NET11 Topic 1.2 ...And the World Wide Web?

This week we are to learn of the the history and technologies behind the World Wide Web and the origins of hypertext, and how this affects our understanding of information.

'Hypertext' is basically the system of linking one article or page to another whereby when you click on the highlighted or underlined word, you jump from one page to another.  CERN researcher Time Berners-Lee originally proposed the notion of a large interconnected database of information where you could navigate around by hyperlinks.

A graphical web browser was soon developed and the 'public face of the internet' or the 'World Wide Web', was born.

The addresses on the web are known as URL's (Uniform Resource Locators).  It is far easier to remember a textual web address than an IP address! When you type an address into your browser to go to a URL, it makes a request to a Domain Name Server (DNS) that translates it into an IP address (e.g http://143.2.442.56).

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a language that describes how a page should look when viewed on a browser.  You can see the HTML behind the page you are viewing often by going to 'View Source' in the menu bar.

PART TWO - Hypertext, (Why the Fuss?)

The idea of hypertext had been around for awhile before but with the conception of the World Wide Web the idea really began came to fruition.  Links that allowed the user to 'surf' the web, linking similar ideas together or leading to other things of interest, was a new way of discovering information and very natural to the human mind.