Web 1.0

Past State of the Web


Web 1.0 refers to the environment of the Web before Web 2.0. This term was not coined at the time, but rather after Web 2.0 was coined by O’Reilly media. Both of the terms refer to a collection of techniques used to design Web pages. Since Web 2.0 was coined before Web 1.0, the definition of Web 1.0 is very dependent on the definition of Web 2.0, i.e., it comprises the features of the Web that Web 2.0 happened to be lacking between the years of 1994 and 2004. Web 1.0 possesses three defining characteristics. First, Web 1.0 pages were static; this means that the pages were displays for information, but the pages were rarely updated. The page was informative, but did not provide a reason for the user to return to the site. Second, Web 1.0 pages were not interactive; users were not invited to provide feedback, comments, or edit the page content. Last, Web 1.0 applications were proprietary, i.e., closed source. Companies had a vested interest in keeping their source code private so that other users could not copy it. With the emergence of Web 2.0, open source technology encouraged users to copy code and contribute to the development of collaborative applications.

Web 1.0 layouts can still be utilized for many purposes. For example, if a restaurant is looking to post their menu online for customers to view, they wouldn’t want the menu to be editable, or even feedback-prone because it is meant to be read-only media. This is not the context in which visitors of the site need interactivity. Web 1.0 was also beneficial in preserving information’s objectivity. In Web 2.0, information has a tendency to be biased due to the interactive elements. An example of this is Wikipedia, whose content can be edited by visitors. Those visitors may feel that they have an objective duty to post informative information, but other visitors may have a personal agenda in which certain facts may be left out. This creates uncertainty when viewing information on Wikipedia, a concern that was not considered a huge issue in Web 1.0.

  can be thought of as a library. It can be used as a source of information, but users cannot contribute to, or change the information in any way.