1989: World Wide Web project initially proposed at CERN (March)
1990: The HTML Document Type Designed at CERN.
CERN develops the first Web software for the NExT computer system. (December)
1991: CERN’s browser released to a limited audience.
1992: The first update of CERN’s browser is released; CERN begins publicizing the WWW project (January)
1993: NCSA releases the first alpha of Marc Andreesen’s Mosaic for X browser. (February).
The HTML 1.0 specifications are released as an Internet draft by the IETF;s Internet Information Resources (IIR) working group. The draft eventually expires before it’s ever published. (July)
NCSA releases the Mosaic browser for PCs, Macintoshes, and X Windows computers (September)
Web engineer Dave Raggett (of Hewlett Packard) proposes the first HTML+ specification, which includes forms, tables, and equations. (November)
1994: NCSA’s Marc Andreesen and Silicon Graphics founder James Clark form Netscape (originally called Mosaic Communications Corp.)
Dan Connolly releases an HTML test suite with a Document Type Definition (DTD) to test parsing (a DTD is what SGML uses to describe its languages, and consists of a set of markup tags and their interpretations. (April)
MIT/CERN announce an agreement to create the W3 organization. (July)
A new draft of the HTML 2.0 specifications is rewritten and presented at an IETF meeting in Toronto, where the HTML working group is created. (July)
Netscape releases its Netscape 1.0 browser for general distribution free of charge. The browser stirs controversy because it includes support for a suite of HTML tags that belong to neither HTML 2.0 nor the proposed HTML 3.0 specifications, including text flow around images, and the FONT and CENTER tags. (October)
1995: Revised HTML 2.0 specifications created for a review by IETF’s HTML working group. The working group hopes that this draft will be published as an Internet RFC (Request for Comments) and accepted as a standard. (February)
Netscape relesases the final version of Netscape Navigator 1.1 (April)
Netscape and Sun Microsystems, Inc. announce that Netscape will license Sun’s Java Programming language to implement in the Netscape Navigator browser. (May)
Netscape releases beta for Netscape 1.2, a version designed for Microsoft’s Windows 95 and Windows 3.1. (June)
The final version of Netscape Navigator 1.2 is expected to be released. The product is slated to include enhanced bookmarks with drag and drop capabilities and a new interface for ftp downloads. (September)
HTML 2.0 is waiting for an RFC number. HTML 3.0 continues to be under discussion by the IETF’s HTML Working Group.