ITC Lecture Notes: Web intro -1

Working with the Web: Browser

Basics
The World Wide Web (or WWW or Web for short) and
the Internet are terms that are often used as though they
mean the same thing. Actually, the Web is only a
portion of the Internet. So let's start with finding out
what the Internet is.
The Internet
The Internet is simply a network of computer networks.
But there is nothing simple about this network. Unlike
most networks, the Internet is not under a central
control.

From the beginning, the network was started by the US

Department of Defense. The idea was to have a network
that could have big chunks blown up without losing the
whole network. It has many, many connections between
the member networks and no one place controls the
whole network. In fact, there is no one "in charge" of
anything about the Internet except the assigning of
addresses! It is amazing that thousands of people
working all over the world can manage to create such a
huge system that actually works.

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ITC Lecture Notes: Web intro -1

The original purpose of the Internet was to enable

people in different locations to share text-only
documents.

Now there is much more you can do using the Internet

like:

- Send and receive email messages;

- Search the world for particular files or for files
that contain particular words;
- You can have a live conversation using typed text
or voice or even video;
- Read electronic magazines and newspapers;
- Check on the weather forecast or the score of a
ball game;
- Play computer games with several people at
once;
- Post messages to newsgroups on a common
topic;
- You can buy books, CDs, software, wine, or just
about anything.

The WEB:

The Web is that part of the Internet that uses hypertext

documents, also called Web documents or Web pages.

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ITC Lecture Notes: Web intro -1

Words in hypertext are generally underlined and in a

special color, like this. They have an address attached to
them so that clicking on the hypertext accesses the file
at that address. The file can be one that is on the
viewer's own computer (like C:\My Documents\letters\5-
10-98 to mother.doc) or halfway around the world (like
http://www.microsoft.com/default.asp). Such text is called
a hypertext link, hyperlink, or just a link.

Web pages have come a long way from the original

plain text documents. Now they can show movies, play
songs, and react to what the user clicks on in many
imaginative ways.

It was only in 1989 that development began by CERN

(the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) on the
beginnings of what became the World Wide Web. The
physicists wanted the ability to handle all Internet work
though a single interface, to simplify the sharing of
documents between their widely scattered sites. By 1992
the system was functioning well enough to publicize and
invite others to move to the new approach. Very quickly
numerous browsers were developed for a variety of
operating systems. The Web soon became the most
popular way to access the resources on the Internet.

HTML
Hypertext documents are written in HTML (HyperText
Markup Language), a coding language that does much
more than just create hyperlinks. HTML code puts
special marks in a text document to tell browser

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ITC Lecture Notes: Web intro -1

software how to display the text. For example <FONT

FACE=ARIAL COLOR=#FF0000> means to use the
font Arial and the color red when displaying the text.
The language's instructions are based on English. Each
new version of the HTML standards adds more
formatting choices and the ability to do other things like
playing sounds and running animations.

HTML source code for a web pageOne of the unique

features of HTML documents is that the text wraps to
the size of the window. In a word processor the text will
wrap to the size of the paper page. So a web page can fit
in a wide variety of window sizes, monitor sizes, and
resolutions without making you scroll across the page.
Most people like to point and click on a hyperlink better
than to type long addresses. They like pictures better
than plain text. This explains why the Web has rapidly
become so popular.

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ITC Lecture Notes: Web intro -1

Address of a Web page

Each web page has a unique address called a URL, or
Universal Resource Locator, which tells where a file is
located among all the computers that are part of the
Internet.

A URL usually has three parts: protocol://domain/path

Example,
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/default.asp

Protocol: tells the computer what kind of coding to

expect.
For web pages the address always starts with http://
which stands for hypertext transfer protocol. For a site
that just downloads files you might use ftp:// which
stands for file transfer protocol. There are other
protocols that you are less likely to use.
Domain: the unique name for the computer to which
you are connecting.

All domain names have a 4-part number address like

207.46.130.150 but most have a name using letters, too,
like www.microsoft.com (which is much easier to
remember!). A dot character always separates the parts
of a name.
The www stands for World Wide Web and is used for
most web pages as the first part of the domain name.

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ITC Lecture Notes: Web intro -1

The com part stands for "commercial" and is one of

several extensions allowed for the top level domain.
Others include gov for government, edu for educational
institution, org for organization, mil for military, and
net for network. It is common in many countries to
include the country identifier in the domain, such as .us
for the United States, .fr for France, or .ar for
Argentina.
Seven new top-level domain names have been approved
by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers): .pro, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .aero,
and .name.
Path: is the list of folders on the computer, down to the
actual file, like /windows/downloads/default.asp If no
file name is listed at the end of the path, the browser
will look for the default file, usually named index.html .
If no such file is found, the browser will try to show a
list of the files in the last folder in the path. It may find
that it needs special permission or a password to show
the list of files.

You can expect to see htm or html as the extension for

most web pages. The extension asp (Active Server Page)
is used for a page that uses special codes from Microsoft
in addition to HTML. The extension shtml ( Secure
HTML) is for pages that are encrypted because they
involve sensitive information like credit card numbers.

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ITC Lecture Notes: Web intro -1

The spelling and punctuation of an Internet address

must be exactly right, including the use of upper case
letters. Many servers that handle web pages use the
operating system UNIX, for which myfile.htm,
MyFile.htm, myfile.HTM are all different names.
Type carefully! A forward slash / is not the same as a
back slash \. A colon : and a semicolon ; are not the
same. A comma , is not the same as . the dot
character.

The Language of the Web

Did you notice that the address extensions are based on
English, and the HTML code uses English terms? Many
English terms and phrases have been adopted as the
standard names for things having to do with the
Internet, especially in HTML and in coding languages
like JavaScript. It is another special area of learning

You can find more materials on the Web in English

than in any other language. Major sites are rapidly
building versions in the major languages of the world.
But the primary language of the Internet is English and
many sites are available only in English. The more
English at your command, the more resources there will
be that are available to you.

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