Quick Quiz

 What is the World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web, which is also called a Web, is a group of websites or internet pages saved on web servers and linked to local computer systems via the internet. These websites comprise text pages, virtual images, audio, films, and many others. Users can get entry to the content of these sites from any part of the world over the net using their devices consisting of computers, laptops, cellular telephones, and so on. The WWW, at the side of the net, enables the retrieval and showing of textual content and media on your device.

What is the World Wide Web?

The constructed blocks of the Web are net pages which can be formatted in HTML and related with the aid of hyperlinks referred to as "hypertext" or hyperlinks and accessed with the aid of HTTP. These hyperlinks are digital connections that link related portions of statistics in order that customers can get right of entry to the desired facts quickly. Hypertext gives the advantage of picking a word or word from a text and, hence, accessing different pages that offer extra facts related to that word or word.

A net page is given on the internet referred to as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A unique collection of web pages that belong to a selected URL is known as a website, e.G., www.Facebook.Com, www.Google.Com, etc. So, the World Wide Web is sort of a huge electronic ebook whose pages are stored on multiple servers internationally.

Small websites store all of their WebPages on a single server, but huge websites or groups place their WebPages on exclusive servers in one of a kind nation so that after customers of a country search their website online, they might get the statistics quickly from the closest server.

So, the internet gives a verbal exchange platform for users to retrieve and alternate information over the internet. Unlike a e-book, in which we flow from one web page to every other in a chain, on the World Wide Web we observe an internet of hypertext links to go to an internet page and from that net web page to move to different internet pages. You need a browser, which is established on your laptop, to get right of entry to the Web.

The differences between the World Wide Web and the Internet:

Some human beings use the terms 'internet' and 'World Wide Web' interchangeably. They suppose they are identical in aspect, but it isn't always so. The Internet is absolutely unique from WWW. It is a worldwide network of devices like computer systems, laptops, capsules, etc. It enables users to send emails to different users and chat with them online. For example, while you ship an electronic mail or talk to a person online, you're using the net.

What is the World Wide Web?

But, when you have opened a internet site like Google.Com for records, you are used on the World Wide Web; a network of servers on the internet. You request a webpage from your computer for the usage of a browser, and the server renders that page on your browser. Your PC is known as a consumer who runs a software (net browser), and asks the other laptop (server) for the facts it needs.

History of the World Wide Web:

What is the World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web was invented by a British scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, in 1989. He was running at CERN at that time. Originally, it was developed by means of him to fulfill the need for automatic statistics sharing between scientists the world over, so that they might statistically, without problems, share the facts and consequences in their experiments and research with each other.

CERN, wherein Tim Berners labored, is a community of more than 1700 scientists from more than a hundred countries. These scientists spend some time on the CERN website online, and the rest of the time they work at their universities and countrywide laboratories of their domestic nations, so there was a desire for reliable communication gear so they could alternate records.

The Internet and Hypertext were available at the moment, but no person knew of the way to use the internet to link or share one document to any other. Tim centered on three principal technologies that could make computer systems recognize every different thing; HTML, URL, and HTTP. So, the goal behind the discovery of WWW was to combine current computer technologies, information networks, and hypertext into a person-friendly and powerful international data gadget.

How the Invention Started:

In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee took the initiative closer to the discovery of WWW and wrote the first idea for the World Wide Web. Later, he wrote every other notion in May 1990. After some months, in November 1990, together with Robert Cailliau, it became formalized as a management proposal. This notion mentioned the important concepts and defined terminology associated with the Web. In this report, there was an outline of a "hypertext challenge" referred to as the World Wide Web wherein an internet of hypertext documents might be viewed by way of browsers. His concept included the 3 predominant technologies (HTML, URL, and HTTP).

In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee was capable of running the primary Web server and browser at CERN to illustrate his thoughts. He used a NeXT laptop to increase the code for his Web server and positioned a word on the laptop: "The machine is a server. Do Not Power It DOWN!!" So that it became no longer switched off by chance via someone.

In 1991, Tim created the world's first website and Web Server. Its address was info.cern.ch, and it was running at CERN on the NeXT computer. Furthermore, the first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. This page had links to information related to the WWW project, and also about the Web servers, hypertext description, and information for creating a Web server.

The Web Grows:

The NeXT computer platform was accessible by a few users. Later, the development of the 'line-mode' browser, which could run on any system, started. In 1991, Berners-Lee introduced his WWW software with 'line-mode' browser, Web server software and a library for developers.

In March 1991, it was available to colleagues who were using CERN computers. After a few months, in August 1991, he introduced the WWW software on internet newsgroups, and it generated interest in the project across the world. Graphic interface for the internet, first introduced to the public on 6 August 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee. On 23 August 1991, it was available to everyone.

Becoming Global:

The first Web server came online in December 1991 in the United States. At this time, there were only two types of browsers; the original development version, which was available only on NeXT machines, and the 'line-mode' browser, which was easy to install and run on any platform but was less user-friendly and had limited power.

For further improvement, Berners-Lee asked other developers via the internet to contribute to its development. Many developers wrote browsers for the X-Window System. The first web server, outside Europe, was introduced at Standard University in the United States in 1991. In the same year, there were only ten known web servers across the world.

Later, at the beginning of 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) introduced the first version of its Mosaic browser. It ran in the X Window System environment. Later, the NCSA released versions for the PC and Macintosh environments. With the introduction of user-friendly browsers on these computers, WWW started spreading tremendously across the world.

Eventually, the European Commission approved its first web project in the same year with CERN as one of its partners. In April 1993, CERN made the source code of WWW available on a royalty-free basis and thus made it free software. Royalty-free means one has the right to use copyrighted materials or intellectual property without paying any royalty or license fee. Thus, CERN allowed people to use the code and web protocol for free. The technologies that were developed to make the WWW became open source to allow people to use them for free. Eventually, people started creating websites for online businesses, to provide information and other similar purposes.

At the end of 1993, there were more than 500 web servers, and WWW had 1% of the total internet traffic. In May 1994, the First International World Wide Web conference was held at CERN and was attended by around 400 users and developers and popularly known as the "Woodstock of the Web." In the same year, the telecommunication companies started providing internet access, and people have access to WWW available at their homes.

In the same year, one more conference was held in the United States, which was attended by over 1000 people. It was organized by the NCSA and the newly-formed International WWW Conference Committee (IW3C2). At the end of that year (1994), the World Wide Web had around 10000 servers and 10 million users. The technology was continuously improved to fulfill growing needs and security, and e-commerce tools were decided to be added soon.

Open standards:

The main objective was to keep the Web an open standard for all rather than a proprietary system. Accordingly, CERN sent a proposal to the Commission of the European Union under the ESPRIT program "WebCore." This project's objective was to form an international consortium in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the US. In 1994, Berners-Lee left CERN and joined MIT and established the International World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and a new European partner was needed for W3C.

The European Commission approached the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Controls (INRIA), to substitute CERN's role. Eventually, in April 1995, INRIA became the first European W3C host and, in 1996, Keio University of Japan became another host in Asia.

In 2003, ERCIM (European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics) replaced INRIA for the role of European W3C Host. Beihang University was announced as the fourth host by W3C in 2013. In September 2018, there were over 400 member organizations around the world.

Since its inception, the Web has changed a lot and is still changing today. Search engines have become more advanced at reading, understanding, and processing information. They can easily find the information requested by users and can even provide other relevant information that might interest users.

How the World Wide Web Works?

Now, we have understood that WWW is a collection of websites connected to the internet so that people can search and share information. Now, let us understand how it works!

What is the World Wide Web?

The Web works as per the internet's basic client-server format as shown in the following image. The servers store and transfer web pages or information to user's computers on the network when requested by the users. A web server is a software program which serves the web pages requested by web users using a browser. The computer of a user who requests documents from a server is known as a client. The browser, which is installed on the user's computer, allows users to view the retrieved documents.

What is the World Wide Web?

All the websites are stored on web servers. Just as someone lives on rent in a house, a website occupies a space in a server and remains stored in it. The server hosts the website whenever a user requests its WebPages, and the website owner has to pay the hosting price for the same.

The moment you open the browser and type a URL in the address bar or search for something on Google, WWW starts working. There are three main technologies involved in transferring information (web pages) from servers to clients (computers of users). These technologies include Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Web browsers.