Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

5.4 DID WE NEED HTTP AND HTML?

People are often confused about why we needed, or need, a new protocol called HTTP to facilitate the information sharing process that we have just been describing. After all, Internet protocols for information exchange already existed, including ones for passing text back and forth between two computers, like the email protocols (POP3, SMTP) or file-transfer protocols (FTP) and so on (Newsnet, etc.). It is sensible to ask why these protocols were not adequate for the request-response processing of HTML files.

The answer is that HTTP and HTML are closely matched with the issues we have just been examining, whereas the other protocols are not. HTTP with HTML has the ability to:

• Facilitate file requests from servers using a simple addressing scheme that can be easily mapped to a programmatic request on the target server; for example, to get information from a pre-written HTML file on a disk (static HTML) or from a database (subsequently manipulated into a HTML file, called dynamic HTML files).
• Support anonymous information requests, which makes for an agile system.
• Refer users seamlessly from one resource to another, on the same server or even on another server anywhere on the IP network, all made easier by anonymous access (lack of authentication).
• Support content format negotiation.
• Provide a foundation for universal data access; a common interface for disparate information sets and applications.

Within HTTP there is the implied idea that the information ...