World Wide Web

Remember that important idea (discussed several pages back):

Fundamental Idea: Both programs and data are saved in computer memory in the same way. The electronics of computer memory (both main memory and secondary memory) make no distinction between programs and data.

Communications equipment makes no distinction between programs and data, either. It is all information as far as it is concerned, and all information is transmitted the same way. The Internet is like a worldwide package delivery service. It is concerned with moving packages from one address to another, without concern about what is in the packages.

The Internet provides the hardware and the information transmission protocols for the World-Wide Web. Data intended for the Web is transmitted over the Internet just like any data. What makes Web data special is that it is intended for Web browsers (such as the one you are probably looking at). A browser is a program that can read Web pages and display them in a nicely formatted way.

A Web page is a package of data that contains information on how it is to be displayed on a monitor. This information is given using a language called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). If you want to see an example of this, left-click on View in the menu at the top of your Web browser, then left-click on Source. This will bring up a new window with the HTML of this page in it. After you are done viewing, close the window by clicking on the close button in its upper right corner (the button marked with X).