If we look under the hood of a Web browser, we see that it’s a pretty simple piece of software—it transfers a Web page from a computer on the Internet, known as a server; reads through the contents for images, sound, or other components; and downloads each of those elements. Those parts are then assembled into a page and displayed to the user browsing the Internet.
The language of Web pages consists of computer code called Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. It’s somewhat human readable, with special "markup" used for features on the page—italic, bold, images, and other formatting. But it wasn’t meant for human consumption and can become quite cumbersome to read and edit.
The Web became successful because it was an open standard—no one company controlled the specification for it, and it was maintained by a consortium led by Tim Berners-Lee. Since the Web was not tied to one computer company or encumbered by patents, HTML could be generated and displayed by anyone who had the interest and skill to write a program to translate the codes to the computer screen.
Most everything in HyperCard mapped quite well to HTML—text, italics, bold, images, and sounds. And while Ward Cunningham was finding HyperCard easy to use and to derive a prototype from, someone else was also discovering that HyperCard was useful.
