The World Wide Web is by far the most exciting and the fastest-growing protocol on the Internet. The Web uses hypertext to organize and link various resources -- "home pages," gopher sites, ftp sites, etc. -- into a "web" of networked information. These resources are commonly referred to as "pages" or "sites". The Web is also referred to as the "graphical" or "multi-media" part of the Internet. It can contain text, images, sound, video and movie clips, software programs, and has replaced all the features of the other Internet services/tools. A program called a "browser" is used to access the information located within the Web. Users are attracted to the Web because it is interactive, because it is easy to use, and because it combines graphics, text, sound, and animation into a rich communication medium. To navigate the Web, users "surf" from one page to another by pointing and clicking on hyperlinks in text or graphics.

What is a browser: A browser is a software program that interprets and displays information located on the Internet and WWW in a particular way. Text-only browsers such as lynx do not display images or sounds, while fully-featured browsers such as Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer can display graphics and animation, play movies and sounds and movie clips, and run software programs that are imbedded in Web pages, access different parts of the Internet, and with the right "helper" applications, view 3_D worlds and more. Browser are continually developing, so the possible uses of the browsers are always expanding. HTML tags and attributes are interpreted differently by different types of browsers. The appearances of the various page elements may differ from browser to browser. However, the structural relationship between elements will be the same.

The World Wide Web is developed by researchers at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, in early 1989 and is designed on a system known as hypertext. The developers of the web proposed the Web as a way for scientists around the world to collaborate using a global information system based on hypertext.

What is hypertext and hypermedia: Hypertext is a method of linking and organizing information in a networked environment. Readers of hypertext can choose their path through a text by selecting "links" to other documents. It is this "linking" (sometimes referred to as "hyperlinking") which provides the interactive element to hypertext that is the main method of navigation on the Web. The term hypermedia is used interchangeably with hypertext to denote the linking of sound, images, video, and other non-text media.

In the fall of 1990, the first text-only browsers were implemented and CERN scientists could access hypertext files and other information at CERN. However, the structure of hypertext documents and the way they would be transferred to remote sites still had to be further defined. Based on a proposal by Tim Berners-Lee (of CERN), the structure of hypertext documents was defined by a new language called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). To transfer HTML documents to remote sites, a new protocol was devised. This protocol is called the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

HTTP offers a means of moving from document to document and indexing within documents. The power of hypertext is in its simplicity and transparency. Users can navigate through a global network of resources at the touch of a button. Hypertext documents are linked together through keywords or specified hot areas within the document. These hot areas could be graphical icons or even parts of indexed maps. When a new word or idea is introduced, hypertext makes it possible to jump to another document containing complete information on the new topic. Readers see links as highlighted keywords or images displayed graphically. They can access additional documents or resources by selecting the highlighted keywords or images.

In early 1993 there were only about 50 Web sites worldwide. Then a browser enabling users to exploit the graphical capabilities of the Web was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). NCSA called the browser Mosaic. A group of computer scientist from NCSA left and started a new company called Netscape and then published a new browser called Netscape Navigator.

Today, the Web is the most powerful and fastest growing Internet service. It is many things to its millions of users. It is used as a marketplace, art gallery, library, community center, school, publishing house, and whatever else its authors create.

Last Updated: June 1, 1997