Notes
Blink
![The Origins of the Blink Tag [Detail]](/assets/origins_of_the_blink_tag.png)
You have to feel for Louis J Montulli II (The Netscape Guy). His illustrious career has included no shortage of considerable achievements, not least being widely credited as the inventor of the <blink> tag (though truth be told, he only suggested the idea).
In 1991, while at university, he wrote a program that would eventually become known as Lynx (a milestone and one of the first web browsers). Whilst working on this he was heavily involved in the development of HTTP and HTML, a time he reflects upon as follows:
That time period was one of most exciting and fast paced periods I can remember. Innovations that are completely ubiquitous now were proposed and implemented in incredibly fast cycles. It wasn’t until the later days at Netscape that we coined the term internet time.
In 1994, Montulli moved to California to become one of the founding engineers at Mosaic Communications Corporation, creators of Mosaic - the web browser widely credited with popularising the world wide web. Mosaic, which later changed its name to Netscape, was a hotbed of activity, innovating relentlessly. Whilst there Montulli reflects that he was, “largely to blame for several innovations on the web including cookies and the blink tag….” His list of achievements goes on…
His reflections on The Origins of the Blink Tag, though not recently published, are fascinating reading and well worth a few moments, to either: wander down memory lane, or gain some insight into how things were in ‘the good old days’ when the web we know was being born. Montulli states:
For those of you who are relatively new to the Web, the
<blink>tag … causes text to blink, and many, many people find its behavior to be extremely annoying. I won’t deny the invention, but there is a bit more to the story than is widely known.
Reminiscing, Montulli casts his mind back to a fateful day in 1994 bearing all the hallmarks of a spot of creative inspiration: a bar in Mountain View, California; a 30 foot tall statue of Wonder Woman; a “fair amount of drinking”; meeting a girl (who would later become Montulli’s first wife); and, of course, a great deal of laughter at the thought of blinking text and “blinking this and that” and how absurd this might be.
The rest, as they say, is history. A “pretty harmless easter egg” turned out to be “a lot like Las Vegas” except on Montulli’s - and everyone’s - screen.
Spare a thought for Montulli, who writes:
The
<blink>tag will probably be remembered as the most hated of all HTML tags. I would like to publicly state that at no time did I actually write code or even seriously advocate for the<blink>tag. It is true that I put forth the initial inspiration, but it really was merely a thought experiment.
A gentleman to the end, he refuses to name the names of those who undertook the dastardly deed, and reserves his sympathy for his humble Lynx browser which - ironically - never did get to blink.
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