Chapters 1 : Internet and the World Wide Web
The amount of information available on the Internet has become
so large that it is difficult to search for specific information.
The World Wide Web (WWW) makes retrieval easy and quick.
The WWW is a search tool that helps you find and retrieve
information from a Web site using links to other sites and
documents. The WWW was built on the technology called
Hypertext. This technology increases accessibility to
linked documents on the Internet and helps user to navigate
between documents very easily.
Hypertext is identified by underlined text and a different
color usually. Some places will refer to this types of
technique as Jump-Off Points. Hypertext can make links
within the same document or to other documents.
Each time you access a new document by choosing a link,
there is a connection made with the web server that the
document is on. Once the appropriate document is
retrieved the connection is broken. There is no point
in maintaining the link while you are viewing it. This
is one reason why the WWW is so efficient.
WWW lets you search, traverse, and use many types of
information at numerous sites and in multiple forms.
This interface is called a browser. Some people refer
to a browser as a 'web browser' Often these terms are
used interchangeably.
The WWW is intended to help people share information
resources, and services with the widest possible
community of users. Thus a user can access the
WWW on Apple, UNIX, Macintosh, DOS, Windows, and
other operating systems.
Just like the Internet, the WWW has a protocol, which
is known as HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP
acts as an interface between a Web Client Software,
such Netscape Navigator.
A major advantage of the WWW is that it also supports
TCP/IP services, such as Gopher, FTP, and Archie in
addition to HTTP.
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