Web Fundamentals
Training Series
All About the Web
What We’ll Be Covering…
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What the Web Is (and Isn’t)
The World Wide Web: A Brief History
How the Web Works
Internet Components
Internet Transmission
Transmission Optimization
How the Web Enhances the Internet
What’s to Come
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What the Web Is (and Isn’t)
The World Wide Web IS…
• A global information medium which users can both read
and write to via computers
The World Wide Web IS NOT…
• The Internet
– The Web is a service on the Internet, like e-mail is
– The Internet, under different names and forms, has been
around significantly longer than the WWW (since the early
1970’s)
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The World Wide Web: A Brief History
Originated with and developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1980’s
• Originally conceived to link electronic documents together
via hypertext
Aug. 1991: World Wide Web publicly released
• Typically used by university based science departments
Aug. 1994: Commercialization of the Web begins
• First business on Web was Pizza Hut (1994)
• By 1998, e-business was fairly commonplace
Sept. 1994: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) founded at MIT
• Now the governing body of the World Wide Web
• Develops standards for web technology and practices
• Kept WWW code royalty free and publicly accessible
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How the Web Works
The overall concept is simple
• View files via a browser
• Click on hyperlinks to move to the area of interest
• View and/or download the information
The technology behind the concept is quite complex
• Electronics Technology
– Computing Devices
– Cell Phones
• Network (Internet) Technology
– Wired
– Wireless
• Software Technology
– Databases
– Games
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Internet Components
Many different components are
required for the Internet to work and,
in turn, provide users with the Web
service
Additionally, several different
transmission methods are now
available, adding to the complexity
• Dial-Up / DSL
• Broadband
• Wireless
– Satellite
– Wi-Fi / WiMAX
But, it all boils down to requesting and
receiving information
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The Client / Server Relationship
Client: some form of user, human or automated, who
makes a request for some type of electronic information
or resource.
Server: stores electronic information in the form of
files and “serves” a response to requesting clients
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Internet Transmission
Requires a complicated combination of hardware, software,
and industry protocols
In brief, each Internet transaction that occurs such as: a
hyperlink that is clicked on, e-mail, Instant Message, or a file
that is downloaded, goes through the following process
1. Request / message is broken down into small, electronic
packets
2. Packets are numbered by the requestor’s computer
3. Packets are routed through the Internet to the appropriate
address
4. Receiver’s computer acknowledges the receipt of each
packet
5. Packets are reassembled by receiver’s computer
6. Receiver responds, as necessary
7. Process repeats
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Transmission Optimization
Literally, countless trillions of packets are flying through
transmission paths all over the world at any given second
The bigger the file, the slower the transmission
Some multimedia files can be very resource dependent.
These files include the following:
• Still Images
• Audio
• Animations & Video
In terms of web publications, it’s always a best practice to
use the least amount of resources possible. In doing so,
you not only better serve your audience, but also make less
demands on the system as a whole.
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How the Web Enhances the Internet
Prior to the Web and the development of Mosaic, the first
web browser, all Internet transmissions were console based
and text only. No pictures. No sound
This has definitely changed
Console View
Mosaic (1993)
Firefox (2008)
Web pages created to today’s expectations and standards have
benefits, but also drawbacks
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Visually and audibly appealing
User friendly
High demand on resources
Many “power” users don’t understand supporting system issues
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What’s to Come
Multimedia is a collection of different media forms which
includes various combinations of the following:
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Text
Still Images
Audio
Video / Animation
The tutorial series that follows this presentation is not
meant to be comprehensive, but rather a starting point to
help a user make the most out of available resources while
creating a functional, appealing web page.
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http://oregonstate.edu/cws
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Conclusion
This completes the Web Fundamentals tutorial. For additional
tutorials, please visit WebTrain, the CWS web publishing training
site, at:
http://oregonstate.edu/cws/webtrain
To submit a Help Ticket to Central Web Services go to:
http://oregonstate.edu/cws/contact
Other OSU resources for web and computer help:
http://oregonstate.edu/helpdocs
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