The world wide web, also known as “WWW” or the “web,” is a global collection of websites and web pages stored on servers and interconnected through hyperlinks. In conjunction with the Internet, the web enables users to view web pages containing text, images, and other multimedia on their devices.
The web employs the use of various concepts, such as the web browser, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and the Uniform Resource Locator (URL). They are detailed as follows.
The web browser is an application used to access web pages by fetching the requested page, interpreting and rendering the source code, and displaying it on the user’s screen. Popular web browsers include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and more.
HTML is the authoring language for web pages. It uses various tags and attributes to format and display elements such as paragraphs, hyperlinks, and images.
HTTP is a protocol that standardizes communication over the internet by transferring data between a client and a server. It allows navigation between different web pages through internal connections called hyperlinks.
A URL is a unique string that references the global address of web pages on the Internet. It is required to access a web page through the browser. It consists of three parts:
A collection of web pages having the same domain is called a website.
This is known as the client-server model of computing.
The web was invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee, who at the time was working at CERN. The aim was to facilitate communication between scientists worldwide by enabling the exchange of data and results of experiments and studies. He used existing knowledge about HTML, URL, and HTTP to write a proposal in 1990, and in 1991, he created the world’s first website (info.cern.ch) and web server (a NeXTcube).
Over the following years, there was a slow increase in web servers worldwide. However, with the inception of graphical browsers such as Mosaic, the web began growing at exponential rates. From only 50 known web servers in January 1993, the number increased to 500 by October of the same year. There are millions of web servers in use today.
The world wide web and internet are often used interchangeably. However, they differ in their defined roles. The internet is a vast network of devices spanning worldwide. It supports infrastructure that connects millions of networks, websites, and users to each other. The web, in contrast, is used to access web pages over the internet. In essence, the web is a part of the internet.
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