Before the web, the Internet was largely "academic"
(companies were on it, but wasn't really used for business except email)
The web made the Internet interesting to the general population
- easy to use!
Remember that there were easy-to-use online systems, but they were commercial
- CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL
- had proprietary hypertext systems
- some had e-commerce
- also BBSs
The web has to be understood as an evolved system
- pieces were designed, but the whole grew organically
- means that there are lots of...rough spots
The web is all about compatibility
- so things can be accessed anywhere
- old stuff still works
So mistakes of the past in general can't be fixed
- but there are exceptions
HTTP - hypertext transfer protocol
- requests & responses
- as part of each request, there are key/value pairs containing various bits of info
- requested language, etc
- one field contains the page that sent us to this request
- known as "Referer"
Be aware of this, try to accept it rather than get frustrated (then you'll just be frustrated with web apps forever)
But some things are weird for good reason
- for example, why can't you precisely control the layout of a web page?!
- because the web was designed to adapt to different
screen sizes and different web browsers,
potentially ones that accommodate differently-abled
individuals
- but people fight against this, and so we get lots of pages that are not accessible, break on different screens, but still aren't pixel-perfect