The origin of the tag
I am widely known as the inventor of the <blink> tag. For those who are relatively new to the web: the <blink> tag is an HTML directive forcing the text to blink, and many, many people found it extremely annoying. I will not disown the invention, but far from everything is known to the general public.
Then in 1994, I was the lead engineer at Netscape, and even earlier I wrote the Lynx browser, the predecessor of all the popular browsers of the time. Lynx was and remains a text browser, commonly used in the console of UNIX machines. In Netscape, we developed a GUI application that allows you to display a much larger number of text styles, as well as pictures and other media formats. We spent a lot of time thinking about the future of the web and what technologies will allow us to create new types of documents, applications and applications. A few examples of what these reflections resulted in: HTML tables, SSL for secure connections, extension plug-ins, and JavaScript for dynamics.
One day, at the end of the summer, I and several other engineers decided to relax and headed for a bar on Castro Street in Mountain View. The bar, among other interesting things, was a 10-meter statue of Wonder Woman . At some point, I dropped that I regret the inability of Lynx to display many of the HTML extensions that we have implemented, and also noticed that the only textual style that can support Lynx in its environment is blinking. We laughed at the fiction about the blinking text and discussed how absurd the idea of ​​blinking something was. Then the evening went on as usual, with a sufficient amount of booze and acquaintance with the girl who later became my first wife.
Saturday morning, I went to the office for anything, but definitely not for the blinking text. He blinked on the monitor in all its glory and in the browser. You ask, how did this happen? It turned out that one engineer liked my idea so much that when he left the bar at midnight, he returned to the office and implemented the blinking tag. In the morning he was still there, extremely proud of himself.
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Then there were three versions of the browser that worked under UNIX, Windows and Mac. For a short 12 hours, the blinking was only built into the UNIX version, but it soon spread to both Windows and Mac. I remember, I thought it was a harmless Easter egg, which no one would seriously use, as I was wrong. When Netscape Navigator 1.0 was released, we did not document the blinking, and at first everything was quiet. Then somewhere, somehow the secret knowledge of blinking leaked into the big world, and everything flashed. “Look here,” “buy it,” “check that,” everything blinked. Everywhere blinked big ads. It was like Las Vegas, but on my screen and without the possibility of shutdown.
Then there was a lot of talk, most in the form of posts burning in napalm in various forums, and the <blink> tag went down in history as the most hated HTML tag. I would like to state to the public that under no circumstances did I write code, or seriously proposed to implement the <blink> tag. The truth is that I sowed his grains, but for me blinking has never been anything more than just a thought experiment. I will not give the names of the people who wrote this vile thing, if they want to introduce themselves, they will do it themselves. Finally, what I'm really sad about is that Lynx never blinked. I also sadly inform you that the bar burned to the ground in 1997, it was a good place, and I miss it.
<blink>
Then in 1994, I was the lead engineer at Netscape, and even earlier I wrote the Lynx browser, the predecessor of all the popular browsers of the time. Lynx was and remains a text browser, commonly used in the console of UNIX machines. In Netscape, we developed a GUI application that allows you to display a much larger number of text styles, as well as pictures and other media formats. We spent a lot of time thinking about the future of the web and what technologies will allow us to create new types of documents, applications and applications. A few examples of what these reflections resulted in: HTML tables, SSL for secure connections, extension plug-ins, and JavaScript for dynamics.
One day, at the end of the summer, I and several other engineers decided to relax and headed for a bar on Castro Street in Mountain View. The bar, among other interesting things, was a 10-meter statue of Wonder Woman . At some point, I dropped that I regret the inability of Lynx to display many of the HTML extensions that we have implemented, and also noticed that the only textual style that can support Lynx in its environment is blinking. We laughed at the fiction about the blinking text and discussed how absurd the idea of ​​blinking something was. Then the evening went on as usual, with a sufficient amount of booze and acquaintance with the girl who later became my first wife.
Saturday morning, I went to the office for anything, but definitely not for the blinking text. He blinked on the monitor in all its glory and in the browser. You ask, how did this happen? It turned out that one engineer liked my idea so much that when he left the bar at midnight, he returned to the office and implemented the blinking tag. In the morning he was still there, extremely proud of himself.
')
Then there were three versions of the browser that worked under UNIX, Windows and Mac. For a short 12 hours, the blinking was only built into the UNIX version, but it soon spread to both Windows and Mac. I remember, I thought it was a harmless Easter egg, which no one would seriously use, as I was wrong. When Netscape Navigator 1.0 was released, we did not document the blinking, and at first everything was quiet. Then somewhere, somehow the secret knowledge of blinking leaked into the big world, and everything flashed. “Look here,” “buy it,” “check that,” everything blinked. Everywhere blinked big ads. It was like Las Vegas, but on my screen and without the possibility of shutdown.
Then there was a lot of talk, most in the form of posts burning in napalm in various forums, and the <blink> tag went down in history as the most hated HTML tag. I would like to state to the public that under no circumstances did I write code, or seriously proposed to implement the <blink> tag. The truth is that I sowed his grains, but for me blinking has never been anything more than just a thought experiment. I will not give the names of the people who wrote this vile thing, if they want to introduce themselves, they will do it themselves. Finally, what I'm really sad about is that Lynx never blinked. I also sadly inform you that the bar burned to the ground in 1997, it was a good place, and I miss it.
<blink>
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/98488/
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