Nowadays, it is difficult to live and work without the Internet. Because the Internet has become so familiar to us, it is rare to have the opportunity to learn more about how it works. The Internet consists of the World Wide Web. This time, I will explain how the World Wide Web works and what characteristics it has.
What is the World Wide Web?
The Internet is a huge network built by interconnecting multiple networks spread around the world. In general, the system provided on the Internet, the World Wide Web, is sometimes referred to as the Internet.
The World Wide Web means “the spider’s web that spans the entire world.” This name comes from the image of a huge network built by interconnecting multiple networks spread all over the world, resembling a spider’s web.
The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by physicist Tim Berners-Lee to share research information.
Two technologies that make up the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is made up of two important technologies: hypertext, such as HTML, which is a document description language, and HTTP, which is used to transfer documents.
1.Hypertext
World Wide Web is a hypertext system. Hypertext is a descriptive language such as HTML used to describe web pages. Hypertext allows you to link multiple objects such as text, images, audio, and video. This feature is called a hyperlink.
For example, you can click on a letter to go to another page and see other information about that letter. Alternatively, you can click on the text to display an image or watch a video. Unlike printed documents, hypertext allows you to access the information you want from a single document by following links.
2.HTTP
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and is an application-level protocol, or communication method, developed for data transfer between web servers and clients on the World Wide Web. It is a simple conversational protocol based on requests by clients and responses from servers.
For example, when a client such as a WWW browser sends a command such as “get” or “put” to a web server, the web server returns the corresponding result. The WWW browser then formats the data such as HTML and JPEG images and displays it on the WWW browser.
The basic role of HTTP is to retrieve information specified by a client from a web server. Therefore, the information resource requested by the client must be clearly identified in the request message. The identifier of this information resource is “URI”, which is generally used interchangeably with “WWW address” and “URL”. A URI consists of three parts: a protocol identifier, a server name, and a file name and file format.
Birth and spread of WWW browsers
In 1991, a WWW browser that displayed text information from the World Wide Web was announced. The prototype of today’s WWW browser was called “Mosaic,” which was developed by NCSA in Illinois, USA and released in 1993. Mosaic is a WWW browser that uses a GUI, and can be said to be the ancestor of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, which were widely used in the early days of the Internet.
GUI is an abbreviation for Graphical User Interface and refers to a graphical user interface. Mosaic has evolved from a conventional WWW browser that only contained text information to a colorful and intuitive WWW browser that incorporates images and other multimedia.
The development of this mosaic led to the rapid adoption of the Internet and its widespread popularity.
summary
◆The World Wide Web, which means “a spider’s web that spreads around the world,” is a huge network built by interconnecting multiple networks spread all over the world. It can also refer to the Internet.
◆The World Wide Web is made up of two important technologies: hypertext such as document description language HTML, and HTTP for document transfer.
Hypertext is a description language such as HTML that is used to describe web pages, and has the characteristic that you can refer to the information you want by following links from a single document. HTTP is an application-level protocol developed for data transfer between web servers and clients.
◆With the birth of the GUI WWW browser, the Internet rapidly spread and became widely used.