Web - Introduction to the World Wide

Web
Article Table of contents

Introduction to the World Wide Web

The "Web", short for "World Wide Web" (which gives us the acronym www), is the name
for one of the ways that the Internet lets people browse documents connected by
hypertext links.
The concept of the Web was perfected at CERN (Centre Europ de Recherche Nucl
re) in 1991 by a group of researchers which included Tim-Berners Lee, the creator of the
hyperlink, who is today considered the father of the Web.
The principle of the Web is based on using hyperlinks to navigate between documents
(called "web pages") with a program called a browser. A web page is a simple text file
written in a markup language (called HTML) that encodes the layout of the document,
graphical elements, and links to other documents, all with the help of tags.
Besides the links which connect formatted documents to one another, the web uses the
HTTP protocol to link documents hosted on distant computers (called web servers, as
opposed to the client represented by the broswer). On the Internet, documents are
identified with a unique address, called a URL, which can be used to locate any resource
on the Internet, no matter which server may be hosting it.

What is a website?
A website (also called an Internet site or a home page in the case of a personal site) is a
group of HTML files that are stored on a hosting computer which is permanently
connected to the Internet (a web server).
A website is normally built around a central page, called a "welcome page", which offers
links to a group of other pages hosted on the same server, and sometimes "external" links,
which lead to pages hosted by another server.
A URL looks something like this:
http://en.kioskea.net/www/www-intro.php3

Let's take a closer look at this address:

http:// indicates that we want browse the web using the HTTP protocol, the
default protocol for browsing the Web. There are other protocols for other uses of
the Internet.
www.commentcamarche.net corresponds to the address of the server that hosts
the web pages. By convention, web servers have a name that begins with www., to
make it clear that they are dedicated web servers and to make memorising the
address easier. This second part of the address is called the domain name. A
website can be hosted on several servers, each belonging to the same name:
www.commentcamarche.net www2.commentcamarche.net,
intranet.commentcamarche.net, etc.
/www/www-intro.php3 indicates where the document is located on the machine.
In this case, it is the file www-intro.php3 situ ocated in the directory www.

Introduction to email
Article Table of contents

What is email?
Electronic mail (also known as email or e-mail) is one of the most commonly used
services on the Internet, allowing people to send messages to one or more recipients.
Email was invented by Ray Tomlinson in 1972.

Why use email?

The operating principle behind email is relatively simple, which has quickly made it the
most popular service used on the Internet.
As with a traditional postal service, for your message to reach your recipient, all you need
to know is their address. Its two main advantages over "paper mail" are the speed at
which the email is sent (practically instantaneous) and the lower cost (included with the
cost of an Internet connection).
What's more, email can be used to instantaneously send a message to several people at
once.

Email addresses
Email addresses (both for senders and recipients) are two strings separated by the
character "@" (the "at sign"):
user@domain

The right-hand part describes the domain name involved, and the left-hand part refers to
the user who belongs to that domain. One or more mail servers (MX records in the
Domain Name System) correspond to each domain.
An email address can be up to 255 characters long and can include the following
characters:

Lowercase letters from a to z;

Digits
The characters ".","_" and "-" (full stop, underscore, and hyphen)

In practice, an email address often looks something like this:

firstname.lastname@provider.domain