Chapter 1. What Is Java?

In 1995, the World Wide Web changed from something that only college students and a few geeks knew about into a massive fad that everyone who was anyone had to be a part of. And if you were on the Web, you had to put up your own home page, generally with an obnoxious background, an "Under Construction" graphic, and links to the three people you knew who also had pages on the Web.

Pretty soon, people said "there's gotta be more to building a Web page than this." Java hit the scene in 1995, and the Web hasn't been the same since.