Weaving the Web
by Tim Berners-Lee · first published 1999
48% recommend52% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Firsthand account by the web's inventor of how the World Wide Web was designed and why, including the design principles behind URLs, HTML and HTTP; suits anyone curious about the web's origins and early history.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The history and original design of the World Wide Web by its creator
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…desktops to cell phones as the #1 client now. You know the handler in iOS and Android that makes <select> boxes usable? That's an example of the principle of least power. I recommend reading his book "Weaving the Web" [2] if you want to learn more about the story behind the web. I'm very glad that TBL is getting this recognition. He is a genius and also has a very generous personality. People in the programming…
on “Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award” ↗> nowhere does it say they're the only members, or the most important members, or the members who did most of the work You could also try reading Tim Berners-Lee's Weaving the Web, where he gives them credit for Mosaic. They're probably not the only members (few projects have no outside involvement), but it's pretty clear from Berners-Lee's account that they're the ones pushing…
on “Ask YC: Why are startups secretive?” ↗Also, I feel like inspiration from the early web browsers should be taken. Tim Berners-Lee's book "Weaving the Web" fascinated me and I think that we can learn from both the current and the oldest designs of browsers.
on “Ask HN: What would you want in an ideal web browser?” ↗If you want to know all the intrinsic little details on Mosaic, NCSA and Netscape I would recommend the book Weaving the Web. It is written by Sir Tim Berners-Lee back in 1999 and is very close on the action.
on “NCSA Mosaic for X 1.0 available (1993)” ↗…the people were (Thiel, Musk, etc.). And then once a few years ago. - Chaos Monkeys -- about Facebook circa 2010, touches on YC a few years before that. Somewhat controversial, but a good book. - Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee -- talks about the story from CERN to MIT, etc. Echoing some other posts: - The Idea Factory - The Dream Machine (probably the densest and most informative computer history book…
on “Ask HN: Recommendations on books and documentaries on tech companies/people?” ↗The standard answers for this are: Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, about the origins of the Internet. Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee, about the origins of the World Wide Web.
on “Ask HN: Book recommendations about the history of the internet” ↗RIYL Where Wizards Stay Up Late - Katie Hafner Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web - Tim Berners-Lee The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires - Tim Wu Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of…
on “Books You Should Read: The Soul of a New Machine” ↗Some recommendations: - Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee: https://www.amazon.com/Weaving-Web-Original-Ultimate-Destiny... - Founders at Work: https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...
on “Ask HN: Best computer history book for curious teenager?” ↗I highly recommend reading Weaving the Web by TBL. He explains how URI (identifier) was the term he wanted but he settled on URL (locator) because of politics. The semantics are actually fairly important IMO. Does your URI represent a resource's…
on “Cool URIs can be ugly (2023)” ↗Folks who want a bit more background on this should read Tim Berners-Lee's book _Weaving the Web_ (which to some degree was written using the "Navipress" web browser since it also functioned as an interactive editor (for sites which supported the "Push" protocol --- later it was bought by AOL and…
on “1991 WWW-NeXT Implementation” ↗…things done. The book _CAD History_, available on-line at: https://www.shapr3d.com/history-of-cad/introduction has a bit on Xanadu from the Autodesk end of things. Or, contrast the far more prosaic _Weaving the Web_ by Tim Berners-Lee and esp. take note of compromises such as URL changing from Universal Resource Locator to Uniform Resource Locator.
on “Project Xanadu: Even More Hindsight (2025)” ↗I recommend reading the short book Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee.
on “The Static Site Paradox” ↗…as much as he thinks about computers. He thinks about the ecosystem -- the whole rather than the parts. The inventions and design principles were not an accident; you can read about them in his book "Weaving the Web".
on “For Inventor of Eudora, Great Fame, No Fortune (1997)” ↗…Gopherspace, for that matter.) They're not mutually exclusive; the Web is not HTML over HTTP. To focus on one example: Gopher space is a subset of the Web.* I encourage everybody to read TBL's book Weaving The Web and his other expository writing about the birth of the Web, the thinking that went into URIs/UDIs, and the absence of a universal information space—the hole that existed before he invented the Web to…
on “The Spartan Protocol Homepage” ↗> you could also consider a wider definition That's an understatement, which is sort of the whole point of what I wrote: > I encourage everybody to read TBL's book Weaving The Web and his other expository writing People who think they know what the Web is but thinks it doesn't include Gopherspace are simply wrong; they are ignorant—in the literal, denotative sense of the word.
on “The Spartan Protocol Homepage” ↗