to put it in terms of a simple example, you need several HTML pages before one of them can link to another, but so far that's just hypertext. then you need pages spread out across plural sites to be able to create a web.
Edit: Answered my own question I think. If you choose the option to browse "using the line-mode browser simulator", you can literally type in "Back" to go back.
Navigation was moving a cursor around to highlight points of interest, some of which would be links to further stuff or controls to do something like go back or forwards.
Install lynx or links2 (ie text mode browsers) and you'll get the idea.
The vaguely graphic efforts with browsable content that you might recognise before www were the likes of Compuserve. That got you a sort of forum style interface.
It's quite hard to explain just how fast things have moved over the last 40 odd years (I'm 1970 to date - 55). I should also point out that my granddad saw rather a lot of change from 1901 to 1989. To be honest the last 15 odd years are even madder than the previous 25 and that's just my own personal recollection.
> When (s)he has found an overview page which (s)he feels ought to refer to the new data, (s)he can ask the author of that document (who ought to have signed it with a link to his or her mail address) to put in a link.
> By the way, it would be easy in principle for a third party to run over these trees and make indexes of what they find. Its just that noone has done it as far as I know
avaer•1h ago
No ads, no random tits, nobody trying to convert you to their politics, trying to scam you, or telling you to kill yourself. Just people sharing interesting things.
Really makes me excited for the internet until I close the tab.
[1] http://line-mode.cern.ch/www/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
bogzz•46m ago
My brain even ascribed a CRT distortion effect to it, even though that's not actually happening.
edit: okay, no, I am an idiot. Those pages were made in 2013:
https://line-mode.cern.ch/