HTML/WWW background

An explanation for novices of basic concepts regarding the word wide web and HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language).

history of the Internet

The Internet was originally created by the U.S. government to provide a distributed computer network for the military and scientific communities. The intent was to have a network that could survive nuclear war. Even if most of the network was destroyed, the remaining components would still be in contact with each other.

The Internet provided a set of commonly used methods for communicating, called “protocols”. The most basic form of protocols are those used for moving e-mail and for handling mailing lists.

The Internet became extremely popular in universities because of its combination of e-mail and mailing lists. Mailing lists are a special form of group e-mail in which a person sends one message to a designated list server and that computer sends out copies of the message to every subscriber.

The original Internet protocols dealt only with plain text, useful for e-mail. The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) dramatically improved the usefulness of the Internet by allowing the transfer of non-text files (graphics, sounds, programs, etc.). Fetch is an example of a program that handles FTP.

history of the World Wide Web

A researcher at CERN, Switzerland, came up with a system for moving hyper text documents (documents that have internal links to other documents). This used the Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML) and was moved over the Internet using the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

The HTML provided a system of tags for describing how a hyper-text document should appear on a computer screen.

A group called the W3 Consortium, led by the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), INRIA (a French technology group), and CERN decides on the official HTML standards.

There are several text only web browsers, the most famous being Lynx (free and available on UNIX). These show only the text on a wbe page and insert the phrase “[IMAGE]” every place you inserted a great picture into your web page.

The earliest graphic web browser was Mosaic (free and available on Macintosh, Windows, and UNIX), developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NSCA) at the University of Illinois.

Netscape’s Navigator is currently the most used web browser (available for Macintosh and Windows). Navigator is a feature-laden graphic browser. Over the years, Netscape kept adding additional functionality to the HTML tags, including everything from exact placement of pictures to animations to multi-media plug-ins.

MacroMedia, Adobe, Apple, RealAudio, Quark, and others created a wide variety of plug-ins that offer additional capabilities, including exact copies of original documents (with their original fonts), video, music, live broadcast of audio and video, animation, and advanced interactive multi-media.

Sun and Netscape provided the ability to include short programs (or “applets”) on web pages. Sun introduced Java, which is a platform-independent programming language used primarily for web pages and running embedded processes (such as controlling a microwave oven). Netscape introduced JavaScript, which is a powerful scripting language for web pages.

Microsoft entered the browser arena late with a combination of illegal and immoral activities in an attempt to gain monopoly control over the Internet.

how web pages work

A computer file that has text and HTML tags is a “web page”. It can be available on-line to the public (part of the World Wide Web, or WWW), available on-line to a private group (such as an IntraNet for business), or be located on a hard disk or CD-ROM.

When located on an on-line server, the HTML document is typically called a “web page” (use “open location” in Netscape Navigator). When located on a hard drive or CD-ROM, the same HTML document is typically called an “HTML file” (use “open file in browser” in Netscape Navigator). The document is the same in both cases, the name just indicates the location.

A collection of related web pages live on the Internet is called a web site.

Web pages (or HTML files) can be viewed with either word processors/text editors or web browsers.

When viewed in a word processor or text editor, all of the HTML tags are interspersed with the text, which can be very confusing to read but very handy for editing. This version is called “source”.

When viewed in a web browser, the web page is displayed in a window. All of the HTML tags are stripped from the text and used as commands to determine how the page looks in the browser window. A web browser can show both web pages from on-line and those on a disk, which is very useful for checking your web pages before posting them on-line.

how it all works

Work on a web page starts at the content creation computer (blue circle). This is where the HTML documents, GIF and JPEG pictures, MIDI and AIFF sounds, PDF and Immedia documents, interactive multi-media ShockWave movies and Java or JavaScript applets, and other materials are created. It is possible to do this work on almost any computer, but the best and fastest results are achieved on a Macintosh, which is why more than 2/3rds of all professional web designers use the Macintosh.

Once the source documents are finished, they are moved (by FTP) to a server computer (cyan circle). This is called a web site. The most secure and most commonly used server computer for professional web sites is the Macintosh. Apple is almost finished putting together a new high end operating system, called Rhapsody, that will combine the best features of Macintosh and UNIX web servers to make the best web server operating system available.

From the other end, a person at home or work gets on their home computer (red circle) and starts up their favorite web browser. Their web browser dials up their Internet Service Provider or ISP (green circle).

When the home or business person wants to see a particular web page, their ISP’s computer contacts the server computer and requests a copy of the web page and all the related documents (pictures, sounds, etc.). The server sends all of this stuff to the ISP’s computer (in practice, there may be several Internet computers linked together in a chain, but for simplicity we can pretend it is a direct connection). The ISP computer in turn downloads these materials to the home or business computer, where the web browser puts everything back together to make a web page.

differences between browsers

Every web browser shows web pages differently. Sometimes these differences are trivial, sometimes they are huge. Also, a web page can look different in the same web browser running on different computers or operating systems. These differences mean that a web page developer can’t guarantee that everyone will see the same “great looking” web page. The choices are to: design a web page for a specific browser, operating system, and computer; compromise and create a general version; use Java or JavaScript; or use specialty file formats such as Adobe PDF or MacroMedia ShockWave.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) is the second most used web browser (available for Macintosh and Windows). IE is a free graphic web browser. Microsoft’s Bill Gates decided that the Internet was the computing realm of the future and he wanted to have monopoly control of this important arena. So he started giving away IE for free and even started requiring computer manufacturers to include IE over Navigator as a condition for being allowed to include Windows on their computers. In Windows 98, Microsoft will have integrated their operating system and web browser to the point that you can’t have one without the other. And Microsoft intentionally choose some directly incompatible HTML tags for their web browser, meaning that any web designer that uses one of the disputed HTML tags will have their web page break on one of the two major web browsers, as part of an attempt to force web designers to abandon Netscape. And Microsoft intentionally produced an incompatible version of Java (called J++) to hurt Sun’s Java, particularly in the appliance market where Java competes directly against Microsoft’s Windows CE.

Professional web developers usually test their web pages on a variety of combinations of computer, operating system, and browser to make sure that it works everywhere.

related formats

The two most common picture formats are GIF and JPEG. Both use compression methods that throw away picture information. GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) works best with line art and illustrations, anything with 256 or fewer total colors. JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group) works best with photographs and similar images. Animated GIFs are a low-end method for putting animations into web pages that can be viewed on any graphic browser.

Adobe PDF is a platform independent method for displaying and printing still pages with the exact layout and design created by the original author (within the limits of the computer and printer being used), including even the choice of fonts used. There are stand-alone PDF readers for literally more than a dozen platforms (Macintosh, Windows, UNIX, etc.). There are also PDF plug-ins for Macintosh and Windows browsers that allow PDF documents to be shown on a web page. PDF also supports limited navigation abilities, including hyper-text links and zoom-in. To get a copy of the Adobe PDF plug-in, click here.

Apple QuickTime is the industry standard method for digitally storing video and film, but it also includes the ability to store most every major still graphic, video, music, and MIDI format. There are both stand-alone QuickTime players and QuickTime plug-ins for Macintosh and Windows. To get a copy of Apple QuickTime and the QuickTime plug-in, click here.

MacroMedia ShockWave allows a wide variety of professional interactive multi-media created in Director, Flash, or Authorware. Director and Authorware are high end interactive multi-media development environments with the power to create entire interactive CD-ROMs. Flash is a high end interactive animation development environment with the power to create extremely compact animations. There are Director ShockWave plug-ins for Macintosh and Windows. There are Flash ShockWave plug-ins for Macintosh, Windows, LINUX, and IRIX. To get a copy of the MacroMedia ShockWave plug-in, click here (NOTE: MacroMedia’s site attempts to figure out which version of the plug in matches your computer, but if you want the full version you need to manually select “the works”).

RealAudio is a sound format that allows the real time broadcast of music, speech, and other sounds. More than 300 radio stations from all over the planet broadcast over the Internet 24-hours a day using Real Audio, as well as thousands of sites that use Real Audio to broadcast special events, lectures, speeches, etc. There are Real Audio plug-ins for Macintosh and Windows. To get a copy of the Real Player and RealAudio plug-in, click here (NOTE: This company has really poor customer support and their software fails on many machines).

Quark Immedia is a platform independent method for displaying and printing still pages with the exact layout and design created by the original author (within the limits of the computer and printer being used), including even the choice of fonts used. To get a copy of the Quark Immedia plug-in, click here.

Java is a platform-independent programming language created by Sun Computers. J++ is Microsoft’s private variation of Java.

One other Java note. Apple is the only outside company that has the rights to use Microsoft’s J++ (as part of the out of court settlement for Microsoft having stolen QuickTime source code for their AVI system, the two companies agreed to trade all of their patents for five years). Apple is also one of more than a hundred companies licensed to use Sun’s Java (Sun cancelled Microsoft’s license over the J++/Java incompatibilities). The result is that only Apple’s Macintosh Runtime for Java (MRJ) can run BOTH J++ and pure Java. On Wednesday, March 11, 1998, Apple and Microsoft announced an agreement to work together on MRJ. Microsoft has provided Apple with Microsoft’s J/Direct API technology and Microsoft will use the combined MRJ for their Internet Explorer (Mac version only). Apple extended J/Direct to provide “high performance access to native Macintosh system services such as QuickDraw, AppleEvents, contextual menus, drag & drop, and TrueType fonts”.

JavaScript is an unrelated web page scripting language created by Netscape for their browsers (they picked the name “JavaScript” to cash in on the “buzz” around Java). JavaScript offers many of the abilities of Java and is specifically designed for use with web browsers.

learning by example

One of the cool things about the web is you can learn by example. You can download the source (save as source) for any web page (HTML document) and study it. This is a great way to learn. When you see something cool, just download the source to see how it was done.


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This site made on Macintosh computers.

Best viewed with Netscape Navigator on an Apple Macintosh .

No Microsoft products used in the preparation of this web site.

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