World Wide Web

Use

 Allows interactive browsing of hypertext documents. Most browsers also support other protocols as defined by the URL. The WWW is largely responsible for the huge popularity of the Internet that started with the initial release of Mosaic. The WWW itself was developed at CERN, but also see W3C.

Protocol

HTTP: hypertext transfer protocol.

URL

http://computer/directory/file.html
If a file is not specified, the http server will often send a default page. If the specified file is neither htm nor html, the browser will use MIME to determine how to handle the file.

Example: http://www.mbl.edu/

HTTP Clients

  • Mosaic The first GUI based browser to run under Windows.
  • Internet Explorer Microsoft's browser. Microsoft total missed judged the initial WWW phenomena, but is catching up fast.
  • Netscape Navigator Currently the dominate browser, with around 80% market share.

Browsing

Nescape

 Some info on using netscape.

HTML, VRML

HTML document creation, and a little bit on VRML

Web Searching

Locations of search engines and some suggestions on their use.

Plug-ins

 WWW browser extensions to HTML

CGI and Java

What makes a browser more interactive.