History and Development of the World Wide Web
– Invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989
– Motivated by the problem of storing, updating, and finding documents and data files
– Dismissed common tree structure approach and tagging files with keywords
– Adopted concepts from his private ENQUIRE system and Ted Nelson’s hypertext model
– Submitted a proposal to CERN in May 1989 and got a working system implemented by 1990
– Released outside CERN to other research institutions in January 1991
– Released to the whole Internet on August 23, 1991
– CERN made the Web protocol and code available royalty-free in 1993
– The release of the Mosaic web browser in 1993 led to rapid growth of the Web
– Netscape Navigator browser introduced Java and JavaScript, becoming the dominant browser
– Microsoft developed Internet Explorer and bundled it with Windows
– Netscape became a public company in 1995, triggering the dot-com bubble
– Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1996
– W3C created XML in 1996 and recommended replacing HTML with stricter XHTML
– Mozilla, Opera, and Apple rejected XHTML and created the WHATWG, which developed HTML5
– Developers began using XMLHttpRequest to create Ajax applications
– The Web 2.0 revolution led to the development of interactive web applications
– HTML5 was developed by the WHATWG and adopted by major browser vendors
– The W3C abandoned XHTML in 2009 and ceded control of the HTML specification to the WHATWG in 2019
Function and Accessing Web Pages
– The World Wide Web is an application layer protocol that runs on top of the Internet.
– The Mosaic web browser improved the usability of the web by introducing image and GIF display.
– The Internet and the World Wide Web are distinct entities.
– The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks.
– The World Wide Web is a collection of documents and resources linked by hyperlinks and URIs.
– Web pages are accessed by typing the URL into a browser or following a hyperlink.
– Web browsers initiate background communication to fetch and display requested pages.
– Browsing the web involves moving between pages using hyperlinks.
– User patterns in web browsing include exploratory surfing, window surfing, evolved surfing, bounded navigation, and targeted navigation.
– Web browsers resolve server names into IP addresses using the Domain Name System (DNS).
– The DNS lookup returns IP addresses such as 203.0.113.4 or 2001:db8:2e::7334.
– Browsers request resources from the resolved IP address.
– Browsers communicate with servers to fetch and display web pages.
– Internet protocols enable the transfer of data between web browsers and servers.
Internet Protocols
– Web resources are accessed using HTTP or HTTPS protocols.
– HTTP and HTTPS are application-level protocols that utilize the Internet’s transport protocols.
– HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
– HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP that uses encryption.
– Internet protocols enable the transfer of data between web browsers and servers.
Web Surfing Terminology
– Browsing web pages through hyperlinks is known as web surfing.
– The term ‘navigating the Web’ is also used.
– Web surfing is similar to channel surfing.
– User patterns in web surfing include exploratory surfing, window surfing, evolved surfing, bounded navigation, and targeted navigation.
– Early studies focused on understanding user behavior in web surfing.
Nomenclature and Usage
– Officially spelled as three separate words: World Wide Web
– Commonly referred to as the Web or the web
– In Mandarin Chinese, translated as ‘10,000-dimensional net’
– Use of the www prefix has been declining, especially in mobile web applications
– Many popular websites are mentioned without adding www to the domainSources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
