The World Wide Web

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The World Wide Web is a system for finding information on the Internet through hypertext links. Hypertext is text and graphics that allow you to link or 'jump' to either other areas on the particular site you are in or other Internet sites all together.

Understanding Sites

Think of a web site as a magazine or newspaper. A site can contain any number of pages. Pages can contain a variety of media including text, graphics, sounds, video and even VRML (virtual reality). The main page of a web site, often referred to as a home page, is similar to the front page of a newspaper or a front cover of a magazine.

A browser is an application which is used to navigate the World Wide Web.

The command bar gives you access to menu commands such as tweaking options and opening new locations. The toolbar allows for quick access to the most commonly used aspects of the browser. There are Navigation buttons which allow you to move between pages. Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a toolbar that slides to show more or less of the main window. Here you can type in an URL for quick access to a site. In our example we have Microsoft's main page. You can even configure buttons which link to your favorite sites. We have a button set up for USA Today. The main window is the largest area of the browser window. At the bottom of the page is the status bar. The status bar keeps you informed as to what the browser is doing and also reports on the connection. To the right of the browser window are the scroll bars which let you scroll up and down larger web pages.

Web pages can consist of the following: simple text, hypertext links, graphics and images, frames, acitvex and java applets, sounds, and virtual reality (VRML). We'll look at all of these individually.

The most basic element of a web page is the word. You will see some words that stand out because they are in a different color and possibly underlined. These are hyperlinks. If you move your mouse over one of these words you will see the pointer change to a pointing finger. Clicking on one of these words with your mouse will take you to either a different part of the page you are on or to a different site entirely. Once you have visited a link, you will notice that the color of the link has changed. The colour change makes it helpful to recall which pages you have visited.

There are many pictures on the World Wide Web. Pictures come in many forms on the Web. Some are graphics, some are photographs, some are animations, and some are called image maps. Some of the graphics have links embedded in them. If you click on the image it will act as a hyperlink as well. Image maps are large images that have many different links in them. Move your mouse across an image to see if your pointer changes to a pointing finger.

Some web sites you will visit will have the page divided into different sections. Each frame is independent of the other. You can scroll through frames individually. You can click on a link in one frame and all the other frames on the page will stay the same. Its important to note that you can change the size of a frame by dragging the borders with your mouse. Most sites that use frames also offer a non-frames version. Pages with frames take a bit longer to download.

ActiveX is a form of applet (mini-application) that can change Web pages to fully interactive sites by connecting the Internet to other resources of your computer, such as video clip viewers and sound sound players. It uses Visual Basic script to program the codes.Web pages that use ActiveX launch themselves. ActiveX is only available through Microsoft Internet Explorer. Java is a programming language that can be used by all operating systems. Java sends applets out over the Internet much like ActiveX.

The are a number of sound files available on the internet. It is also possible to listen to live radio broadcasts over the Internet. You can hear AM quality radio from many national radio stations. You need to download a plug-in called Real Player. One site that has a large collection of radio stations broadcasting on the Internet is Audio Net.

This is cutting edge Internet technology. VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) displays 3-D graphic worlds that you can walk around and interact with. A good page to visit for an example of VRML technology can be found at Barnegat Communications.

When you launch your browser, your browser is set to open to the same Web page every time. Internet Explorer can be set to open on the Microsoft Network site which features a customizable start page. You can change the start page and set your browser to s tart on any page you want. To change your start page in Internet Explorer: Click on View and then Options and then click on the Navigation tab. Then type in the page you want to start with in the Address line.

All surfing the web means is moving from page to page across a web site or the whole Internet. There are basically four ways to get to a web page. You can click on a hyperlink, you can use the BACK, FORWARD, or HOME buttons on your toolbar, you can type in the exact address you want to visit in the ADDRESS line or you can click on a link from your Favorites list.

Every page has its own address which is part of the domain name system. The URL (say it like "Earl" as in "The Duke of...") The URL contains Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) as its protocol, the domain name and a path to a resource found on the host.
An example: http://www.Microsoft.com/athome/default.htm

At some point you will want to find information on the Internet. A search engine is the best choice to help you find information on virtually any subject. You can search by keyword or by subject matter. There are literally dozens of them on the Internet.

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