How the Web
Works: A Guide for Anyone Who's Left it Too Late to
Find Out and is Now Afraid to Ask
The Internet and the Web
The words 'Internet' and 'Web' get used interchangeably,
but they mean different things. The Internet (always
spelled with a capital) was invented in the 1960s by
DARPA. Yep, those wacky defense folks who are continually
coming up with paranoid solutions to problems one could
never imagine, wondered how to create a decentralized,
networked communications system, so that even if major
cities were destroyed, enough of the network would remain
intact.
The Internet began within the military, then during
the 1970s moved into education. At the time no one paid
much attention to the habit researchers were developing
of using it for personal communication, too.
The rest, as they say, is history. The rise of the
personal computer, email, and then the invention of
the World Wide Web in the 1990s have all contributed
to the remarkable cultural, social, communications and
lifestyle phenomenon we now take for granted.
So, you're wondering, what is the difference between
the Internet and the Web? The Internet is an umbrella
term for all technologies that use the decentralized
publicly accessible network of networks. This includes
ftp (file transfer protocol) newsgroups, bulletin boards,
chat groups, and more. Then in the early 1990s the World
Wide Web was born. The Web is a part of the Internet,
but it's not the whole Internet. It's distinguishable
from other Internet services in that it allows for graphics,
sound, video, animation, and a non-linear organization
of information through 'hyperlinks', i.e. the ability
to click on a word or image and be taken to another
page.
Web Sites: What Are They Made
of and How Do They Work?
Websites are collections of digital files hosted on
computers called Web servers. Web servers are connected
to each other over the Internet and communicate using
a language called HTTP. This stands for 'hypertext transfer
protocol', and I mention it only because you'll notice
'http' at the beginning of web addresses and you might
be wondering what it means.
'Hypertext' is text that contains links to other pages,
which pretty much sums up text on the Web. And 'transfer
protocol' just means a particular way of schlepping
information around between computers.
So when you look for a web page your browser sends
off a request for that page out over the Internet. Your
computer sends a message to your ISP (Internet Service
Provider, e.g. Comcast, Verizon, etc.), which relays
the message to the server hosting the site. Then the
host server replies by sending the various files associated
with that particular site back to your ISP, your ISP
sends it to your computer, and the files pop up on your
browser screen.
And isn't it incredible that it all happens in seconds?
But wait! There's more! The information transmitted
around the Internet, whether the requests for files
or the files themselves, is broken up into 'packets',
and different packets take different routes through
the network of the Internet. And each time you request
a page, the information will arrive in your browser
via a different set of journeys, to be reassembled in
front of you by your web browser. Amazing!
Your Web Browser
Your browser is a jigsaw-puzzle solver. Reading instructions
in HTML, it assembles websites for you on the fly out
of the collection of information it receives. Despite
often resembling brochures and books, websites are not
created the same way. There is nothing fixed about the
content of a website, it's just an illusion that it's
laid out coherently. If any of the instructions are
wrong, or the browser is too old to read modern instructions,
the page will not display correctly.
The cool thing about HTML is that it was designed to
be readable by any browser on any kind of operating
system on any kind of computer, whether you had a creaky
Windows machine or the latest Mac. The flipside is that
it makes HTML limited as a design tool, kind of like
drawing with six colors of crayons. But many partner
technologies have been developed to expand the design
scope of the web, such as CSS and JavaScript. Curious
readers can explore these terms further on Wikipedia.
Contact Information:
Julia Stoops
Blue
Mouse Monkey
Copyright Protection and Reprint Rights: This
article is fully copyrighted by the author, but can
be reprinted without permission provided the article
links back to this page: http://www.800Muses.com/muse-profiles/muse-julia.htm
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