Web Technology Basics

WEB BASICS

Internet fundamentals and basics guide
This is a brief article on Internet fundamentals written especially for the beginner. You are encouraged to read the other detailed articles on Internet fundamentals such as email and the world wide web which would provide a stepping stone for learning web development.
The Internet started as a small government project in the United States of America back in 1970s. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) linked their computers to ease the transfer of data. This network came to be known as ARPANET and is the birthplace of the Internet.
The Internet is now a huge global network of computers. It is not just one network but consists of thousands of other networks worldwide. No one knows how many computers are connected to the Internet because each day several new machines are added and some old ones taken off. The Internet, you see, is always in a state of flux.
Numerous people and organizations around the globe own the different computers linked to the Internet. Hence, no one is actually in-charge of the Internet. Private companies (government agencies, in some countries) own the Internet backbone through which information flows and various organizations develop the technical aspects of this network.
Email - Internet Fundamentals
The rapid development of the Internet can be attributed to the immense popularity of email. Email has been the most used Internet application because it has revolutionized the way we communicate. Email messages can be received almost instantly and can include images, video and sound in addition to text. Furthermore, interactive emails can be created using HTML.
The World Wide Web - Fundamentals
The World Wide Web, also called WWW or simply the web, is a subset of the Internet. It brings text, images, animation, video, sound and other multimedia content, all under one roof. The Web is changing continuously by absorbing new technologies and updating the old ones. The pages on the Web, appropriately called web pages, can contain multimedia objects such as images, sound, and video in addition to text. Highly interactive web pages can be developed using HTML and a client-side language such as JavaScript or VBScript. This greatly enhances the web experience for the web surfer. Web pages are viewed using browsers such as Internet Explorer (from Microsoft), Firefox (from Mozilla), Opera (from Opera Software) and Netscape Communicator (from Netscape). A list of web browsers can be found in the Web page Design section of this web site.With video conferencing and wireless applications, the Internet is ready to take us to the new realm of communication and information exchange.

The World Wide Web (WWW) basics and fundamentals

The World Wide Web (also known as the Web, WWW or W3) is a system of Internet servers through which several Internet protocols can be accessed using a single interface (your browser). Almost all protocols available on the Internet are available on the Web. This creates a convenient and user-friendly environment through which email, FTP, Telnet, Usenet News etc. can be accessed. Because of this and also because of the ability of the Web to work with multimedia and advanced programming languages, the World Wide Web has been the fastest growing and the most interesting part of the Internet.Note: The World Wide Web is a subset of the Internet.

The World Wide Web's HTTP Protocol
One of the most famous and popular protocols on the web is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Hypertext documents contain links that connect to other documents or files. The user can activate these links or 'hot spots' (through a mouse button click, for example) and the target document will then be transferred on to the client machine and if it's a web page, it would be displayed in the browser. These 'hot spots' are created using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and can be placed as text, pictures etc. A single HyperText document can contain many such hyperlinks. Because of all this "linking", a virtual web of connections can be made.
Web Pages are created with HTML
HTML files or web pages are plain text (ASCII) files with a lot of tags. These tags are the building blocks of HTML. The tags help in structuring a document and displaying visual features such as font size, color, italics etc. The tags are also used in creating hyperlinks and embedding images, sounds, video and other multimedia content. HTML tags come in pairs (most of the times); there is a starting and a closing tag. Tag names and tag attributes are enclosed in <> signs.

Let us look at a simple tag - The Bold tag that displays text in bold.The starting bold tag is and the ending tag is . Any text enclosed between these is rendered (displayed) in bold by the browser. Remember all closing tags have the extra slash (/).
Web Browsers
Though the World Wide Web is a part of the Internet, it serves as an important interface through which all of the net can be accessed. This interface to the Internet is the browser. The browser displays the HTML files using the instructions in the tags. In addition, the browser can also display images and video.

The web has grown tremendously over the few years and provides a vast range of experiences including video, multimedia presentations, real-time collaboration, interactive pages, radio and television broadcasts. With the use of programming languages such as JavaScript, VBScript, Perl, PHP, ASP, Java, VRML, the functionality of the web is being increased. The pages on the web can also be linked to databases to provide dynamic content to the visitor. This feature attests the active and energetic nature of the web.