World Wide Web

1. World Wide Web By Elizabeth Nye

2. Introduction The World Wide Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents contained on the Internet. One can view web pages that may contain text, images or videos and navigate between them using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, English engineer and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. He was later joined by Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau while both were working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

3. Web Browsers A web browser is a software for viewing the content of web pages. It interprets the HTML code and displays text and graphics on screen. There is a common standard for how this is done. However, different web browsers interpret the commands slightly differently, hence designers must plan and test their pages carefully to ensure that the end user sees what they are supposed to. Extra features can be added to web pages using JavaScript or plug-ins such as Adobe Flash. These can make Web sites very dramatic and exciting, but not all users will be able to see the material. As well as storing details of pages in the history folder, the parts that make up the web pages are stored on a hard disk of the computer.

4. Forums Forums are a form of electronic noticeboard, usually hosted on a web site. When users visit the forums, they can read messages or leave their own for others to read. Most forums are dedicated to a particular theme such as football, cooking or books. People post their messages either to provide or request information, or to give their opinions, Forums often have FAQ sections which enable users to avoid asking questions that might have already been asked.

5. Wiki A wiki is a set of web pages that anyone can edit. The edits can be made through a normal web browser interface. A wiki is a great tool for collaboration and discussion because the content can be created by many people instead of just one. The best known wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia. It was started in 2001 and it now has thousands of active contributors, millions of articles and billions of viewers.

6. Social Networking Sites There are a number of increasingly popular social networking sites and interactive services that are designed to help people keep in touch with each other, Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Bebo offer tools for users to share blogs, photos and messages. Sites such as Twitter enable users to find out what their friends ate up to by receiving short messages of up to 140 characters. Usually these social networking web sites and interactive services are either private or publically searchable. They raise issues about online bullying, posting of inappropriate images and the misuse of content.

7. Blogs A blog is an online journal intent to be shared with other web users, written by a ‘blogger’. Sometimes blogs are personal diaries; alternatively a blogger may be a Politian, expert or journalist writing for a specific purpose. Blogs are an important news source – Breaking news may be reported by those who are living through the events. Sites for Uploading Digital Media Users can upload digital media (e.g. music or video clips that they have been created) to web sites in order to share it with other web users. Examples of these web sites include: Youtube, a video-sharing Web site, and Flickr, a photo-sharing web site.