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Software & Languages
Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0 on May 22. Compatible with DOS programs, the
first successful version of Windows finally offered good enough performance to
satisfy PC users. For the new version, Microsoft revamped the interface and
created a design that allowed PCs to support large graphical applications for
the first time. It also allowed multiple programs to run simultaneously on its
Intel 80386 microprocessor.
Microsoft released Windows amid a $10 million publicity blitz. In addition to
making sure consumers knew about the product, Microsoft lined up a number of
other applications ahead of time that ran under Windows 3.0, including versions
of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. As a result, PCs moved toward the
user-friendly concepts of the Macintosh, making IBM and IBM-compatible
computers more popular.
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Berners-Lee proposal
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Networks
The World Wide Web was born when Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the
high-energy physics laboratory in Geneva, developed HyperText
Markup Language. HTML, as it is commonly known, allowed the
Internet to expand into the World Wide Web, using specifications he developed
such as URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and HTTP
(HyperText Transfer Protocol). A browser, such as
Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer, follows links and sends a query to a
server, allowing a user to view a site.
Berners-Lee based the World Wide Web on Enquire, a hypertext system he had
developed for himself, with the aim of allowing people to work together by
combining their knowledge in a global web of hypertext documents. With this
idea in mind, Berners-Lee designed the first World Wide Web server and browser
-- available to the general public in 1991. Berners-Lee founded the W3
Consortium, which coordinates World Wide Web development.
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