World Wide Web is a system of computer files linked together on the Internet. The Internet connects computers and computer networks around the world. The portion of the Internet not on the World Wide Web (often called the Web, for short) contains only text information. The Web, however, has multimedia capabilities—that is, its files include illustrations, sounds, and moving pictures in addition to text. The Web is made up of electronic addresses called websites, which contain Web pages that hold the multimedia information. Websites and their pages reside in computers connected to the Internet.
Tim Berners-Lee, an English computer scientist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, wrote the Web software in 1990. The Web became part of the Internet in 1991. The introduction of the Web helped make the Internet popular and easier to use.
Many computer users find the Web’s multimedia content more attractive than text-only content. In addition, Web browsers make the Web easy to use. A Web browser is a software package used to locate and display information on the Web. To find information on other parts of the Internet requires complex software and knowledge of specific computer commands. A Web browser is easier to use because it employs a graphical user interface—a way of interacting with a computer using pictures as well as words. The pictures represent commands in a manner that is easy to understand. For example, a small picture of a printer represents the command to print a document. By clicking the computer’s mouse on an element, the user gives the computer command represented by that element.
Another major feature of the Web is hypertext. Hypertext enables a user to jump from one document to another—even if the documents are stored on different parts of the Internet. For example, in a website concerning space exploration, the words space shuttle might be highlighted. Clicking on these words would bring information about the shuttle to the screen. Pictures, too, can be used as hyperlinks (hypertext links). Words and pictures that hyperlink to other documents are called hot spots. Hot spots and their hyperlinks are created by the author of a Web page.
