About The Web |
| What is the Web ? |
As you're here, you have some idea about the web. For now we'll assume that you are new to this area and, as such, would like to know a little more about how it all works and what it's all about.
The world wide web is a collection of computers located throughout the world, permanently connected together. Each computer can hold many 'web sites' , 'domains' and other resources.
More people are interested in web sites (such as this one) than other features on the internet (except e-mail). Web sites bring together many components; text, images, animation, music and other interactive elements to provide a resource that people who 'browse' or 'surf' them can look around. In some ways web sites are like books or brochures, but they can be so much more.
In a brochure you can write about what you or your company does and you can include pictures. Customers browse the brochure or use the index to find what they want.
In basic form a website is the same, BUT: the users don't have to flow from start to end, they can follow 'hyperlinks' (words or pictures that you click on to go to another page or site) to more actively choose the information they want.
Better still web sites can be made to 'react' to the user, remembering who visited, presenting information specifically tailored to their needs. Web sites can be 'engaging', encouraging the user to delve deeper. Web sites can be your store front, projecting your business image and handling your customer queries and requests 24hrs a day, 365 days a year.
As technology improves so does the power available for web site design. More features are becoming standard with new software and all this can only lead to more compelling websites.
In most cases your, or a visitor to your site's, computer is connected to the telephone network using a modem. When the browser is started the computer instructs the modem to dial your ISP (Internet Service Provider). Once your computer has successfully connected to the ISP's computer your off and running.
When you type an address into your browser or click on a link:-
Your browser asks your ISP's computer to fetch the required page.
The ISP's computer finds the computer where the page lives (Anywhere in the world) and asks for the page to be sent.
The page is sent, usually via many different locations to the ISP's computer.
Your browser gets the page.
Phew! it's amazing it works really. The clever part is that if one of the links in the chain between your ISP and the computer with the page you want fails, usually an alternative route can be used and you still get the page.
*Note. The above may vary if you access the web over a network.
First, speed. One of the biggest complaints about the internet is the speed that web sites are displayed (too slow). When you connect to the internet using a modem it connects at a certain 'speed'. This can be defined as the length of time it takes to send or receive a piece of information of a given size.
You may have heard of some standards here, such as 28.8, 33.6 or 56K? These are optimum speeds for connection by different modems and in practice they are rarely achieved. So usually you are connected to the internet at a lower 'speed' than your modem is capable of. Why? - lots of reasons but usually to do with the quality of your telephone connection or the available connections to your ISP.
Lets assume that you are connected as fast as you can be and STILL a site seems slow, there are several possible reasons for this.
When you surf a site your computer is being sent lots of files:- text and code for the web pages, images, sounds, video's etc. Usually most if not all of it will have to arrive at your computer before you can see anything. If the images and files are large (not necessarily in size, but in the amount of data in them) and there are lots of them on the page you are waiting for, it will take a long time to see the page. One of the key features of a good website is to keep file sizes as low as you can. It's a balancing act for the designer of files size over download time.
The last part of the equation is the computer sending the web pages (the host or server). If lots of people ask to see the same page at the same time, each of those people will get the page but slowly. The more people wanting to see it, the slower.
A fast server with a large connection to the net will perform better.
Lastly, how about that bandwidth thing. Bandwidth is a description of the amount of data sent out over a given period. When you agree to rent space on a server for your web site most firms will give you a 'bandwidth restriction' that limits the amount of data that can be sent out from your site every week or month. This is another reason to keep those file sizes down.
Browsers are the program that is used to 'surf' the internet. Just as a word processing program is the tool used to processes words - the browser is the tool used to browse the web.
Again, like other software, browsers come in different shapes and sizes. Microsoft(tm) provide Internet Explorer and Netscape(tm) provide their Navigator browser. There are also other software companies such as Mosaic(tm) that supply browser software and several Internet service providers issue their customers with 'branded' or non standard browsers. Some, such as AOL have their own browsers altogether.
All of these browsers have been around for a while and have gone through several stages of development or versions. In addition many browsers are available for different platforms, ie Mac(tm) and Windows(tm) as well as things like web tv.
Here's the problem. All of these browsers display pages differently and some browsers/versions support features that others don't.
The good news is that most of the big players in the browser market supply some versions of their browsers free! These are available for download from the companies respective download sites and you can usually find free copies on magazine cover disks. In addition most ISP's give away cd's with browsers on them.
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