from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
World-Wide Web
WWW
<World-Wide Web, networking, hypertext> (WWW, W3, The Web) An
{Internet} {client-server} {hypertext} distributed information
retrieval system which originated from the {CERN} High-Energy
Physics laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland.
An extensive user community has developed on the Web since its
public introduction in 1991. In the early 1990s, the
developers at CERN spread word of the Web's capabilities to
scientific audiences worldwide. By September 1993, the share
of Web traffic traversing the {NSFNET} {Internet} {backbone}
reached 75 {gigabytes} per month or one percent. By July 1994
it was one {terabyte} per month.
On the WWW everything (documents, menus, indices) is
represented to the user as a {hypertext} object in {HTML}
format. {Hypertext} {links} refer to other documents by their
{URLs}. These can refer to local or remote resources
accessible via {FTP}, {Gopher}, {Telnet} or {news}, as well as
those available via the {http} protocol used to transfer
{hypertext} documents.
The client program (known as a {browser}), e.g. {NCSA}
{Mosaic}, {Netscape} {Navigator}, runs on the user's computer
and provides two basic navigation operations: to follow a
{link} or to send a query to a server. A variety of client
and server software is freely available.
Most clients and servers also support "forms" which allow the
user to enter arbitrary text as well as selecting options from
customisable menus and on/off switches.
Following the widespread availability of web browsers and
servers, many companies from about 1995 realised they could
use the same software and protocols on their own private
internal {TCP/IP} networks giving rise to the term
"{intranet}".
The {World Wide Web Consortium} is the main standards body for
the web.
An article by John December
(http://sunsite.unc.edu/cmc/mag/1994/oct/webip.html).
A good place to start exploring
(http://ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/StartingPoints/NetworkStartingPoints.html).
WWW servers, clients and tools
(http://w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Status.html).
Mailing list: <[email protected]>.
Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.infosystems.www.misc,
news:comp.infosystems.www.providers,
news:comp.infosystems.www.users,
news:comp.infosystems.announce.
The best way to access {this dictionary} is via the Web since
you will get the latest version and be able to follow
cross-references easily. If you are reading a plain text
version of this dictionary then you will see lots of curly
brackets and strings like
(http://hostname/here/there/page.html).
These are transformed into hypertext links when you access it
via the Web.
See also {Java}, {webhead}.
(1996-10-28)