February 25, 1993 - Marc Andreessen Pitches the IMG Tag
Mark Pilgrim has posted an intriguing look back at the birth of the <IMG> HTML tag…
On February 25, 1993, Marc Andreessen wrote:
I’d like to propose a new, optional HTML tag:
IMG
Required argument is SRC=”url”.
…
An example is:
<IMG SRC="file://foobar.com/foo/bar/blargh.xbm">(There is no closing tag; this is just a standalone tag.)
It’s fascinating to revisit the ensuing conversation between Marc Andreessen (Netscape founder), Dave Raggett (W3C fellow), Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web inventor), and others, especially thanks to Mark’s informative commentary.
After highlighting the players, the specs, the technology, the constraints, and the long-term implications of that WWW-Talk thread, Mark closes with a critical reminder to developers and entrepreneurs everywhere (emphasis mine):
But none of this answers the original question: why do we have an <img> element? Why not an <icon> element? Or an <include> element? Why not a hyperlink with an include attribute, or some combination of rel values? Why an <img> element? Quite simply, because Marc Andreessen shipped one, and shipping code wins.
Read the whole post at dive into mark: Why do we have an IMG element?
(hat tip: @veen)
Wow. 1993. When making a TSR program written in 8086 assembly work was the highlight of my day…
I wonder if 15 years from now we’d look back on XML and say the same things…why do we have an “all”?