Core_Computer Studies: WWW What it is, where it came from and other bits of info
As more people make use of the Internet there are fascinating implications for the way people work, and play.
What is the Internet and the World Wide Web?
In everyday conversation many people interchange these terms but the two are actually different. The World Wide Web is part of the Internet this is the first thing you have to understand. The internet has been described as is a "network of networks" and it demonstrates how technology can produce unexpected social changes.
The Internet is a global computer network which allows millions of computer users to access digitally archived resources. These computers range from PCs and Macs to supercomputers, but they all use a set of rules to exchange information.
The internet is based on a file transfer system that means it does not matter what type of computer you own or where it is. On the Internet you can locate and read files from any other computer. For this reason the Internet is not located in an particular place but dispersed throughout the millions of servers.
I have also been asked - Who owns and runs the Internet? Nobody owns the Internet as it is a network of machines owned by many people.On the internet there is also a number of services for communicating (such as email), browsing the world wide web, searching, and creating content. Driven by the popularity of services such as electronic mail, file transfer, news groups, and the World-Wide Web, the Internet's growth rate has been astonishing.
History:
The Internet was established at the end of the cold war to ensure continued communications between the military and various branches of government. The Department of Defence in America wanted to solve a communications problem should nuclear war happen. What they did was to create a computer network that would continue to function in the event of just such a disaster. If part of the network were damaged or destroyed, the rest of the system still had to work. That network was ARPANET, which linked U.S. scientific and academic researchers. It was the forerunner of today's Internet. Now, however, its uses have far outgrown its creators intentions.
Articles online:
Internet History: this article sketches in a brief outline of what happened.
History of the Internet - Timeline: A briefly described timeline of Internet history. Guess when it all started? 1836!!!! This time line starts with the invention of the telegraph and as a site is nothing to look at, but the information is sound.
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History by Gregory R. Gromov . This nine-page Internet history lesson tells an amazing story which is rich in anecdotes and graphics. It explores history and the philosophy of the Internet. Gromov by the way starts the story with the Atlantic cable of 1858.
The World-Wide Web
The World-Wide Web is a system that allows users to interact with documents stored on computers across the Internet as if they were parts of a single hypertext. The Web began in 1992 at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, as a means of distributing and annotating scientific research.
Technical standards are now defined by the World-Wide Web Consortium.The creators of the web specified a set of rules for creating, publishing, and finding documents.
Creating documents: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
Web documents are created by using text. This text is 'marked up' with tags that control the documents appearance. Users need a web browser (for example, Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer) to view web pages.
Publishing documents: HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
Users retrieve HTML documents from servers (or "web sites"). HTTP allows a networked computer to listen for and respond to incoming requests for files. HTTP is often a more cost-effective solution than traditional paper publishing.
Finding documents: URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
A URL is the Internet address for a web document or other file. A typical URL looks like this:
http://www.anu.edu.au/ITA/corecomputer/
The web grew tremendously in popularity after the release of a free browser program, Mosaic, by the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Mosaic provided an easy-to-use, graphical interface to the web that behaved the same on all computers. When Mosaic was released in 1993, there were approximately 130 web sites on the Internet. By 1994, this number had increased to more than 10,000. While other browser programs such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer are now more widely used, NCSA Mosaic has been a critical factor in the growth of the World-Wide Web.
Why is there more than one Web browser?
A little more history is of use here. When the internet was young it dealt almost exclusively with text; then, in 1993, when Mosaic was released everyone including myself got excited because it was the first graphical browser. The Mosaic browser also made it possible to design documents. The Web page was born. Since Mosaic could display an image my curiosity was sparked and as I have said, so was the curiosity of a good number of other people. I would suggest that one of the reasons the web became popular is that people like to look at pictures, and the Mosaic browser allowed people to do just that.
The next step of the story however took place in 1994, with the release of Netscape Navigator 1.1. A guy called Marc Andreessen who was working at Mosaic decided to leave. He set up his own enterprise and followed the successful model Mosaic had established. Marc Andreessen developed and released Netscape. The other thing he did was to distribute Netscape for free on the Internet in order to establish a wide user-base. This tactic worked as Netscape quickly dominated the browser market. This situation did not last long.
Microsoft who at that stage had not paid much attention to the internet finally saw the potential of the Internet. Microsoft's tactic was that it applied its usual style threw money at the problem and outspending Netscape, Microsoft built a browser. Internet Explorer was the result. The user base for Microsoft Internet Explorer continues to expand, largely due to the company's strategy of bundling Explorer with Windows system software.
How the Web Works
The Web is an example of is called client/server computing, in which networked computers share the work of a task. That right it is a bit of technological team work. When you are browsing you are using a client program, probably Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer to retrieve information from a server computer. The server (which can be anywhere in the world) is responsible for transmitting the document, while your client software- the browser is responsible for displaying it. This distribution of labor speeds up processing. This is the up side.
The down side however is that publishers of web documents cannot completely control the final appearance of their page. This is because the way the page is displayed depends on the way the client software- the browser has been configured. For example, your browser might use the Times-Roman font to display text, while I may have configured my browser to use Helvetica.
The interaction may be described like this:
User: This is interesting, I wonder where this link leads? I suppose being the person I am there's only one way to find out.
Click!
Web Client -Browser Software: What's she's clicking on? A URL ... I'll send a message to the server at that address requesting a copy of the specified document!
Web server: Another hit! Which document does this client want? Okay, coming right up - here it comes! Glad I'm done with that, now I can go back to waiting for the next hit.
Web Client -Browser Software: Finally, that server's sending some data back. It is a HTML document - how convenient. I'll interpret all these tags and display the result in a beautiful manner on the screen.
User: How fascinating, an illustrated history of chocolate! I wonder if they have any chocolate cake recipes? MM I wonder where this link goes ...
How to use the World Wide Web:
What is a Web Browser?
Browsers as I have said are software products that provide a means of viewing the information on the Web. Users need a web browser program to view web pages. The two main browsers used on the web, Netscape, Internet Explorer are both available for free.
Browsing:
The heart of the Internet is browsing. Hypertext (demonstrated on this site) is jargon for a richly cross-referenced text. Browsing is accomplished by following links, the connections between related information.
Web sites:
A web site is a collection of related pages. A home page is a starting point for browsing a web site it is effectively an index page. Often this page is considered and referred to metaphorically as the front door of a site. The role the home page plays is that it introduces users to the purpose of the site, then gives them some method of navigating through the site. If users get lost or want to explore other areas of the site, they can return, to the homepage and follow a different path. It is in a way an contents or index page or a base from which to navigate.
What is a URL?
A URL (Universal Resource Locator) is referred to as an address but in many ways it is more useful to think of it as the electronic equivalent of a call number on the spine of a library book. The URL is where an electronic file is on the Web.
Below, the URL for corecomputer page is analyzed part by part
http://www.anu.edu.au/ITA/corecomputer/
http://
The first part of the URL identifies the protocol necessary to retrieve the file. http:// indicates that the file is a web page (HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol,). You may encounter URLs using other schemes, such as:
gopher://
Identifies a file on a gopher server.
news://
Identifies an item from a Usenet news group.
ftp://
Identifies a file that can be downloaded from an FTP server.
Web browsers can also process URLs specifying other server protocols. This means that a program like Navigator can also act like a gopher client, a news reader, and an ftp client.
www.anu.edu.au
This part of the URL is in the same format as part of an e-mail address. It is the domain name of the machine on which the file is located. Understanding domain names can give us information about a site before visiting it.
Firstly www directs us to a specific computer as www is a common name for World-Wide Web servers.
From this URL a visitor would know that the site is educational because it has edu in the address. Educational institutions have domain names with edu in them. We can also tell that it is an Australian site because of au.
Other common endings for domain names are:
- .com (a commercial organization),
- .org (a non-profit organization), and
- .gov (a government organization).
In the case of the URL above anu identifies the Australian National University as the subdomain.
The last part of the URL specifies what is called the fully-pathed filename for this page. It describes the full path which means that the name tells what directory the file is stored in on the web server's hard disk drive. So ITA identifies the site as being part of the Institute of the Arts section of the server and then finally corecomputer tells us that it relates to this course. Obviously an outsider would not know that but you have a pretty good idea that it would have something to do with computing at a teaching institution.
You will often encounter a URL which is followed by a single slash. Entering this URL will retrieve the main index/home page for the site. Leaving off this slash can sometimes produce an error. URLs do seem long and cumbersome, but each part of the URL is necessary. When you consider that a URL tells exactly where in the world the file is and how to get it, it explains the length and it's worth all that typing!
Basic browser features:
A window which displays the current page:
This window behaves like any other window on your computer: it can be opened, closed, resized, and moved around on the screen. Scroll bars allow you to see parts of a page that are not currently visible. The title of the current page appears in the window's title bar.
If your computer has enough memory, you open other windows within your web browser. This is handy if, for example, you need a web page open for reference in one browser window while visiting new pages in another browser window. To open another browser window select "New" or "New Window" from the "File" menu).
Links:
Words or phrases on a web page that are links appear underlined and in color. Click once on a link to follow it to a new page.
The row of buttons at the top of the browser window.
These buttons include:
Home button :
No matter where you are on the web, if you click the button with a picture of a house it will take you back to the home page that is specified in the Preferences. In the case of the computers at ANU our home page is usually the ANU student information page.
Back and Forward buttons
These left- and right-pointing arrows, will take you back through the pages you have visited since launching the browser. Logically, the Forward button is only active if you have used the Back button. You can also use the Go menu to retrace your web-browsing session.
Stop button
This button allows you to abort an attempt to retrieve a page from a web server. If a page is loading very slowly, you may want to change your mind and look at something else.
The Go menu
The Go menu maintains a list of the pages you have visited since starting the browser program. You can go back to any of these pages by selecting their titles. This is quicker than clicking on the Back button repeatedly.
Preferences
Web browsers can be configured in many ways by selecting "Preferences" from the "Edit" menu. Please do this only on computer at home not on the computers in the labs. You can tell the web browser whether it should automatically display images when it loads a page. Other preferences you can set include the URL for your home page by this it is meant the browserÕs home page. This is the page that is loaded when you launch the browser and when you use the Home button. The fonts used to display text on web pages, your e-mail address, are all settings you can change in your preferences.
The Bookmarks or Favorites menu
Often you will visit web pages to which you'd like to return to. The Bookmarks menu (in Navigator) or Favorites menu (in Explorer) allows you to add these pages to a list.
There will be more on bookmarking and keeping track of your research in next weeks lecture.
Ways to browse & navigate:
Click on highlighted text (or a picture). Notice cursor change. Notice URL at bottom of window.
Go directly to a site by manually entering the URL.
Make a bookmark
Use a bookmark.
Use the history list ("Go" menu).
Don't forget to make use of help menus when they are provided. For information about how either browser works, choose "Help" in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
The Internet and education:
The Internet and the World Wide Web are fast becoming part of the infrastructure of all colleges and universities. Use of the Internet can provide opportunities for what those in the teaching profession call inquiry-based learning.
Students using the Internet and the World Wide Web need to develop skills in information gathering and learn to evaluate the validity of information acquired through Internet. Not only that you need to know how to locate information you need to learn to contextualize information.
Democracy reigns on the World Wide Web.
The reason I say this is because anyone can be a publisher. For the first time in history we literally have freedom of the press. It used to be said that you have freedom of the press if you own the press. The WWW in many ways provides this. This is wonderful on one hand as the gate keepers of our culture ie the institutions, media giants, editors and curators are to a degree losing control. This is great as counter cultural movements around such issues as the environment or third world debt can disseminate information quickly and effectively.
The down side however is that this very freedom leads to wide variation in quality. There are many examples of trash online. However there are equally many examples of highly polished, professionally designed sites.
The Internet since it is built and used by people is not without flaws. The "information wants to be free" advocates often optimistically argue their case but for instance in the early period of web history non-English speakers were at a disadvantage. Increasingly information on the Internet is available in languages other than English. There is also the issue of who actually is online. Access to technology and in turn the Internet is still heavily involved with social and economic position.
You will encounter:
Organizational and design problems:
Because of the nature of the web much of the content is provided by non-professional authors who unlike professional writers do not have copy editors. Because of this many pages also lack "meat" with poor graphic design and confusing navigation. You often encounter text which is displayed on a patterned background that makes it impossible to read. My personal pet hate on some commercial sites is multiple animations that are very distracting.
Often pages are published before their time and you encounter a shell without much content. Nothing is static on the web. Pages and sites change constantly. You can not rely on material being at the same location the next time you visit the site.
Technical problems:
Apart from typographical errors when you type in the URL other Errors are common while browsing. As you browse you will often encounter a message that those who love jargon refer to it as a 404 error it reads "Network error, DNS entry not found, Unable to locate server" This means the server is not responding for some reason or other it could be something simple like the power is down or the site has moved. Links are often broken due to the site being moved.
Overcrowding:
If too many people try to access a site at the same time this can prevent access. It can also slow things down considerably. People refer to this as lag. It is a shorthand for the time (lag) it takes for a document to be retrieved by the browser.
Search engines:
As I have said the Internet is a "network of networks," linking thousands of computer networks together. Because of the Internet's vast resources, it is impossible to know of every file that is online. Students need to understand how to use a variety of search engines. You will notice that in this lecture I have not touched on locating information you may need. Next week Georgina Buckley from the ITA Library is going to give us a comprehensive discussion on using search engines and directories. We will be also looking at book marking sites and keeping track of your research.
These notes are written for students who undertake the Core Computer course at School of Art, Australian National University. Students of the course should feel free to contact any member of staff with comments questions and general suggestions..
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