So, I go to Google Groups to try to find the first mention of HREF on Usenet.<p>I have no idea how to do this. It takes four clicks just to get to the Google Groups page.<p>I see a search box. I look for something to give me the advanced search page. I can't find it. (I can see 2 buttons for settings.) So, I type HREF into the search bar and click seach. The drop down offers "in any group" or "groups named". First attempt I ignore both of those and just click the button.<p>Posts: 28200040, groups: 58<p>I need to narrow this down. I need the advanced search pane. It's still not there.<p>I arrange by date. LOL NO, that hasn't worked for literally years.<p>The advance options turn up if I'm in a group. They allow me to narrow the search down, but not to change the group I'm searching in.<p>I will donate $5 to the charity of your choice to the first person who tells me how the fuck I can perform the following search:<p>[HREF]<p>any Usenet group (or the news hierarchy)<p>Before 1998<p>Sorted by date<p>Bonus $5 if the instructions you give are in any Google documentation online.
I'm surprised to see that this submission is from 2008; while I identify with the author's struggle (and subsequent delight) as he plays the part of an Internet archaeologist, I thought this was a common piece of knowledge five years ago, let alone today. Goes to show how incorrect assumptions about what we do (and do not) know can be.<p>Burners-Lee's talks are wonderful. My favorite is his talk "Hypertext and Our Collective Destiny": <a href="http://www.w3.org/Talks/9510_Bush/Talk.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3.org/Talks/9510_Bush/Talk.html</a>
Let's see - the HREF attribute that implements the basic principle of hypertext referencing in the Hypertext Markup Language which TBL invented as a file format to serve over his Hypertext Transfer Protocol... what could it possibly mean? I can see the confusion.
I just wonder how many people think that web is so wonderful invention. But they completely forget Gopher. There isn't so much difference between web and gopher after all. It's just a bit different linking method. After all, it's rare that invetions are relly great, most of those are just small gradual change over time. Still remember how much hype there was about hypertext back in old days. See: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29</a>
In the software world we often seem to end up with abbreviations which are ubiquitous but no longer strongly linked to their unabbreviated form. I often find this annoying and distracting. I try an avoid being the source of such annoyance for others. For example if I find myself using abbreviations in my source code, maybe as a prefix for example, I will always ensure the abbreviation is explained at least once in a place that won't be lost (in a header file for example).<p>An example from back in the day was the acronym (presumably) "Afx". Vast numbers of identifiers in the old MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) Windows API C++ wrapper used this prefix. For some reason not knowing what it meant caused me chronic stress.
I like this kind of article because what seems obvious isn't always correct. It could have just as easily meant... anything... and seeing the process and resources different people use to dig into things is always pretty neat.
I'm surprised they didn't fix this sillyness in HTML5 when they were making up semantically-sensible tags for everything else.<p>A tag with<p><pre><code> <link to="http://somepage" in="new window">
</code></pre>
or something like that would make more sense as having the "article" inside the "body" of the document. Yes, I know link is already used in the head. You know what I mean, though.<p>I mean, the dual-use of a as both anchor and link has always been bizarre.
The term Hypertext was coined by Ted Nelson, probably 1965. Check out his book Computer Lib/Dream Machines. He envisioneers the internet quite well.
According to Wikipedia the "href" attribute stands for:
"Hypertext REFerence"
(<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink</a>)
Even my high school computer science text book taught me HREF= Hypertext REFerence...<p>Though I didn't know the A stands for Anchor, so there's that.