Static Content Versus Dynamic Content

The World Wide Web (WWW) would function quite well as a large interconnected library, a collection of relatively static text pages embedded with links from one to another. In the early days of the Web, not much more than that was envisioned. Even graphics were considered inessential and dismissively filed under “bells and whistles.” When information was to be added to the Web, it simply meant revising the text of an existing page, or adding a new one.

The idea of dynamic content came along a while later. When somebody accesses a Web page, why should the same thing happen every time? It is useful (or at least entertaining) to keep pages updated with current information and to provide various kinds of intelligent ...

Get Sams Teach Yourself Ruby in 21 Days now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.