The exact definition for the World Wide Web (popularly known as the Web)
varies,
depending on whom
you ask. Three common descriptions are:
- A collection of resources (Gopher, FTP, http, telnet, Usenet, WAIS and
others) which can be accessed via a web browser.
A collection of hypertext files available on web
servers.
A set of specifications (protocols) that allows the transmission of web
pages
over the Internet.
HTTP was created at
CERN,
the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, as a means
for
sharing
scientific data internationally, instantly, and inexpensively. The core idea behind
the
Web is
hypertext, a concept that has been around for a long time. With hypertext a
word or phrase can contain a link to other text. To achieve this they created a
programming language, HTML, that links you to
other pages or network services on the Web. If you encounter a page with a
word
that is
highlighted in some way (usually in a different color and underlined), you can
click on
that
word and "go to" the page or resource to which connects. This non-linear, non-
hierarchical
method of accessing information was a breakthrough in information sharing and
quickly
became the major source of traffic on the Internet.
The basic elements of the World Wide Web are:
- HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) - the set of standards used by
computers to
communicate and share files with each other.
- URL's (Uniform Resource Locator) - the "address" of a resource (file or
diretory) on the
Web.
- HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) - the programming "tags" added to
text documents that turn
them into hypertext documents.
The World Wide Web Consortium at CERN
continues to be the premier
source of information about the Web. For more background information link to
the
history of CERN
involvement in the Web
and the Internet.
Also see Web Page
and Web Site.
