The World Wide Web, or simply the Web, is the newest and most exciting addition to the Internet. The Web has transformed the task of finding information on the Internet from a difficult task to an exciting adventure. Technically speaking, the Web is an information retrieval system consisting of an international network of computers that are all interconnected using hypertext links (described in detail in the next section). The web also features multimedia abilities. Multimedia refers to the fact that the web uses not only text, but also graphics, audio, and video.
Hypertext and Hyperlinks
Hypertext is what makes the Web so valuable. But what is it? Hypertext is simply a type of document (found on the Web) that contains links (called hyperlinks) that point your web broswer to another resource on the Internet. A hyperlink can be in the form of a word, several words, or even an image. When you select a hyperlink with your web browser (usually by clicking the link with your mouse), your web broswer automatically loads whatever the selected link indicates.
The advantages of hypertext? Well, imagine that you're reading a document on the Web about Australia. In the section on Australia's animal life, the word, "kangaroo," could be linked (if the author of the document felt inclined to do so) to a brief description of the animal, along with a picture. A link such as this one would differ from rest of the document either by being underlined, colored, or highlighted, depending on your web browser. More than one of these methods is often often used to distinguish hyperlinks.
What is HTTP & HTML?
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transport Protocol, which is the protocol (language) used by computers on the World Wide Web. This acronym gives us the common Internet address prefix, http://, which always preceeds addresses for Web pages.
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, which is the script language used to create Web pages. This language uses HTML tags to tell your web browser how to display each document. HTML tags are not only responsible for determining what gets bolded or italicized in a document, but they also are responsible for making hyperlinks.
Uniform Resource Locators (URL)
On the World Wide Web, uniform resource locators, or URL's, are used to locate and access information on the Internet. URL's consist of a protocol prefix, a domain name, a path, and a filename. We will deal with each of these parts separately. A protocol prefix tells your web browser what type of document is being accessed and which protocol it should use to access that document. Four of the more common protocols are as follows:
The second part of the URL, the domain name, is probably the most important part. This tells your web browser which Internet site the requested data is located on. A typical domain name is in the format of host.domain.com. If only the protocl prefix and the domain name are included in a URL, the file that will automatically be accessed is index.html (in the root directory of the accessed server).
If a more specific URL is desired, a path and filename must be added. This is done by adding a slash (/) after the domain name, followed by the path (path of directories and subdirectories that must be followed to find the desired filename). The filename is placed after the path and is separated by the path by another slash (/). For example, if the file welcome.html is located in the directory /pub/datafiles/, on the web server www.example.gov, the correct URL would be as follows:
One of the most exciting features of the World Wide Web is the ability to include graphics and sound in web pages. Graphics can be in the forms of icons, colored lines, backgrounds, or even photographs. Although sound is rarely heard on the Web, some Web pages do contain sound clips, usually lasting a couple minutes, or even "background music".
Whether you can expreience the full multimedia effect of the Web depends primarily on your web browser, as well as your computer. In order to view graphics, you must have a graphical web browser (which requires a SLIP/PPP Account). Although most web browsers today do allow graphics, people using Shell accounts typically use a browser called Lynx, which does not support graphics. Your ability to download and listen to audio files on the Web depends not only on your Web browser, but also on your computer. While you might have a browser that supports audio files (most graphical browsers do), your computer might not have a sound card or speakers, in which case it would be impossible listen to the audio files.
Every graphic you will find on the Web is simply an image file that your computer must download from the Internet site hosting the Web page. The image files are usually either GIF's or JPEG's. This simply indicates the method of compression used when storing the graphic as a file. GIF compression is usually used on small graphics, like icons or colored lines. The file extension for a GIF file is simply ".gif". JPEG compression (the file extension is either ".jpeg" or ".jpg") is used to compress large files, such as photographs. This is because of the fact that JPEG compression is much more efficient when storing large graphics, resulting in an image file that is much smaller in file size (uses less bytes).
File size is important when it comes to graphics because the larger the file size, the longer the file takes to download. And the longer an image file takes to download, the more time you will sit at your computer waiting for your favorite Web page to load. This is why anyone considering creating a Web page must first try downloading their pages using a 14.4 baud modem (still the average speed modem on the Internet) and see how long it takes. All to often, HTML authors create Web pages consisting of too many graphics, which results in pages that take as much as 10 minutes to download using a 14.4 baud modem.
Finding Your Way on the Web
One of the most common problems all Internet users face is the fact that it can be quite difficult to find what you want on the Internet. At first, it can even seem downright impossible. This is primarily because the Web is not a true on-line service. There is no central "main menu" that users can access to navigate through the Internet. Although there might not be an official menu, there are several resources available -- both on-line and off-line -- that can make "surfing the net" easier.
Internet "Yellow Page" Books
These books are similar to your local phone book's yellow pages. They list Internet sites (primarily Web pages) and their URL's by categories (in alphabetical order). These books can be found at computer stores and at most book stores.
On-line Internet Directories
Internet directories are on-line Web sites that place Web pages into one or more categories. Web pages are usually listed with a brief description and their URL. Depending on the Internet directory you are using, a search engine may also be available, as well as a Random URL link (when selected, picks a random Web page for you). While some directories manually review sites first, others automatically add submitted sites to their directory. See Netscape's Destinations: "Web Guides" page for links to some good Internet directories.
Internet Search Engines
There are a few different types of search engines out there (which are described in detail below), but regardless of the way they work, all behave pretty much the same way. Most search engines take one or more words entered by the user, search the contents of every Web page stored in their databases (or only pages in selected categories if desired), and display the results. In most cases, the resulting pages are given a score (determined by the number of times the search criteria is met in each page), and are ordered from the highest score to the lowest. Following are links to a few of the available search engines:
There is certainly no shortage of hot lists on the Internet, ranging from professionally constructed lists of Internet sites (like Netscape's "What's Cool" page) to personal link pages. These "hot lists" are simply lists of Internet sites whose creator(s) think you should visit. Their reasoning behind adding sites to hot lists can vary. Sites can be added because the list maintainer thinks they're "cool," because they have neat graphics (which usually take forever to download), for "political" reasons, or for commercial advertisement. Although hot lists don't typically help Internet users search the Internet for a desired piece of information, they can sometimes lead the user to some of the more interesting or controversial places on the Net.