The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is that part of the internet that supports the multimedia capabilities of your computer. The World Wide Web provides the ability to view pictures, graphics, movies, music, animations and text individually or together on one page. The world wide web is different than the other sections of the internet because the web was established based upon the development of the computer language called: Hyper Text Markup Language better know as HTML.
The key attribute of this programming language was that simply clicking on what is called a hyperlink, could easily perform navigation from webpage to webpage. When the hyperlink is clicked, the commands needed to directed you to another webpage were automatically entered.

Web Browser
The software necessary to access the special media filled pages on the world wide web is called a web browser.

Examples of web -browsers:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Netscape Navigator
• AOL Web Browser
• Mazilla

Finding a Home

Every location on the World Wide Web is a very special place. Every computer connected to the internet has a unique identification number. This identification number is called an IP number. The IP Number (Internet Protocol Number) is a unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g.165.113.245.2.

It would be very dicult to remember, and type in, the IP number of your favorite computer on the web. So most computers connected to the internet also have a domain name linked to it's IP Number. So instead of typing in 165.113.245.2 to get to your favorite place you would just type in a simple domain name. Example: AOL.com.

After you have typed in your domain name into the address bar of your web browser, and pressed go, you will be taken to what is called a Website. A website is a location on the world wide web that has a collection of webpages. In other terms, a Website can be seen as an electronic book and it's webpages are like the pages of a book. Another term that relates to the website is it's Homepage. The Homepage is the first page displayed when a person goes to a website.