World Wide Web
Hypertext system for publishing information on the Internet. World Wide Web documents (‘Web pages’) are text files coded using HTML to include text and graphics, and are stored on a Web server connected to the Internet. Web pages may also contain dynamic objects and Java applets for enhanced animation, video, sound, and interactivity. In 2007 it was estimated that there were over 30 billion pages on the Web.
The Web server can be any computer, providing Web server software is available. Every Web page has a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) – a unique address (usually starting with http://www) which tells a browser program (such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer) where to find it. An important feature of the World Wide Web is the facility to link between documents. This enables readers to follow whatever aspects of a subject interest them most. These links may connect to different computers all over the world. Interlinked or nested Web pages belonging to a single organization are known as a Web site.
| The original World Wide Web program was created in 1990 for internal use at CERN, the Geneva-based physics research centre, by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau. The system was released on the Internet in 1991, but only caught on in 1993, following the release of Mosaic, an easy-to-use PC-compatible browser. The exponential growth of the Internet since then has been widely attributed to the popularity of the Web: from the 600-odd Web servers in existence in late 1993, the number grew to around 40 million by the end of 2003. |
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