History of the Internet

World Wide Web (WWW) also called Web, the Internet's (worldwide computer network) leading information retrieval site. The Internet provides users with access to a vast array of documents that are linked to each other by hypertext or hypermedia links — i.e. hyperlinks, electronic connections that link similar pieces of information to allow an user to access them.

Hypermedia files function links to images, sounds, animations, and movies. The Web operates inside the Internet‘s primary client-server format; servers are pc programs that save and transmit files to different computer systems on the network when asked to, whilst consumers are packages that request files from a server as the person asks for them. Browser software program permits users to view the retrieved documents.

• In Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML), a hypertext document with its corresponding text and hyperlinks is written and assigned an online address called an Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

• Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN, an international research organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, started creating the World Wide Web in 1989. They developed the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) protocol which standardized server-client communication.

• In January 1992, their text-based Web browser was made available for publication.

• The World Wide Web rapidly gained recognition with the launch of a web browser named Mosaic, created in the United States by Marc Andreessen and others at the University of Illinois National Centre for Supercomputing Applications, and launched in September 1993.

• Mosaic allowed people the usage of the Web to use the identical type of “point-and-click” graphical manipulations that had been accessible in private computers for some years.

• In April 1994 Andreessen cofounded Netscape Communications Corporation, whose Netscape Navigator grew to become the dominant Web browser quickly after its launch in December 1994.

The InternetWorks of BookLink Technologies, its first tabs browser in which a user would be able to visit another website without opening a completely new window, debuted the same year. The World Wide Web was having millions of active users by the mid-1990s.

Recent History

• Microsoft Corporation, the software giant, was interested in promoting internet applications on personal computers and in 1995 created its own web browser (based initially on Mosaic), Internet Explorer (IE), as an add-on to the Windows 95 OS. IE was incorporated into the Windows operating system in 1996 which decreased competition from other Internet browser manufacturers including Netscape. IE gradually became the default Web browser.

• Apple's Safari was released on Macintosh personal computers as the default browser in 2003, and later on iPhones (2007) and iPads (2010). Safari 2.0 (2005) was the first privacy-mode browser, Private Browsing, where the client does not save Web sites in its history, save files in its cache, or enter personal information on Web pages.

• The first major challenger to IE‘s dominance was Mozilla's Firefox, released in 2004 and designed to address problems surrounding IE with speed and security. Google launched Chrome in 2008, the first browser featuring isolated tabs, which meant that when one tab crashed, other tabs and the entire browser would still work.

• In 2013 Chrome had become the dominant browser, popularly outperforming IE and Firefox. In 2015, Microsoft removed IE, replacing it with Edge. Smartphone‘s became more computer-like in the early 21st century, and more modern services, such as Internet access, became possible. Web use on Smartphone‘s has gradually increased, and it accounted for over half of Internet browsing in 2016.

Internet vs WWW

Internet vs. World Wide Web The Internet is a comprehensive computer network and was conceptualized by the ARPA or Advanced Research Projects Agency during 1969. The World Wide Web is much newer than the Internet, and was introduced during the 1990s. The World Wide Web is a series of web pages that follow the http protocol, accessible from any part of the world through the Internet.

The http protocol is a type of language used on the Internet to transmit data and to communicate. It is an application that is used on the Internet and all pages that are part of the World Wide Web start with http:/www, with www being a World Wide Web abbreviation. The World Wide Web is a framework for the knowledge exchange. It represents a way of accessing information through the Internet.

Understanding the differences between the Internet and the World Wide Web is key to understanding the true workings of search engines. Search engines search websites that are accessible on the World Wide Web and not other internet- based sites. As Web 2.0 web applications seek to brand their domain names and make them easily pronounceable, the use of the www prefix is declining. Given the growing popularity of the mobile web, services such as Gmail.com, MySpace.com, Facebook.com and Twitter.com are most frequently mentioned without adding "www." (Or indeed ".com") to the domain.

What Is the Web Made of?

The Web consists of:

• Your personal computer

• Web browser software to access the Web

• A connection to an Internet service provider (ISP)

• Servers to host the data

• Routers and switches to direct the flow of data

How the Web Works

Web pages are stored on web servers located around the globe. Entering the Uniform Resource Locator or URL of a web page in your web browser or clicking a link sends a request to the server that hosts the page. The server transmits the web page data to your computer and your web browser displays it on your screen.

A web page is an electronic document written in a computer language called HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language).Web pages can contain text, graphics, audio, video, and animation, as well as interactive features, such as data entry forms and games. Each page has a unique address known as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), which identifies its location on the server.

Web pages usually contain hyperlinks to other web pages. Hyperlinks are text and images that reference the addresses of other web pages. A website consists of one or more web pages that relate to a common theme, such as a person, business, organization, or a subject, such as news or sports. The first page is called the home page, which acts like an index, indicating the content on the site. From the home page, you can click links to access other pages on the site or other resources on the Web.