World Wide WebThe World Wide Web (W3, The Web, or WWW) is a system for retrieving information on the Internet. It uses hypertext and hypermedia, which allow you to "link" easily to other places on the Web by clicking on either text or graphics. The development of the Web occurred at The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. CERN released the Web for public use in 1991; in 1993, Web browsers, which make the information on the Web even easier to access, were introduced.
The original purpose of the WWW project was to create a hypermedia system that would be able to access information from any desktop computer, at any place in the world. Since the Web has standard formats for the text, sound, graphics, and video information it contains, it is eminently searchable by any networked machine. The scientific community responded very positively to it, since it allows you to navigate the Net without using more complicated ways of information retrieval such as FTP and Gopher. Their enthusiasm was quickly mirrored by the general public when Web browsers became available for both home and business use.
The Web refers to the body of information available on the Net, while the Net is technically the physical side of the connection (the cables, the computers, etc.) -- although the word is frequently used in a broader context. The Web's strength is its hypermedia capacities, which allow all users easily to index and search text, graphics, video, and sound. Unlike the Net, which has been in existence since the late 1960s, the Web wasn't developed until very recently. In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (a European collective of physics researchers) proposed its development as an efficient means of transferring information and exchanging ideas throughout the organization. The first Web prototype was developed the following year, using NeXT's object-oriented technology, and the name "World Wide Web" was officially adopted. 1993 was the year that the Web truly began to excite the public, with the release of the first Web browser, Mosaic. Mosaic sported an impressive GUI (Graphical User Interface) featuring icons and colors, and its effect was to make the Net more palatable, less intimidating, and more fun for many people. Before the advent of Web browsers, most activity on the Net centered around Gopher and FTP, which simply don't compare to a Web browser in terms of visual aesthetics and ease of use. The art of Netsurfing also emerged with the invention of Web browsers, since the links are so fast and slick.
The creator of this seminal application, Mark Andreessen, was working for $6.85 an hour at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications when he released "Mosaic for X". Part of Mosaic's research was funded by the National Science Foundation, who have been integral in the Net's development (see "Net history" for a more detailed explanation of their role). Andreessen, who was 22 at the time, went on to develop the Netscape Web browser, which many accepted as the definitive browser at the time of its release, and then became vice-president of technology at Netscape Communications Company. The Web took a new turn in November, 1994, when the restrictions against commercialization expired, making way for advertising to become a major force on many Web sites.
On the Web, everything is represented either as a hypertext or hypermedia object, meaning that you can click on text or graphics to take you to another site. The sites are linked by a URL (Universal Resource Locator or Uniform Resource Locator), which is the name of a specific file on the Internet. All documents, menus, and indices on the Web are represented as a hypertext objects in HTML format, which simply means that they link to URLs of other sites. A URL for a connection to a Web server looks like this: http://www.whitehouse.gov. When a URL designates a sound or picture file, it begins with "file" rather than "http"; when it begins with "ftp", it takes you to an ftp site to transfer files. URLs may also begin with "telnet" or "gopher" when they are connecting to those applications. Since a URL must be a single, unbroken line, it never contains any spaces.
When you follow a link on the Web, the browser opens the URL of the page you want. This information has been inputted through HTML, a language used to create the format in which all Web pages must be written. HTML surrounds text by "tags", which encode information about what directions the specified text must follow. A "tag" consists of a "<", a directive, a number of parameters, and a">". Frequently used tags are "
", which indicates a paragraph, "", bold, and "
", preformatted text. Although not all Web browsers will read every type of tag, a browser will simply ignore any tag that it doesn't understand. When you're on the Web, you can travel to a specific Web site by inputting a URL. By following a link, you don't have to know a site's URL; the Web browser automatically tracks it.The Web's software has a client/server architecture. Web clients (or Web browsers, for interactive use) send requests for information to Web servers, which have the ability to send the desired information out. Web servers and clients may be in the same building or they may be separated by continents. In order for Web servers and clients to communicate, they must speak in a language called HTTP, Hypertext Transfer Protocol. You will see this acronym at the beginning of a URL when you're using the Web to get to a specific site.
Since you can download free Web browsers, there really isn't any reason not to use one (unless you're afraid of becoming addicted to surfing, which is always a distinct possibility). However, if you are connected to the Net but don't have a Web browser, the Web is accessible by telnet at "telnet www.w3.org" (or Internet address 128.141.201.74).
E-Mail: The World Wide Web Encyclopedia at wwwe@tab.com
E-Mail: Charles River Media at chrivmedia@aol.com
Copyright 1996 Charles River Media. All rights reserved.
Text - Copyright © 1995, 1996 - James Michael Stewart & Ed Tittel.
Web Layout - Copyright © 1995, 1996 - LANWrights & IMPACT Online.
Revised -- February 20th, 1996