I WAS THERE: The History of the Web

The evolution of the web was anything but a straight line. From the birth of HTML to the chaos of browser wars, the rise and fall of Flash, and the utility-first elegance of Tailwind — it’s been a wild ride.
We’ve seen developers lose their hair over IE6 and tear up with joy at their first successful JSON response.
Every new technology brought hope; every new standard brought heated debates.
I was there.
There was code. There was chaos. But somehow, things worked. Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

📜 Timeline of the Web

• 1991 — HTML is born
  Tim Berners-Lee published the first web page. No styling, no interactivity — just pure potential. A revolution dressed as Hello World.

• 1993 — Mosaic browser
  Images arrived. Clicking links hurt a little less. The web started evolving from document collection to user experience.

• 1995 — JavaScript (Mocha → LiveScript → JavaScript)
  Brendan Eich wrote a scripting language in 10 days. Ever since, frontend developers haven’t known peace.

• 1995–2000 — IE vs. Netscape
  Netscape took the lead, then Microsoft buried it by bundling IE with Windows. Standards? What standards?

• 1996 — CSS
  A noble attempt to separate content from presentation. Looked good on paper — the browsers had other ideas.

• 2000–2005 — Rise of MySQL
  Dominated the LAMP stack alongside PHP. Lightweight and everywhere.

• 2000–2005 — The Macromedia era
  Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks — web design got flashy and visual. The drag-and-drop website craze began.

• 2001 — IE6
  The dark plague. I still remember the sheer hours spent wrestling with its broken box model, the conditional comments littering my HTML like arcane sigils...

• 2005 — The AJAX revolution
  Asynchronous requests without full page reloads. “You submitted a comment without a refresh?” — pure magic.

• 2006 — jQuery
  The $(document).ready() era. DOM pain reduced. Community exploded (then imploded).

• 2006 — MooTools
  Cleaner, more structured, but jQuery stole the spotlight. Deserved better.

• 2006 — Adobe acquired Macromedia
  Flash’s fate was sealed. HTML5 started its ascent. Apple rejected Flash on mobile.

• 2006–2010 — Rise of JSON
  When XML got out of hand, JSON showed up. Lightweight, human-readable. “Remember XPath? Yeah, no thanks.”

• 2006 — ActionScript 3.0 & ECMA alignment
  Strongly typed, class-based, JS-adjacent. It was TypeScript before TypeScript.

• 2007 — Flash & ActionScript peak
  Rich interactions and animations! Then JavaScript matured, mobile rose, and Flash flatlined.

• 2008 — Bootstrap (by Twitter)
  Responsive design became accessible. Grid systems became religion.

• 2008 — Google Chrome + V8 Engine
  Fast, slick, and updated automatically. Finally, sanity in browser land.

• 2009 — Node.js
  JavaScript hit the server. “Wait, I write both frontend and backend now?”

• 2009 — Oracle acquires Sun (Java + MySQL)
  The open-source world held its breath.

• 2010 — npm
  Package manager of the people. Small utilities, big problems.

• 2010 — AngularJS
  Declarative bindings, controllers, dirty checking — the SPA era had begun.

• 2011–2014 — Framework flood
  Ember, Knockout, Backbone — everyone wrote a framework. Frontend identity crisis ensued.

• 2010+ — MongoDB and the NoSQL rise
  JSON met databases. Structure? Optional.

• 2010+ — Python & Django
  Clean syntax, batteries included. Later got async powers too.

• 2011 — Node.js + Express
  Minimal, fast, event-driven. RESTful APIs found their backbone.

• 2012+ — Laravel and the PHP renaissance
  Elegant syntax, Eloquent ORM, Blade templates — PHP felt cool again.

• 2013 — The Ruby on Rails effect
  Convention over configuration. Startups loved it.

• 2013+ — RESTful API madness
  Every app had a GET /v1/user/me.

• 2013 — React
  Facebook shook things up. Virtual DOM changed the game.

• 2015+ — ASP.NET Core & .NET revival
  Cross-platform! Cloud-ready! Enterprise-worthy!

• 2015 — Microsoft buries IE with Edge
  Declare a holiday: Independent Web Day — June 15, 2022.

• 2015 — ES6
  JS got its groove back — let, const, arrow functions.

• 2016 — TypeScript rising
  Typed JS, backed by Microsoft. .ts files became the new normal.

• 2016 — Vue.js, 2019 — Svelte
  Lightweight, community-driven, and oh-so-satisfying to write.

• 2017 — Next.js
  SSR, file-based routing, fullstack in a box.

• 2020 — Remix
  Rethought data-fetching. Route loaders and progressive enhancement FTW.

• 2020 — Tailwind CSS
  Utility-first philosophy ended CSS fatigue.

• 2020+ — Future of the Web
  React Server Components, Edge Functions, WebAssembly, AI-powered UI, Vite, Bun, TurboPack...

I’ve been here for 25+ years. I’ve coded, optimized, and survived.
Each phase brought a new headache, but each headache came with a little triumph.
“The web has never been this beautiful, never been this chaotic.”

...hey Gem/GPT/Claude, I need a website like ...

Also, this post is posted via a custom GPTs. New ERA is comin, why we need interfaces while we can do it by talking.