Core Web Technologies

The World-Wide Web was the brainchild of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. It was conceived as a way to share information across the Internet; in Sir Berners-Lee’s own words describing the idea as he first conceived it:

This project is experimental and of course comes without any warranty whatsoever. However, it could start a revolution in information access.

Clearly that revolution has come to pass. The web has become part of our daily lives.

There were three key technologies that Sir Tim Berners-Lee proposed and developed. These remain the foundations upon which the web runs even today. Two are client-side, and determine how web pages are interpreted by browsers. These are:

• Hyper-Text Markup Language
• Cascading Style Sheets

They are joined with a third key client-side technology, which began as a scripting language developed by Brendan Eich to add interactivity to web pages in the Netscape Navigator.

• JavaScript

You have already studied each of these core client-side web technologies in CIS 115, and used them to create your own personal web pages.

The other foundational web technology created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the communication protocol used to request and transmit web pages and other files across the Internet:

• Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol

We will review each of these technologies briefly, before we see how ASP.NET builds upon them to deliver web applications.