[rbldnsd] OT: DHTML in 1994 (was: Re: how to make public (DNS)RBL?)

[Steven Champeon]

OK, I can't resist.

on Sat, May 16, 2009 at 08:49:54PM +0000, Chris. wrote:
> > On Sat, 16 May 2009 12:31:31 -0400, Steven Champeon wrote...
> >> /me resists urge to also school you on DHTML, which is not the same
> >> as Javascript, and certainly wasn't around in 1994. ;)
> 
> P.S.
> ...and I'll refrain from the /overwhelming/ urge to rebute your
> insinuation to the contrary. ;)

Heh. Well, I have been working with SGML and Web technologies since
1993, and I can tell you with certainty that there was no "DHTML" in
1994. I wrote my book, "Building Dynamic HTML GUIs", in 1997-1998;
although you could do some stuff with the Netscape Layers DOM in 1996,
Javascript wasn't even introduced until December 1995. Internet Explorer
didn't have JScript support until 3.0, released in August 1996. As DHTML
refers to the intersection of Javscript, markup, and CSS, you're really
looking at 1997 before there was sufficient cross-browser support for
the basic functionalities (despite the nightmare of incompatibilities,
resolving which took up a good chunk of my book) of DHTML for it to be
considered as having "arrived" in any meaningful sense.

So, you'd be hard pressed to be doing any script-driven HTML in the
browser in 1994. And as client-side script-driven interactivity is
what most people are referring to when they say "DHTML", I stand by
my assertion that you're off your nut. :-)

As for "Web 2.0", that's a marketing term, or as Neil Stephenson
would say, "bullshytte", and if there's any hard kernel of truth
in it it would have to be formed around AJAX, Asynchronous Javascript
and XML, support for which didn't arrive in IE until 5.0, in 1999.

Apologies to the list. I plead XKCD #386.

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