Lesson 1 – Getting to know the web

The beginning of the web

The World Wide Web allows people to use a global network of computers to send information to each other. Originally this network consisted mainly of scientific & military people. However, in 1990 a British Scientist - Tim Berners-Lee - invented a common format to send this information and the Internet as we know it was born. (So you could claim the Internet is a British invention!)

At it’s simplest, the web is a way to store information on an Internet connected computer called a server. Your computer when used to read that information is called a client and you user a special program called a browser to show the "pages" on screen.

What’s in a page

A Web page usually has text and some pictures, possibly a sound or some animated pictures, and maybe even a form to send information.

When you want to look at a web page the words, pictures and so on are sent over the Internet by the Server and your browser (hopefully) puts them together in the right order on your screen. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the special computer language that tells the browser what to put where.

What’s here

These pages won’t cover everything about HTML; in fact we will barely scratch the surface! There are dozens of books and sites on the Internet you can visit if you want more. Hopefully I will cover enough here to enable you to build a basic site.

I’m sticking to a standard version of HTML (3.2) that is supported by most web browsers. The two most common browsers INTERNET EXPLORER & NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR now work with more advanced versions, however some of the features understood by one are not understood by the other. Many other features, Java Applets, Javascript, Shockwave, RealAudio, have emerged in the last couple of years, but these are too complicated for beginners to understand, so we will stick to the basics.