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Chapter 1: Introducing the World Wide Web



Introducing the World Wide Web

Before there was the World Wide Web, before there was an Internet, there was the dream of Xanadu. In Xanadu, all of human knowledge, all documents, images, sounds, and videos would be instantly accessible to anyone who had a computer, anywhere, anytime.

Xanadu was the dream of Ted Nelson, a computer visionary. He foresaw a world where all information could be linked together in a worldwide web of hypertext and hypermedia. In short, he saw a world where the constant Babel of incompatible data for-mats and protocols would be replaced by a universal library of information. It would be a world transformed; one that would have as little in common with our world as ours does with the one before Gutenberg invented the printing press.

This chapter introduces you to the World Wide Web and focuses on the following points:

Hypermedia and hypertext


The evolution of the Web

World Wide Web browsers

Business on the Web

The growth of the Web


Exploring the Web's Foundation

Xanadu was the dream. Today we have a reality: the World Wide Web (WWW). It's not the reality envisioned by Ted Nelson—his Xanadu project soldiers on under the guidance of Serious Cybernetics in Melbourne, Australia. But, although the Web might not be quite what Nelson envisioned, it attempts the same grand unification theory of information. It will change the world as perhaps no other invention has, save the printing press and the computer.

Those are strong words, but consider this: The Web can link together information from anywhere in the world and make it available to anyone. A grade-school student can jump from Dun & Bradstreet's financial information to a virtual tour of Croatia's capital, Zagreb (see fig. 1.1), to the state of the Internet in southern Africa, without ever leaving his desk.

Figure 1.1. Without leaving your office, you can discover a world of information at your fingertips.

There's far more to the Web than just information. You can learn static facts from any encyclopedia. The information stored on the Web is constantly updated. With the Web, you'll always have the freshest information at your fingertips, as well as a seemingly endless archive of reference material.

The Web also dynamically links information into a seamless whole. You may start your information hunt next door and finally track down your quarry somewhere in Singapore. From where you sit, how-ever, there's no difference between the two online data sources. The Web enables you to move around the world as easily as to the local library—with a click of a mouse.

The Web manages this feat by employing the twin concepts of hypertext and hypermedia. Both concepts date back to Ted Nelson.

Looking at Hypermedia

In hypertext, related information is linked together. Instead of being forced to move linearly from page 1 to page 2 and so on, a hypertext document lets you leap from word to word using links.

In a hypertext encyclopedia, for example, you could be reading about Michael Jordan and find a reference to the Chicago Bulls winning the NBA championship in 1996, and that makes you wonder which team won the championship the year before. In an ordinary book, you're stuck; you must either go to the index or continue reading through the book searching for the information you seek. In hypertext, however, a simple click on the phrase "NBA championship" can take you to the next occurrence of the phrase or to a fuller description of the NBA championship's history. With the addition of multimedia items in Web pages now, you might even get a video clip of a game or an audio clip taken from an interview.



During the 1996 NBA championship telecast, NBC provided up-to-the-minute updates on the World Wide Web, including scores, commentary, and video highlights. NBC analyst Charlie Jones also fielded questions from viewers via Internet e-mail and posted his responses on the World Wide Web.

Now, take this concept one step further. With hypermedia, you can link pictures, sounds, and movies to form multimedia documents—not only words are linked together, but images and sounds are bound together as well.

Hypermedia tries to make computers work the way people think; that is, jumping around rather than always moving straight forward or backward. It is not perfect, of course. Hyperdocument links might lead you far astray from the destination you have in mind. Still, hypermedia can be a great help in chasing down elusive information.

How the Web Started

In short, the Web is a part of the Internet, which is a worldwide network of computers and computer databases. In concept, the Web is a client/server database management system that uses a common information retrieval architecture (this is how your Web browser software accesses the information on the Web). There's nothing particularly special about this as advanced database designs have been doing it for years.



A browser is a program that enables you to access the World Wide Web. If you like the information superhighway analogy, you can think of a browser as your car that lets you drive from one Web site to another.

Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer programmer, did something different from that which had gone before. He combined hypermedia with the Internet's vast information resources. Before the Web, you could do an untold number of interesting things on the Internet, but none of them easily.

In 1989, Berners-Lee was working at the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee faced the eternal problem of getting people the information they needed to work together effectively on many projects in real time.

Berners-Lee's solution uses hypertext technology to form a web of documents. Unlike books or many databases, there is no hierarchical structure to his information web. Instead, there are many possible connections between documents without a beginning or an end. All the messy details of how this information is linked is hidden by a character-based hypertext interface. With the Web, a physicist can jump from an article on particle theory in a local machine to a glossary of nuclear physics terms on a system ten thousand miles away. He can do so with less trouble than a reader has paging through a book's glossary for the same information.

Web documents must be written in a special format that enables the hypertext links to work. This format is Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML is a subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML is an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard for defining formatting in text documents. Although SGML is meant for desktop publishing, Berners-Lee and his companions seized upon its hyperlink capacity to form the basis of the first Web documents.

To access the first early strands of the Web, you had to use a line-based Web browser, an interface that was so simple that it couldn't even use a full-screen character interface. Rather, it was limited to a single line of information. To get to the interface, you had to use an Internet tool called Telnet to connect either of the first two Web servers: info.cern.ch or nxo01.cern.ch. This first version, which you ran with the login www, had only two commands: start a search and follow a link.

That link capability might not sound like much, but it really is. With the introduction of the Web, users had the ability to seek information without worrying about where it was or how to unlock it. Much of the data with which the Web dealt was not in hypertext format, so the hypertext advantage was not clear, and the Web often came across as simply another Internet data-hunting tool with a more consistent interface.

The result was that the Web grew very slowly. If you were to ask Internet information jockeys what was hot in Internet information retrieval four years ago, chances are that most of them would have mentioned Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS). What changed the Web from being an interesting but neglected part of the Internet to being the hottest news ever to hit the Net ever was Mosaic.

Mosaic—A Dawn of a New Era

No one set out with a plan to build an interface (a browser) that would free the power of the Web. Instead, Mosaic (see fig. 1.2) began as a project by Marc Andreessen, an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). In 1993, Andreessen faced the same problems at his part-time job at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) that Berners-Lee had dealt with at CERN: many people working on many projects at once who needed to share information. Specifically, Andreessen was working on tools for scientific visualization.

Figure 1.2. The latest version of Mosaic.

In the course of working toward that goal, Andreessen began to build Mosaic. At first, Andreessen didn't even know of the Web's existence. Not being one to reinvent the wheel, he searched for existing solutions and found the Web. After he discovered the Web's potential, he began turning Mosaic into a Web browser. In April 1993, the first version, Mosaic 1.0 for the X Window System, appeared. The program took off like wildfire, and the Web's popularity exploded with it.

Because of Mosaic's popularity (due in large part because it was freeware for any one to download and use), the NCSA developed Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh versions of the browser. These programs were released in the early autumn of 1993—just in time for Mosaic to ride the wave of Internet interest to the beaches of broad popular acceptance.

Because the NCSA's resources were designed to provide supercomputer resources to researchers, rather than help Microsoft Windows users navigate the difficulties of setting up Mosaic, the NCSA gave several companies, such as Spry, Mosaic Communications, and Quarterdeck, the right to commercially develop Mosaic.

This proved only a short-term solution because the NCSA found itself in a commercial world that it was ill-suited to deal with. Finally, in August 1994, the NCSA gave Spyglass Incorporated the right to commercially develop and license Mosaic. There continues to be a freeware version of Mosaic, however, which includes some Spyglass
improvements.

Although the Spyglass decision washed NCSA's hands of the difficulties of commercializing Mosaic, it also muddied the Mosaic marketplace. With numerous "Mosaics" moving into the marketplace, telling one version from another became confusing. Today, there are several companies developing Mosaic from its older versions, while others use Spyglass' Enhanced Mosaic as their base.

In 1994, Mark Andreessen left NCSA to help form a new company—Netscape Communications—and produce a revolutionary Web browser named Netscape Navigator. Within weeks (perhaps even days!) of Navigator's initial release in beta format, Navigator became the most popular browser on the market. Navigator 2.0 (see fig. 1.3), released in January 1996, is still the number one selling browser, and Netscape Communications' is one of the busiest sites on the World Wide Web.

Figure 1.3. Netscape Navigator 2.0 is the top-selling Web browser.



As an interesting sidebar to Web history, Netscape Communications' first choice for a company name was Mosaic Communications. NCSA pressured the new company to change its name, which it did—to Netscape Communications. A term you might encounter as you surf the Web is Mozilla. Mozilla is a Netscape term used to stand for "Mosaic Killer," showing the company's real feelings about NCSA and its Mosaic product.


Looking at the Web Today

If you are presently deciding between Web browsers, your choice likely depends upon your operating system's needs, plus the performance and features you desire. Although today you can pretty much get data from any Web server by using any graphical Web browser, in the future, that won't be the case as the Web itself grows more fragmented. Many Web sites offer extended features that require you to use specific Web browsers. Some of the extended features you might encounter include sites that have applications created by a new programming language called Java and virtual reality pages that have been created with the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). You might also encounter Web pages that include ActiveX, JavaScript, and Visual Basic Script applications. With older versions of browsers (including Netscape 1.2), you cannot access these features.

As of this writing, two browsers have emerged as the leaders of the pack: Netscape Navigator and the Internet Explorer from Microsoft. For simple Web navigation, both browser work fine. In fact, most other browsers on the market work fine as well. By many accounts, Netscape has captured about 70 percent of the browser market due in large part to its capability to innovate and add to its feature-set. Many industry pundits, however, predict that within 12 months the Microsoft Internet Explorer will be on more desktops than Netscape Navigator. Right now, the issue for many users thinking of migrating to Internet Explorer is that, of the two browsers, Navigator tends to incorporate new features first. This trend, however, is changing with Microsoft's new commitment to providing the most innovative World Wide Web technologies to users and software developers. The commitment to provide Web browsers that stay current with what Web page designers can place on their Web pages is important for users who want to get the most from the time they spend on the Web, including accessing the most up-to-date resources available.

Another problem with browsers, but one that is likely to disappear soon, is that most Web browsers are not universal front ends to all Internet services. Although any Web client can use Gopher, most of them can't read newsgroup messages, or read and write e-mail. Developers are working, however, to make Web browsers that enable you to do anything your heart desires on the Internet. Netscape Navigator 2.0, for instance, enables you to access ftp, Gopher, news, and mail services within the browswer. The Netscape e-mail window is shown in figure 1.4.

Although Web browsers are all very easy to use, and they are becoming easier to install and configure, attaching to the Web can still be a headache sometimes. Depending on the operating system you use, you might spend a few hours configuring your software and hardware to work together to get you connected properly. If you use Windows 95, you have a better chance of configuring the software without too much hassle than you would if you use Windows 3.1.

The primary hurdle to cross when establishing a Web connection is setting up TCP/IP support on your computer. TCP/IP, or Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, is a network protocol that enables all the computers on the Internet to talk to one another. It is the language of the Internet. Because most computers in the world today do not use TCP/IP, they must be configured to "speak" TCP/IP before users can connect to the Web. Chapter 4, "What You Need To Link to the Web," discusses what you need and how to set up your connection to the Web. You should just know that you might need to bring in some help to get yourself on the Internet before you try to surf the Web.

Figure 1.4. Netscape Navigator 2.0 enables you to read, reply to, and create e-mail messages without leaving the browser.

The Growth of the Web

The Web is continuing to expand at a remarkable rate. You can't watch a prime-time television show without seeing an advertisement that includes a Web site address for more information. In fact, many television shows and stations have their own presence on the World Wide Web. On the Internet, you can read messages posted on Usenet newsgroups devoted to Web servers, (such as comp.infosystems.www.providers) to see that a new Web server pops up on the Web every day.



A Web site is an Internet system that holds a Web server. A Web server is the software on a site that enables Web browsers to access Web documents sitting on the Web site.

Newsgroups are services on the Internet that enable users to communicate using an electronic bulletin board system.


This surge in Web servers springs from several factors. A large part can be attributed to the fact that Web servers are relatively easy to set up and are becoming less expensive to implement in businesses and organizations. Also, as more and better HTML editors and text converters have emerged, which enable users to create Web documents to place on Web servers, new Web servers will flood the Internet. Equally important is that Web servers enable businesses to enter the Internet.

Business and the Web

In the past, because of the Internet's long-standing acceptable use policies, it was impossible for commercial traffic to use the Net. This changed in 1991 with the beginning of the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX).

The CIX was created by the Internet service providers behind AlterNet, CERFnet, and PSInet, whose goal was to create a system by which commercial traffic could flow freely through the Internet. The effort was a success because now businesses can use the Internet to share information from one office to another. A company based in Pasadena, California, for instance, can use the Internet to access their accounting records in Bangor, Maine. At the same time, however, CIX inadvertently created the expectation that other Internet services also could be used for commercial purposes, such as selling goods or services.



These early efforts were feeble at best. At their worst, companies engaged in mass e-mail mailings and using Usenet newsgroups for advertising. This is analogous to receiving dozens of pieces of junk mail in your regular mail—but you have to pay the postage! Many users became irritated when they received unsolicited e-mail from companies they were not interested in hearing from. In response to this, users turned around and sent messages (in many cases thousands of messages) back to the original sender flooding the company's Internet server.

The Web, however, offered new ways for companies to venture into the Internet. Here, companies can project an attractive appearance while simultaneously selling their services or goods through a Web server hyperlink. For example, if the traditional Sears & Roebuck mail-order catalog existed on the Web, it would have text and illustrations just like its paper counterpart. Unlike mere paper and ink, Web catalogs let users find out more about a product than they could ever learn from an ordinary catalog, then enable them to post orders instantly. And that's the least you can do with Web interactions and catalogs. Silicon Graphics' catalogs (see fig. 1.5), for example, let you try their high-end systems from across the Web when you access their catalog.

Figure 1.5. Businesses, such as Silicon Graphics, use the Web to offer more than simple product information for customers interested in their products.

Other companies, particularly computer companies, can offer technical support services over the Web. Federal Express, for instance, enables you to track your packages using its Web site (see fig. 1.6). The Web lends itself to this use because users can easily find their way to the solutions for their problems thanks to the hypertext format.

Figure 1.6. If your package is not there when you need it, track it down on Federal Express' Web site at:

http://www.fedex.com

Other businesses are using the Web as a publishing venture. Their magazines and newspapers exist only as electronic text and graphics. Though this format might not appeal to all readers, it does offer a way for both old and new publications to gain a worldwide online presence without substantial capital investment.



Some companies are venturing onto the Internet by building their own Web servers and hypermedia documents. These businesses are enlisting the aid of a new breed of expert, called a "Webmaster" or, more appropriately, "Webweaver." Whatever the title, the job combines the work of network administrator, technical writer, editor, computer programmer, and desktop publisher.

To make commerce on the Web work, the Web needs secure encryption standards so that a user in Tulsa can send her credit card number to a company in San Francisco without worrying someone will steal the number. Secure encryption is a method of encrypting a document so only those computers that have the decryption software or code can read the document. To do this, Web businesses are building encryption schemes into their Web servers to make sure that anyone intercepting credit or debit card numbers will only pick up garbage.

All solutions come with their own set of problems. One such problem is that encryption schemes are not compatible with one another. This could mean that even if you have a secure Web browser, you might not be able to buy things from every secure Web site.

Looking toward the Web's Future

In the next few years, you'll see many Web developments. The Web browser of the year 2000 will be as easy to install as a simple word processor is today; in fact, it will be part of the operating system in the next version of Windows, now called Windows 97 (code named Nashville). Future programs will combine all Internet services into a single, easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) that will be both keyboard-, mouse-, and voice-activated.

What won't change, however, is that the Web will still be difficult for some kinds of information retrieval. Although there are current efforts to standardize and catalog Web data, there is no consensus on how this should be done. Even if rules on how to catalog the Web's data existed, it seems questionable that these could be in place on the majority of Web servers. The Web will always be somewhat confusing. That is why a catalog of Web sites like the New Riders' Official World Wide Web Yellow Pages is valuable to help you manage and find resources on the Web.

Overall, you'll also see faster performance from software and the Internet itself. In particular, integrated services digital networks (ISDNs), will increase the throughput speed of modem users from a top of 28,800 bps to 64,000 bps.

There will also be some incompatibility problems between browsers and Web servers. Netscape Communications has added some extensions to HTML. Documents written in this new variant of HTML might not be displayed properly by some browsers.

A more serious problem is that as the language of the Web, HTML, matures and evolves, and as new technologies emerge to create Web resources, users stuck with older Web browsers will be limited to the type of information and resources they can access. Many Web sites now require either Netscape Navigator 3.0 and/or the Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 to view their site in the most optimal way.

The Web's potential is as unlimited as human communications. The next chapter takes a closer look at the system behind the Web—the Internet.


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