Detailed slide-by-slide text content extracted from this presentation.
Slide 01
Web Development
Evolution
- Technology / Web Development
- From static pages in 1991 to full-stack reactive applications in 2026 -- the 35-year journey that reshaped how humanity communicates, works, and creates.
- 1 / 22
Slide 02
The Birth of the Web (1989-1993)
- Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist at CERN, proposed a hypertext system in March 1989 to help researchers share documents. By December 1990, the first web page went live at info.cern.ch.
- March 1989
- Berners-Lee submits "Information Management: A Proposal" to CERN. His supervisor Mike Sendall writes "Vague but exciting" on the cover.
- December 1990
- First web server (a NeXT cube), first browser (WorldWideWeb.app), and first web page all go live at CERN.
- April 1993
- CERN releases the World Wide Web software into the public domain, making it free for anyone to use.
- 2 / 22
Slide 03
HTML: The Foundation
- HTML (HyperText Markup Language) started with just 18 tags. Berners-Lee drew from SGML to create a simple, forgiving markup language that anyone could author.
- <!-- The original 18 HTML tags (1991) -->
- <title> <nextid> <a> <isindex>
- <plaintext> <listing> <p> <h1>-<h6>
- <address> <hp1> <hp2> <dl>
- <dt> <dd> <ul> <li>
- <menu> <dir>
- HTML 2.0 (1995)
- First formal specification via RFC 1866. Added forms, tables, and image maps -- enabling interactive content for the first time.
- HTML 4.01 (1999)
- Introduced stylesheets, scripting, frames, and accessibility features. Separated structure from presentation.
- 3 / 22
Slide 04
The Browser Wars (1995-2001)
- Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer fought for dominance, introducing proprietary tags and incompatible features that fragmented the web.
- Netscape Navigator
- Launched Dec 1994. Peaked at 80%+ market share. Introduced <blink>, JavaScript, cookies, and frames. IPO in Aug 1995 at $29/share, closing at $58 -- igniting the dot-com era.
- Internet Explorer
- Microsoft bundled IE with Windows 95 OSR2. IE 4.0 (1997) introduced DHTML, ActiveX, and the DOM. By 2002, IE held 95% market share.
- "The browser war was really about who would control the standards of the internet."
- -- Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape
- 4 / 22
Slide 05
CSS: Styling the Web
- Cascading Style Sheets, proposed by Hakon Wium Lie in 1994, fundamentally changed how we think about web design by separating content from presentation.
- CSS1 (1996)
- Fonts, colors, text alignment, margins, borders, padding. Supported by IE 3 (partially) and Netscape 4 (poorly).
- CSS2 (1998)
- Positioning (absolute, relative, fixed), z-index, media types, and the cascade model. Full browser support took until ~2005.
- CSS3 (2011+)
- Modularized approach: Flexbox, Grid, animations, transitions, custom properties, media queries. Transformed layout design.
- Modern CSS (2022+)
- Container queries, :has() selector, cascade layers, subgrid, color-mix(), view transitions. CSS now handles what once required JavaScript.
- 5 / 22
Slide 06
JavaScript: From 10 Days to Everywhere
- Brendan Eich created JavaScript in 10 days in May 1995 at Netscape. Originally called Mocha, then LiveScript, it was renamed JavaScript as a marketing play alongside Java.
- Days to create
- 98%
- Websites use JS
- 17M+
- Developers
- GitHub language
- // JavaScript through the ages
- // 1995: Basic DOM manipulation
- document.write("Hello World");
- // 2006: jQuery simplification
- $('#element').fadeIn().addClass('active');
- // 2015: ES6 arrow functions, promises
- const getData = async () => {
- const res = await fetch('/api/data');
- return res.json();
- 6 / 22
Slide 07
The Dot-Com Boom & Bust
- Between 1995 and 2000, the NASDAQ rose from 1,000 to 5,048. Hundreds of web startups burned through venture capital before generating revenue. The crash wiped out $5 trillion in market value.
- Survivors
- Amazon (founded 1994) -- lost 90% of stock value but survived
- eBay (1995) -- profitable by 1998 before most peers
- Google (1998) -- launched after the peak, grew during the bust
- PayPal (1998) -- merged with X.com, acquired by eBay in 2002
- Casualties
- Pets.com -- $300M spent, shut down 268 days after IPO
- Webvan -- $830M invested in online groceries, bankrupt 2001
- Boo.com -- burned $188M in 18 months on a fashion site
- Kozmo.com -- free delivery of anything under an hour, never profitable
- 7 / 22
Slide 08
Web 2.0 & AJAX (2004-2010)
- The term "Web 2.0" was coined by Tim O'Reilly in 2004, describing a shift toward user-generated content, social networking, and rich interactive applications.
- AJAX Revolution
- Jesse James Garrett coined "AJAX" in February 2005. Gmail (launched 2004) demonstrated that web apps could rival desktop software by using XMLHttpRequest for asynchronous data loading -- no full page reloads.
- Key Platforms
- Facebook (2004) -- social graph + News Feed
- YouTube (2005) -- Flash video streaming
- Twitter (2006) -- real-time microblogging
- iPhone (2007) -- mobile-first web browsing
- "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform."
- -- Tim O'Reilly, 2004
- 8 / 22
Slide 09
jQuery & the Library Era
- John Resig released jQuery in January 2006. It solved the browser compatibility nightmare with a simple API: "Write less, do more."
- // Before jQuery (2005): browser-specific code
- if (document.all) { // IE
- document.all['myElement'].style.display = 'block';
- } else { // Netscape/Firefox
- document.getElementById('myElement').style.display = 'block';
- // With jQuery (2006): universal
- $('#myElement').show();
- // jQuery at its peak powered 74% of the top 10,000 websites
- Other influential libraries of the era: Prototype.js (2005), MooTools (2006), Dojo Toolkit (2004), YUI (2006 by Yahoo), and Ext JS (2007).
- 9 / 22
Slide 10
HTML5 & the Death of Flash
- HTML5, finalized in October 2014, brought native audio, video, canvas, geolocation, and local storage -- making Flash plugins obsolete.
- HTML5 Key Features
- <video> and <audio> -- native media playback
- <canvas> -- 2D drawing and game graphics
- Web Storage -- localStorage and sessionStorage
- WebSockets -- real-time bidirectional communication
- Geolocation API -- user location access
- Semantic tags -- <header>, <nav>, <article>, <section>
- Flash's Decline
- Steve Jobs published "Thoughts on Flash" in April 2010, refusing to support it on iOS. Key arguments: security vulnerabilities, battery drain, and the availability of open standards. Adobe officially ended Flash support on December 31, 2020, after 24 years.
- 10 / 22
Slide 11
Responsive Design & Mobile First
- Ethan Marcotte coined "responsive web design" in his landmark May 2010 article on A List Apart, combining fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries.
- 60%
- Mobile traffic (2026)
- 2015
- Google mobile-first index
- 320px
- iPhone original width
- 4.3B
- Mobile web users
- /* Responsive Design Pattern (2010+) */
- .container {
- width: 90%;
- max-width: 1200px;
- margin: 0 auto;
- @media (max-width: 768px) {
- .grid { grid-template-columns: 1fr; }
- .sidebar { display: none; }
- 11 / 22
Slide 12
Node.js: JavaScript Everywhere
- Ryan Dahl presented Node.js at JSConf EU in November 2009. By running Google's V8 engine on the server, it unified frontend and backend development under one language.
- Key Innovations
- Event-driven, non-blocking I/O model
- npm (2010) -- world's largest package registry (2M+ packages)
- Single language across the entire stack
- Enabled real-time apps like chat and collaboration tools
- Ecosystem Impact
- Node.js spawned an entire ecosystem: Express.js (2010), Socket.io (2010), Meteor (2012), and later Deno (2018) and Bun (2022). Companies like Netflix, LinkedIn, Walmart, and PayPal adopted it for performance-critical services.
- 12 / 22
Slide 13
The Rise of Frontend Frameworks
- Single-page applications (SPAs) demanded better state management and component models. Three frameworks reshaped frontend development.
- Angular (2010/2016)
- Google's AngularJS pioneered two-way data binding. Angular 2+ (2016) was a complete rewrite with TypeScript, modules, and dependency injection. Used by Google, Microsoft, and Samsung.
- React (2013)
- Facebook's Jordan Walke created React with a virtual DOM, one-way data flow, and JSX. Component-based architecture became the industry standard. Powers Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, and Airbnb.
- Vue.js (2014)
- Evan You built Vue after working at Google. Progressive framework with gentle learning curve. Single-file components, reactivity system. Adopted by Alibaba, GitLab, and Nintendo.
- Svelte (2016)
- Rich Harris's Svelte compiles components at build time, shipping minimal runtime code. "Write less code" philosophy. Acquired by Vercel in 2021.
- 13 / 22
Slide 14
Build Tools & Developer Experience
- As web applications grew complex, an ecosystem of build tools emerged to manage modules, transpile code, optimize assets, and improve developer workflows.
- Grunt / Gulp (2012-2014)
- Task runners that automated minification, compilation, linting, and testing. Configuration-based (Grunt) vs. code-based (Gulp) approaches.
- Webpack (2014)
- Module bundler that treated everything as a module -- JS, CSS, images. Loaders and plugins enabled complex build pipelines. Dominated for years.
- Babel (2014)
- JavaScript transpiler that let developers use ES6+ syntax while supporting older browsers. Made modern JavaScript accessible immediately.
- Vite (2020)
- Evan You created Vite using native ES modules for instant dev server startup and esbuild for fast bundling. HMR in milliseconds instead of seconds.
- Turbopack / Rspack (2022+)
- Rust-based bundlers promising 10-700x faster builds. Turbopack by Vercel, Rspack by ByteDance. The toolchain shifts to compiled languages.
- 14 / 22
Slide 15
TypeScript: Adding Types to JavaScript
- Microsoft released TypeScript in October 2012, created by Anders Hejlsberg (also creator of C# and Turbo Pascal). It adds static typing to JavaScript via a superset that compiles to plain JS.
- 78%
- Devs use TS (2025)
- 5th
- Most used language
- 50M+
- Weekly npm downloads
- 2012
- First release
- // TypeScript catches errors at compile time
- interface User {
- id: number;
- name: string;
- email: string;
- role: 'admin' | 'editor' | 'viewer';
- function getUser(id: number): Promise<User> {
- return fetch(`/api/users/${id}`).then(r => r.json());
- // Error: Argument of type 'string' is not
- // assignable to parameter of type 'number'
- getUser("abc"); // <-- caught before runtime
- 15 / 22
Slide 16
Backend Frameworks & APIs
- Server-side development evolved from CGI scripts and monolithic apps to microservices, REST APIs, and GraphQL endpoints.
- Evolution of Backend
- CGI/Perl (1993) -- first dynamic web pages
- PHP (1995) -- "Personal Home Page" tools, powers 77% of known server-side sites
- Ruby on Rails (2004) -- convention over configuration, 15-minute blog demo
- Django (2005) -- "batteries included" Python framework
- Express.js (2010) -- minimalist Node.js framework
- Go/Gin & Rust/Actix (2015+) -- performance-focused
- API Paradigms
- SOAP/XML (2000) -- verbose, enterprise-focused
- REST (2000) -- Roy Fielding's thesis, resource-based URLs
- GraphQL (2015) -- Facebook's query language, client-driven data
- gRPC (2016) -- Google's Protocol Buffers, high-performance RPC
- tRPC (2021) -- end-to-end type-safe APIs without schemas
- 16 / 22
Slide 17
Databases & Data Layer
- The web's data storage needs grew from simple file systems to distributed databases handling millions of queries per second.
- Relational (SQL)
- MySQL (1995) -- LAMP stack staple, powers WordPress
- PostgreSQL (1996) -- advanced features, JSON support, extensible
- SQLite (2000) -- embedded, serverless, used in every smartphone
- NoSQL Revolution
- MongoDB (2009) -- document store, flexible schema, JSON-like
- Redis (2009) -- in-memory key-value, caching, pub/sub
- Cassandra (2008) -- distributed, high availability, Facebook origin
- Modern Data Layer
- Prisma (2019) -- type-safe ORM for TypeScript
- PlanetScale (2021) -- serverless MySQL with branching
- Supabase (2020) -- open-source Firebase alternative on Postgres
- Drizzle ORM (2022) -- lightweight, SQL-like TypeScript ORM
- Edge Databases
- Cloudflare D1 -- SQLite at the edge
- Turso (libSQL) -- distributed SQLite
- Neon -- serverless Postgres with branching
- Data moves closer to users for lower latency
- 17 / 22
Slide 18
JAMstack & Static Site Generation
- The JAMstack architecture (JavaScript, APIs, Markup) emerged around 2015, championed by Netlify's Mathias Biilmann. Pre-rendered markup + client-side JS + API calls.
- Static Site Generators
- Jekyll (2008) -- Ruby-based, GitHub Pages default
- Hugo (2013) -- Go-based, blazing fast builds
- Gatsby (2015) -- React + GraphQL, rich plugin ecosystem
- Eleventy (2018) -- zero-config, template-agnostic
- Astro (2021) -- islands architecture, ships zero JS by default
- Why JAMstack Won
- Performance -- pre-built pages served from CDNs
- Security -- no server, no database to attack
- Scale -- CDN handles traffic spikes effortlessly
- DX -- Git-based workflows, instant previews
- Cost -- static hosting is nearly free
- 18 / 22
Slide 19
Full-Stack Meta-Frameworks
- Modern meta-frameworks blur the line between frontend and backend, offering server rendering, static generation, API routes, and edge computing in one package.
- Next.js (2016)
- Vercel's React framework. Server Components, App Router, ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration), middleware at the edge. Used by Hulu, TikTok, Nike, and the Washington Post. 5M+ weekly npm downloads.
- Remix (2021)
- By React Router creators. Web-standards focused: progressive enhancement, nested routes, form handling. Acquired by Shopify in 2022. Merged back into React Router v7.
- Nuxt (2016) / SvelteKit (2022)
- Nuxt for Vue, SvelteKit for Svelte. Both offer file-based routing, SSR/SSG, and excellent DX. SvelteKit uses adapters for deployment anywhere.
- Rendering Strategies
- SSR -- server-side rendering per request
- SSG -- static site generation at build time
- ISR -- incremental static regeneration
- Streaming -- progressive HTML delivery
- Partial prerendering -- static shell + dynamic holes
- 19 / 22
Slide 20
WebAssembly & Edge Computing
- WebAssembly (Wasm) brings near-native performance to the browser. Edge computing pushes server logic to 300+ global PoPs, reducing latency to single-digit milliseconds.
- WebAssembly
- W3C standard since 2019. Compile C, C++, Rust, Go to a binary format running in browsers at near-native speed. Used by Figma (30x faster than JS), Google Earth, AutoCAD Web, and Photoshop Web. WASI extends Wasm beyond browsers.
- Edge Platforms
- Cloudflare Workers (2017) -- V8 isolates, 300+ locations
- Vercel Edge Functions -- run Next.js middleware globally
- Deno Deploy (2021) -- native TypeScript at the edge
- Fastly Compute -- Wasm-based edge compute
- 20 / 22
Slide 21
AI-Assisted Development (2021-2026)
- AI tools are transforming how developers write, review, and ship code -- accelerating productivity while raising questions about quality and skill development.
- Code Generation
- GitHub Copilot (2021) -- AI pair programming, used by 1.8M+ developers
- Cursor (2023) -- AI-native code editor
- Claude Code (2025) -- agentic coding in the terminal
- v0 by Vercel -- AI-generated UI components from prompts
- Impact on Web Dev
- Boilerplate generation is nearly instant
- Testing and documentation automated
- Design-to-code pipelines shorten
- Focus shifts from syntax to architecture and UX decisions
- Junior developer role evolving rapidly
- 21 / 22
Slide 22
The Web in 2026 & Beyond
- The web platform continues to evolve at an accelerating pace. Key trends shaping the next era of web development:
- Platform Trends
- Server Components -- React Server Components mainstream
- Signals -- fine-grained reactivity (Angular, Solid, Preact, Vue)
- Web Components -- interoperable custom elements maturing
- CSS-only solutions replacing JS for animations, layouts, interactions
- Infrastructure Trends
- Edge-first architectures become the default
- Monorepos with Turborepo / Nx for large codebases
- Local-first software and CRDTs for offline collaboration
- Rust-based tooling (SWC, Biome, oxc, Rolldown)
- "The web always wins. It's the most successful and resilient platform ever created."
- -- Alex Russell, web standards advocate
- End of presentation
- 22 / 22
