Where does the web fit in?
The story of the growth of the Arpanet to the Internet takes us to the mid 1970s, but why did it a take a further 20 years for the Internet to be widely adopted for business and social use? The reason is that the World Wide Web or ‘web’ for short is a much more recent innovation. As you know, the web provides a familiar, easy way to access information through the Internet such as the web browser through which you are reading this unit. So the web provides was an easy, graphically rich, standard method for exchanging and publishing information on the Internet. If we take the analogy of television, then the Internet would be equivalent to the broadcasting equipment such as masts and transmitters, and the World Wide Web is equivalent to the content of different TV programmes. The publishing medium is based on standard document formats such as HTML that can be thought of as similar to a word-processing format such as that used for Microsoft Word documents. The HTML standard has been widely adopted since:
· it offers hyperlinks which allow users to readily move from one document or web site to another – the process known as ‘surfing’;
· HTML supports a wide range of formatting making documents easy to read on different access devices;
· Graphics and animations can be integrated into web pages;
· interaction is possible through HTML based forms that enable customers to supply their personal details for more information on a product, perform searches, ask questions or make comments.
World Wide Web (WWW)
The most common technique for publishing information on the Internet. It is accessed through web browsers which display web pages of embedded graphics and HTML/XML encoded text.
Hyperlink
A method of moving between one web site page and another, indicated to the user by an image or text highlighted by underlining and/or a different colour.
It is this combination of web browsers and HTML that have proved so successful in establishing widespread business use of the Internet. The use of these tools provide a range of benefits including:
· easy to use since navigation between documents is enabled by clicking on hyperlinks or images. This soon becomes a very intuitive way of navigation which is similar across all web sites and applications;
· it can provide a graphical environment supporting multimedia which is popular with users and gives a visual medium for advertising;
the standardisation of tool and growth in demand means information can be exchanged with many businesses and consumers.