I invented Web 2.0 - Really, truly

OK, the title is a little tongue in cheek, but the following is all true.

In the dark days of early 2004, when many of us felt that innovation on the web was in big trouble due to the almost complete dominance of a particular, increasingly long in the tooth browser (Firefox had far from become the success it is today, and I, as well as many others didn't hold out a lot of hope for that happening, as good as the browser was) I wrote an email to a number of people I had known, or knew of, in the web standards arena, some whom I had been involved with at WASP for some years, others whom I knew from their more recent work.

I won't name any names, but many of them you would know very well from their writing, books, presentations and work.

It was sent on the 29th of May 2004 (Sydney time, so the 228th in much of the world :-)

My aim was to help build a "brand" (like the term Ajax is a brand for an existing set of technologies) for the standards based web. Something a little "sexier" than the "standards based web". Something that made developing for a specific browser look "old hat", old fashioned, which made standards based development the thing to do.

The ideal situation for web development would be "write once, run everywhere".
Web standards promise this for the web.

The combination of xhtml, Javascript/ECMAScript, the W3C DOM, CSS, the PNG graphic format and looking down the track a little SVG provides an almost unbelievably rich set of complimentary technologies that when supported in all contemporary browsers will if nothing else make web development easier and less expensive, allowing developers to concentrate their energies on solutions, not the problems thrown up by browser incompatibility, and take us a significant step closer to the world wide web.

This seeming nirvana is actually in sight.
Let's call it "the Web2.0 or some such "brand" that captures the spirit of a standards based web and which browser developers, tool developers, web developers and web user can all "buy into"

What is Web2.0?

It's a web built on top of the W3C and other recommendations and standards
Developers could think of it as a standardized set of APIs for the web.

1. xhtml 1.0
2. CSS 2.1
3. W3C DOM (which version?)
4. ECMAScript (1.what?)
5. PNG
6. JPEG
7. SVG

Morphic resonance or what?

OK, so this is not the Web 2.0 as we think of it today. It focusses mostly on technology, and on the front end, whereas the ideas floating around about web2.0 take in philosophies, business models, user experience design, and backend technologies. But a lot of it is there - the idea of the web as a standardized platform, reinforcing its openness and interoperability.

So why am I publishing this now?

Well, I just kick myself that I didn't over 18 months ago (before the folks at O'Rielly talk about coining the term). Usually, I'm not averse to shooting my mouth off in public. Just this once I shopped the idea round privately, as something WaSP might use to get some public attention.

Anyway, the term was far from non obvious, the internet/web oriented business magazine, Business 2.0 had been round for years, so Web2.0 was a bit of a no brainer really. In fact I think the email suggests I wasn't sure it was a great term at the time.

I'm sure most off us have had an idea we then put on the back burner, only to see someone else also have the idea, take it and run with it. More power to them.

The moral of the story? There aint one really, just thought I'd let you know.

john

tags Web 2.0