What is the World Wide Web? Is there a difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web? To find answers to these questions and more, we recommend that you start off with the document Introducing the World Wide Web.
For the final exam, you should know the following highlighted acronyms, terms, and concepts:
- WWW - World Wide Web
- The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a large-scale networked hypertext information system started at CERN in Switzerland, based on the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
Often the terms World Wide Web and the Internet are used interchangeably.
They do not, however, mean the same thing.
- HTML - HyperText Markup Language HTML
- is the markup language used to create documents used by the World Wide Web. Web browsers allow users to view html documents in (hopefully) consistent form.
- SGML - Structured General Markup Language
- is a data encoding that allows the information in documents to be shared -- either by other document publishing systems or by applications for electronic delivery, configuration management, database management, inventory control, etc.
- A URL - Uniform Resource Locator
- represents the location of the a WWW resource. A URL may point to an HTML file, a GIF image, an MPEG movie, an AU sound file, etc.
- httpd server (web server)
- allows you to create and provide documents to the world, including executing programs based on forms interaction with the user (for example, using the Common Gateway Interface (CGI)).
- Perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
- has become an extremely popular language for writing CGI programs, due to its suitability for manipulating text, files, and processes. Also, see The Perl Programming Language.
other terms
- browser
- a World Wide Web client--that is, a software package that lets you to look around the World Wide Web
- CERN
- particle physics institute located in Geneva, Switzerland and originators of the World Wide Web
- client
- a computer running client software that connects to server machines running server software; the client makes requests to a server for documents and is responsible for displaying the information. NCSA Mosaic is an example of client software.
- document
- unit of information sent from servers to clients; a document may contain plain or formatted text, inlined graphics, sound, other multimedia data, or hyperlinks to other documents; often also referred to as a file
- external viewer
- a software program that a client calls upon to view file formats it does not support internally
- HTML
- HyperText Markup Language, the collection of styles used to define the various components of a hypertext document
- HTTP
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the protocol used by Web servers
- hyperlink
- a word or graphic in a document with some form of highlighting that links to another document; also called an anchor
- hypermedia
- online information with text, images, audio, and animation associated in a nonlinear web of associations
- inlined image
- a graphic image that is displayed along with text in a document window
- tables
- Internet
- an international computer network connecting universities, research institutions, government agencies, and businesses
- NCSA Mosaic
- Web client developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications; available on X Window System, Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows platforms
- server
- a computer running server software that provides information upon request to computers running client software
- tags
- formatting codes used in HTML (e.g., <H1> </H1>, <P>)
- UIUC
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- URL
- Uniform Resource Locator, server and path information used in an HTML-coded source file to locate another document
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