The complete untold history of web development

An extended version of @fireship_dev’s tweet about the history of web development, patch filling a lot of important milestones/events that changed the landscape of web development: (Draft 1)

1987: GIFs invented
1989: HTTP invented
1991: HTML invented
1994: Netscape Navigator invented
1994: PHP invented
1995: JS invented to fix HTML
1996: CSS1 invented to fix HTML
1996: Flash invented to fix GIFs
1998: XML invented, CSS2 invented to fix CSS1
1998: SOAP invented
1999: CSS3 invented to fix CSS2
1999: HTML 4 created to fix HTML
2000: XHTML invented to fix HTML
2000: REST invented to fix SOAP
2001: IE6 invented to fix Netscape Navigator
2002: JSON invented to try to fix XML
2003: WordPress invented to fix HTML
2004: Web 2.0 invented to fix Web 1.0
2004: WhatWG invented to fix HTML, CSS, XML, JS 2004: Firefox invented to fix IE
2004: Canvas invented to fix Flash
2005: AJAX invented to fix ActiveXObject, Prototype/Dojo/scriptaculous invented to fix JS
2005: Ruby on Rails released to fix PHP / MVC
2006: Mootools, jQuery invented to fix Prototype, Dojo & JS
2006: YUI invented to fix HTML/CSS/JS, JSON adoption fixes XML, SASS invented to fix CSS
2006: jQuery used/popularized CDN to fix HTTP
2006: IE7 invented to fix IE6
2007: iPhone invented to fix Flash & desktop browsers, ExtJS invented to fix AJAX/JS, Blueprint CSS invented to fix CSS
2007: jQuery UI invented to fix jQuery/CSS
2008: HTML5 invented to fix HTML4
2008: Chrome invented to fix Firefox/IE
2008: 960 invented to fix Blueprint/CSS/760 Width layouts
2008: Full stack development invented to fix frontend/backend stack
2009: Flexbox invented to fix floats, Websockets invented to fix AJAX/XHR
2009: LESS invented to fix SASS
2009: CORS invented to fix SOP
2009: Cloudflare invented to fix DDOS
2009: Modernizr/polyfills invented to fix HTML/CSS/JS
2009: IE8 invented to fix IE7/IE6 hasLayout
2010: AngularJS/BackboneJS invented to fix jQuery/YUI
2010: Responsive design invented to fix unresponsive design
2010: Google Fonts invented to fix fonts
~2010: HTML5 doctype invented to fix XHTML doctype 2011: Bootstrap/Foundation invented to fix CSS/HTML/JS/jQuery
2011: EmberJS invented to fix JS/AngularJS/BackboneJS 2011: HTML5 Boilerplate invented to fix HTML
2012: Typescript invented to fix JS
2012: HTML5 adoption to fix XHTML
2012: MeteorJS invented to fix JS/jQuery/Ajax
2012: ionic invented to fix Responsive design
2013: React invented to fix AngularJS/BackboneJS 2014: Vue invented to fix React & Angular, HTTPS adoption embraced to fix HTTP
2014: Web 3.0 invented to fix Web 2.0
2014: Babel invented to fix ES6
2015: ES6 invented classes to fix JS Prototypal Inheritance
2015: Microsoft Edge invented to fix IE
2015: GraphQL invented to fix REST
2016: Angular 2 invented to fix AngularJS & React
2015: PolymerJS invented
2016: Next.js invented to fix React
2016: Nuxt.js invented to fix Vue
2017: Tailwind created to fix CSS
2017: CSS Grid invented to fix CSS/floats
2018: Google invents mobile first indexing to fix desktop first indexing
2019: Svelte 3 invented to fix React, Angular, Vue
2019: Mobile adoption fixes desktop dominance
2019: React hooks invented to fix React
2020: Vue 3 invented to fix React hooks
2020: Solid invented to fix React, Angular, Svelte, Vue
2020: HTMX 1.0 invented to fix React, Angular, Svelte, Vue, Solid
2021: React suspense invented to fix React, again 2023: Svelte Runes invented to fix Svelte
2023: WordPress still used on 43% of websites
2024: jQuery still used on 75% of websites

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