..... Click the link for more information. documents and files and other network services linked in such a way as to create an immense electronic library from which information can be retrieved quickly by intuitive searches. The Web represents the application of hypertext hypertext, technique for organizing computer databases or documents to facilitate the nonsequential retrieval of information. Related pieces of information are connected by preestablished or user-created links that allow a user to follow associative trails across the
..... Click the link for more information. technology and a graphical interface to the Internet Internet, the, international computer network linking together thousands of individual networks at military and government agencies, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, industrial and financial corporations of all sizes, and commercial enterprises
..... Click the link for more information. to retrieve information that is contained in specially formatted documents that may reside in the same computer or be distributed across many computers around the world. It consists of three main elements. The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) comprises the programming codes, or tags, that define fonts, layouts, embedded graphics, and links (hyperlinks) to other documents accessible via the Web. The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) defines a set of standards for transmitting Web pages across the Internet. The Universal Resource Locator (URL) is a standardized naming convention for identifying a Web document or file, in a sense the address of a link. The result is called the Web because it is made up of many sites, all linked together, with users traveling from one site to the next by clicking a computer's pointing device on a hyperlink.
Web sites, also called Web pages, are really Internet sites that all use the same techniques and HTML tags to create multimedia documents with hypertext links. Each Web page can contain many screens or printed pages of text, graphics, audio, and even video, and the starting point for any Web site is called its home page. Although each page is an Internet site, it must be accessed via a special program called a Web browser, which can translate the HTML into the graphical images, text, and hypertext links intended by the creator of the page.
Interactive television is a generic term that encompasses a variety of Web-related television technologies and products. Typically, a home television receiver and a telephone line are connected through a small appliance that accesses the Internet through the telephone line and converts the downloaded Web pages into a form that can be displayed on the receiver. A remote control interface allows the user to navigate through the Web and select the information to be displayed.
Ted Nelson, an American computer consultant, had promoted the idea of linking documents via hypertext during the 1960s, but the technology required was not to be available for another 20 years. The foundation of what we now think of as the Web originated with work done on the retrieval of information from distributed systems by Tim Berners-Lee Berners-Lee, Tim (Sir Timothy Berners-Lee), 1955–, British computer scientist, b. London, grad. The Queen's College, Oxford Univ. (B.A. 1976). He joined CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, as a consultant software engineer in 1960.
..... Click the link for more information. at CERN during the 1980s. This culminated in the introduction of a text-only interface, or browser, to the scientific community in 1990 and to the public in 1991. Because of the difficulty of using this version, acceptance outside the scientific and academic communities was slow. Marc Andreessen, an undergraduate student working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), developed a graphical browser for the Web, introducing a UNIX version in 1993. Versions for the Windows and Macintosh operating systems followed in 1994, and acceptance of the World Wide Web blossomed quickly. In the late 1990s the development of improved browsers with greater multimedia functionality, security, and privacy, as well as more powerful search engines capable of indexing the ever greater information on the Web, led to the commercialization of the Internet (see e-commerce e-commerce, commerce conducted over the Internet, most often via the World Wide Web. E-commerce can apply to purchases made through the Web or to business-to-business activities such as inventory transfers.
..... Click the link for more information. ).
Bibliography
See P. Whitehead and R. Maran, Internet and World Wide Web: Simplified (2d ed. 1997); E. Wilde, Wilde's WWW: Technical Foundations of the World Wide Web (1997); A. Glossbrenner and E. Glossbrenner, Search Engines: For the World Wide Web (2d ed. 1998); S. Western, The Complete Beginner's Guide to the World Wide Web (1998); T. Berners-Lee and M. Fischetti, Weaving the Web (1999).
World Wide Web (WWW)
or WebLeading information-exchange service of the Internet. It was created by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN and introduced to the world in 1991. The Web gives users access to a vast array of documents that are connected to each other by means of hypertext or hyperlinks. A hypertext document with its corresponding text and hyperlinks is written in HTML and is assigned an on-line address, or URL. The Web operates within the Internet's basic client-server architecture. Individual HTML files with unique electronic addresses are called Web pages, and a collection of Web pages and related files (such as graphics files, scripted programs, and other resources) sharing a set of similar addresses (see domain name) is called a Web site. The main or introductory page of a Web site is usually called the site's home page. Users may access any page by typing in the appropriate address, search for pages related to a topic of interest by using a search engine, or move quickly between pages by clicking on hyperlinks incorporated into them. Though introduced in 1991, the Web did not become truly popular until the introduction of Mosaic, a browser with a graphical interface, in 1993. Subsequently, browsers produced by Netscape and Microsoft have become predominant.
(2) (World Wide Web) An Internet-based system that enables an individual or a company to publish itself to the entire world, except to countries or locations that prohibit the free interchange of information. The major service on the Internet, the World Wide Web is the world's largest online shopping mall and the world's largest source of information, news and commentary. To understand the difference between the Web and the Internet, see Web vs. Internet.
Web Servers
The "Web" is made up of "Web servers," which are computers that store and disseminate "Web pages" to anyone with an Internet connection. Web pages are interactive documents that contain text, graphics, animations and videos. The pages often contain embedded programs that cause them to function the same as software that users install in their computers. As a result, the Web has enabled the concept of a "global server" that provides a source for all applications as well as data (see Web 2.0).
Hyperlinks and Web Addresses
The heart of the Web technology is the hyperlink, which connects each page to each other by address, whether the document is on the same Web site or on a site half way around the world. In the mid-1990s, the novel concept of "click here" (click the hyperlink) caused the Web to explode. The address of a Web site or Web page is officially known as the "uniform resource locator" (see URL).
The Web Browser
Web pages are accessed by the user via a Web browser application such as Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox and Safari. The browser renders the pages on screen, executes embedded scripts and invokes additional software as needed. For example, Flash animations and video are rendered by Flash plug-in software that is tailored to each type of Web browser.
HTML Is the Rendering Format
A Web page is a text document coded with HTML tags that define how the text and graphics are displayed on screen. Web pages can be created with any text editor or word processor. They are also created in HTML authoring programs that provide a graphical interface for designing the layout, and such programs generate the HTML tags behind the scenes. Many applications export documents directly to HTML, thus basic Web pages can be created in numerous ways without HTML coding. The ease of page creation helped fuel the Web's growth.
The HTML codes define the page layout as well as certain basic interactions; however, it is the embedded scripts within the Web page, written in languages such as JavaScript, that make the Web page function like a full-blown application.
Web Sites Are Made Up of Pages
A collection of Web pages makes up a Web site. Very large organizations deploy their public Web sites on inhouse servers or on their own servers co-located in a third party facility that provides power and Internet access. Such public sites may contain hundreds and thousands of pages and databases that hold millions of records.
Small to medium Web sites are often maintained by third-party hosting companies for fees that start as little as $5 a month. They can also be hosted by the same Internet service providers (ISPs) that deliver Internet access to the building. For individual customers who want to publish a Web site, many ISPs host a personal Web site at no extra cost, but the site is limited to a few pages.
The Intranet
The public Web spawned the private "intranet," an inhouse Web site for employees. Protected via a firewall that lets employees access the Internet, the firewall restricts uninvited users from viewing internal information. There is no difference in hardware and software architecture between a private Web site (intranet) and a public Web site. The difference is who has access.
HTTP Can Deliver Anything
HTML pages are transmitted to the user via the HTTP protocol. A Web server stores HTML pages for a Web site, but it can also be a storehouse for any kind of file delivered to a client application via HTTP. For example, the Windows version of this encyclopedia is available as an HTTP application. The text and images are hosted on The Computer Language Company's Web server and delivered to the Windows client in the user's PC. The Windows client is an HTTP-enabled version of the popular interface first introduced in 1996 for stand-alone PCs.
From a Couple Hundred to a Trillion URLs
By 1994, there were approximately 500 Web sites, and, by the start of 1995, nearly 10,000. By the turn of the century, there were more than 30 million registered domain names. A decade later, more than a hundred million new domains were added. In 2010, Google claimed it found a trillion unique addresses (URLs) on the Web as it maneuvered from Web site to Web site to populate its search engine.
Everyone's Interested
Everyone has some vested interest in the Web. ISPs, cable and telephone companies want to sell more connectivity. Webmasters want visitors. IT managers want security. The publishing industry wants to preserve its copyrights. Software publishers want to sell more Web-based products, and hardware companies want to sell more Internet infrastructure.
From Anywhere to Anywhere
Using Web-based protocols and mobile devices, the Web has enabled anyone within reach of a cell tower to monitor or analyze an activity anywhere on the planet as well as obtain information and make every conceivable business transaction no matter the time of day. The Web has an exciting future. Stay tuned! See Web 2.0, Internet, HTTP, HTML, World Wide Wait and Wild Wooly Web.
 |
| Web Linking |
|---|
| Accessing a Web document requires typing in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) address of the home page in your Web browser. The home page contains links to other documents that can be stored on the same server or on a server anywhere in the world. |
World Wide Web
World Wide Web [¦wərld ¦wīd ′web]
Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content.
| ?Page tools | ||
|---|---|---|
|
