The Web. Today

Web Applications are driving today's business. They are fun and involve a lot of things. Since the 90's they have captured interest among all people alike. Just looking at some stuff online, chatting with unknown people and viewing images aroused the interest of many, The web has come a long way from simple text to images to media to a whole new world of social interaction. Maps when you travel, booking flight tickets, telling friends that you are at a movie theater on Facebook, to selling old textbooks online, everyday we interact with the web. The most powerful software that we interact on our computer that literally drives our lives today is the Web Browser. Many companies have laid their foundations on the web. They are turning over billions. Google, Facebook, Amazon, E-bay,Twitter, Yahoo are some of the known giants. They are a source of income to many developers and yet capture a significant amount of time in the non-technical community. They are the biggest things that Planet Earth has seen after the Computer Itself. Businesses run on the web. Everyone wants to be able to be reading the latest updates on their favorite team, listen/watch the news live , watch movies stream instantly or know how the weather is messing around their camping plans and guys want to share and express ideas through blogs.
All this has begun from simple text based language. A simple protocol that was conceived and a simple software that understood both these parts well. After 20 years the web is THE biggest thing. As a developer its unique in the way it provides so many opportunities and specializations. Developers, Artistes, Media guys, Database people, all are involved.
As a Developer, i shall look for various stuff and collect material and post the same. Everything i learn will go here and it will act as a point of reference for me and for others, Its so fascinating that i learnt many of the things that i know very slowly. Most of my concentration has gone into deep understanding of stuff and in bits and pieces i have captured a basic understanding of how stuff is put together. I have grown as a guy who learnt HTML in Notepad from school years to a guy trying to understand applications in general. Anyways stuff that interests me:

• HTTP
• The Browser
• HTML4, HTML 5
• CSS 2, CSS 3
• JavaScript
• JavaScript Libraries & Frameworks
• DOM
• Web development tools
• AJAX
• Performance
• Security
• XML
• XSLT
• C#
• ASP.NET
• ASP.NET MVC
• IIS
• Apache
• SQL Server
• MySQL
• ORM Frameworks
• NoSQL
• APIs : JavaScript APIs & Web APIs
• Shopping Carts, E-Commerce
• RIAs
• Web 2.0
• RSS, ATOM
• TCP/IP

& much more.. this is a huge list. I should take everything i learn and know about as a small thing which would help in some way in understanding the huge domain..
Whatever it is, building a set of applications using some of the technologies listed will help better understand the web more.