Creating Research-Based Web Sites with Netscape Composer

What is the World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web, or simply the Web, is a special collection of files that are viewed via the Internet using a special application called a Web Browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Safari are web browsers).  These files, generally HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) files, contain instructions to create a page in a browser that can contain text, images, and multimedia components like audio or movies.  A special computer, a Web Server, keeps these HTML files accessible on the internet, and sends them out to browsers that request them.  The web page designer (the part you will be playing in this process) creates the web site on their computer, and then uploads the files to the Web Server where others can then view them with a browser.  If we were to diagram what the web looks like, it would resemble something like the diagram to the left.

Let’s break this process down in a bit more detail:

When you open a web browser, it is designed to use the internet to communicate with a web server, request the HTML page, receive it, and then display the page.  For example, if we open our browser and type in the following in the address field:

 

Here is the process that unfolds:

1. The browser searches the internet for the web server at www.google.com.
2. Once the browser finds the server, it requests a specific page from the server.
3. The server responds by sending the HTML files back to the browser, as well as any images or multimedia files that are included in that web page.
4. Your browser reads the HTML code and any additional files and assembles the page for you to view in your browser.

The whole process is generally seamless to us when we surf the web – we just type in addresses and click links, and the web server and browser take care of all the details.  Of course, these details are the essence of what you will be learning in the next few weeks so you can develop your own web pages.

Additional Resources about the Internet and World Wide Web:

• If you would like a bit more background on the Internet, an excellent introduction titled “Internet 101” by UMW’s Andy Rush is available here:  http://www.umw.edu/training/inte/internet/101/index.htm
  
• Andy has also created a short introduction to using web browsers:  http://www.umw.edu/training/inte/internet/browsers.htm