Web 101 for Dummies Or Everything You Wanted to Know About the Web But Were Afraid to Ask!

This paper was presented at CUMREC '99, The College and University Information Services Conference. It is the intellectual property of the author(s). Permission to print out copies of this paper is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage and that the title and authors of the paper appear on the copies. To copy or disseminate otherwise, or to republish in any form, print or electronic, requires written permission from the authors.

Web 101 for Dummies
Or
Everything You Wanted to Know About the Web But Were Afraid to Ask!

Mickey Bryant, Applications Systems Analyst
Arizona State University

WEB 101 For Dummies (or almost everything you wanted to know about the Web but were afraid to ask) is an overview of the World Wide Web. It will be presented in layman's terms and is geared towards anyone who is interested in understanding how the Web began, how it works and how it evolved. If you are thinking about moving into Web development or if you use the Web in your daily routine and want to have a better understanding of it, this presentation is meant for you.

The presentation agenda contains the following:

Introduction
How It Began
How It Works

Web - The First Generation - What Made It Work:

Web - The Next Generation
Final Thoughts
Acronyms - a list of commonly used acronyms and an explanation of what they mean
Definitions - a list of commonly used Web terms and an explanation of what they mean
Information Sources

Web 101 for Dummies
Or
Everything You Wanted to Know About the Web But Were Afraid to Ask!

Introduction

The growth of the WWW has been unprecedented!

More than 6 million people are using the World Wide Web, less than five years after it was invented and there appears to be no end in sight.

Have you ever wondered how it all happened; who dreamed up this unbelievable tool used by everyone from a grade school student to a college professor? How it all comes together and works? I did, especially after I was assigned to our Web development team in May of 1998.

Shortly after joining the Web development team, I attended a presentation at a Sterling Software Conference entitled Web 101. Although I found the presentation very interesting, I still had all kinds of questions. So much of the information was over my head. What I needed was a basic introduction to the Web and how it worked. Since I could not find one, I did what almost everyone else was doing; I went on the Web and began exploring, looking for information about the Web. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. In addition, I wanted to share what I had learned with my team members and co-workers. The result is this presentation, Web 101 for Dummies.

How It all Began

It all began in Geneva Switzerland at the CERN Laboratories, when Tim Berners-Lee, a graduate of Oxford University, got frustrated because his daily scheduler, his list of phone numbers, and his documents were stored in different databases on different machines making it impossible for him to access them all simultaneously. In 1980 he wrote a program entitled, "Enquire-Within-Upon-Everything", which enabled him to access his private data across multiple machines and databases. Shortly after writing this program, he left CERN Laboratories to accept another position.

In 1989, he returned to CERN Laboratories and discovered 2 things. 1) No one had done anything with his program and 2) data at the laboratories was even more distributed than before. Shortly after returning, he proposed the use of a hypertext-based system to access the data stored across multiple machines and databases. He believed that hypertext was the solution for providing "a single user-interface" to large classes of stored information such as reports, notes, databases, computer documentation, etc.

Then in 1990, while working on a project to enable information sharing within internationally dispersed teams and the dissemination of information by support groups, he proposed a Web concept.

The project was approved and development began. By November 1990, his development team began testing the following:

the Web browser
the Web server
the protocol to communicate between the client and the server, HTTP
the language used to compose the Web documents, HTML
the means to locate the information, the URL

By May of 1991, the first Web application was ready for use by the scientists at CERN Laboratories.

Before the implementation of the Web, in order to find some information at CERN, one had to have a number of different terminals connected to a number of different computers and one had to learn a number of different programs to access the data.

After the implementation, the information was accessible from any type of computer, in any country, and to any authorized person. This was of extreme importance to CERN since there was no telling what system each person might be using. This is also one of the features that has really helped the Web gain such widespread acceptance.

How It Works

The first step in learning how the Web works is understanding that the Web and the Internet are two distinctly different technologies. However, they work together to make the World Wide Web what it is today.

Explore the Web and you find information

The World Wide Web (WWW, W3 or Web) is currently the most advanced information system deployed on the Internet. It is a body of software, and a set of protocols and conventions. Through the use of hypertext and multimedia techniques, the web is easy for anyone to roam, browse, and contribute to. The Web is growing at the phenomenal rate of 50 to 100 sites a week.

Explore the Internet and you find computers, routers and cables

The Internet was developed by the US Department of Defense in the 60�s and is the grand-daddy of all networks. A network is a collection of two or more computers (usually dozens or hundreds) connected via special cables so they can share information. The Internet's job is to connect these networks together using high-speed phone lines, fiber optic cables, or satellite links.

Picture the World Wide Web and Internet as a city.

Each Building holds information you want to retrieve (the World Wide Web). Each road is a path to that information (the Internet). If you know the address of the building containing the information and the room the data was in, you could get into your car and drive there to get it. The WWW and Internet work in the same manner.

Web - The First Generation - What Made It Work

Believe it or not, Tim Berners-Lee was not a programmer. He was a particulate physicist and yet he and his team developed the heart of what would be the most explosive software in the history of communication. The first Web application, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), included the protocol, HTTP, to communicate between the browser and the server, the URL to locate the information and the language, HTML, to display the information as a web document.

I found it ironic that when Berners-Lee chose the name, the World Wide Web, he had no idea of its future use. He called it the World Wide Web because it was designed to be used by physicists employed by the CERN Laboratories but working all over the world, who needed to share information with each other.

There are 3 main parts to the World Wide Web Technology:

The Browser that is viewing the information
The Server that holds the information
The Protocol that connects the two

The Browser is a software application that requests the retrieval of information from the World Wide Web and displays the data on your PC.

Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are two examples of browsers.

The Server is the hardware running a set of software applications. Sun Solaris and Hewlett-Packard are 2 servers used at ASU.

The Server is also the software application that retrieves the requested data and formats it for display or executes tasks requested by the browser. Netscape Enterprise and Microsoft Internet Information Server are the 2 servers used at ASU.

The Protocol is the method used to communicate between the browser and server.

World Wide Web in Action:

Basically, the World Wide Web works in the following manner. While on your PC, you access one of the browsers, such as Netscape Navigator. Then you enter the address (URL) of the information you want to retrieve. When you press enter:

the browser sends the URL via the protocol, HTTP to the server (Software) such as Netscape Enterprise, which is on the server (hardware)
the server software application retrieves the data, formats it using HTML and
returns the static page back to the browser for your viewing pleasure

Okay, what are URLs, HTTPs and HTMLs?

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and it is the address of a file and usually consists of four parts: the protocol, server (or domain), path, and file name.

http://www.asu.edu/asuweb/student addresses is an example of an URL

http is the protocol
www indicates you are going to access the World Wide Web
asu.edu is the server, or domain
- asu is the owner of the domain
- edu is the owner type designator and indicates that the owner of the information is an Educational institution

Other organization type designators you may have seen include:
.com = Commercial, .gov = Government and .org = Organization

asuweb/ is the path
student addresses is the file name

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol.

HyperText refers to a collection of hyperlink-laden documents.

(A hyperlink is a word, phrase, or image that when clicked "sends" users to another document.)

Transfer refers to the sending of commands from the browser to the Web server to "read" the requested Web page.

Protocol is an agreed-upon sequence of bits, bytes or characters exchanged between programs for purposes of sending and receiving data.

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.

HTML is the language used to build Web sites (pages). HTML uses standard codes, or tags, to determine how a Web page looks when your browser displays it. HTML tags also display the hyperlinks that connect information on the World Wide Web.

Example of tags controlling page presentation:

<H1> I am the largest Header </H1>

<H6> I am the smallest header</H6>

Example of a tag defining a hyperlink:

Web - The Next Generation

The first generation of the Web enabled the retrieval and display of information. As word of this new technology spread, more and more people were interested in seeing and using it. Including the academic community which began using the Web by 1992.

In April of 1992, the first Graphical User Interface (GUI) browser was released. This was the first step towards the interactive Web.

In 1993, Mosaic, a truly professional GUI browser was released. After Microsoft and Macintosh got wind of the new project and made new browser software, the Internet community picked up the new tool and the annual use of the Internet rose rapidly. One factor in the rise of Internet use was that computers had become a household item.

The expanded use of the Web dictated the need to retrieve live data from databases and provide a method for interaction with the data. Developers began using CGI (Common Gateway Interface), an application which enabled them to write and execute programs with languages that worked with HTML. These programs enabled the Web applications to access and interact with data in active databases on other servers.

The addition of small programs called scripts, which execute on the browser (client) and on the server, enabled the editing of data within the Web Applications. All of this new technology working together made Web applications more versatile and powerful and expanded the use of the Web dramatically.

Technology produced new languages to be used in Web development. For example, two years ago Java was a type of coffee; today it is the most talked about Web development tool in the IT industry. When I heard words like Java, Java Applets, Java Beans, I wondered, " What the heck are they talking about?"

Java is a simple yet powerful object-oriented language developed by Sun Microsystems. Unlike other programming languages, the object-oriented languages merge code and data into a single package or object, often referred to as a "black box". These object-oriented modules are then included in applications. Java is considered a powerful language because it is machine independent. This means the same program can run on a PC and a Mac. Java Beans and Applets are examples of object-oriented "black boxes".

A Java applet is a Java program that runs under the control of the web browser. The spinning globe seen on the Internet Explorer page is an example of what an applet can do.

The Java Bean is also Java. The Bean component can be as simple as a list box, scroll bar or a series of push buttons. Complex beans can define embeddable applications such as spreadsheets, calculators or calendars.

Java and its components are just an example of the new technology that makes the Web interactive. We would need another presentation to cover all of the technology that makes the Web so dynamic and powerful today.

At ASU, we have taken advantage of both generations of the Web. We used the functionality of the first generation of the Web to provide our students with the University's course catalog and student directory.

The second generation of Web technology has enabled us to provide several services for our students via the Web, such as:

Class registration, which updates our IDMS legacy database
Address and phone maintenance, which updates both our Affiliate Sybase database and our IDMS legacy database

We are currently working on an application, which will enable students to verify their Social Security Number and enter it into both the Affiliate Sybase database and the IDMS legacy database. We can see this application being used often as the students begin taking advantage of either the Hope Tax Credit or Lifetime Learning tax credit.

The use of Web applications has reduced the burden on the staff who would have been manually entering the information now entered by the students via the Web. The feedback we have gotten from the students regarding our Web applications has been very positive.

Final Thoughts

The growth of the Internet and World Wide Web over the last few years has been simply mind-boggling and it is much more than anyone ever imagined a couple of years ago.

How far will it go, where will it end? --- It's anyone's guess!

Tim Berners-Lee said, "We've only caught a glimpse of the Web's impact!"

DEFINITIONS:

ATM: (asynchronous transfer mode) A high-speed cell switching networking technology that can be scaled from 128 Mbps (Mega bits per second) to more than six Gbps (Giga bits per second).

BROWSER: A software application that permits browsing, retrieval and viewing of content from the World Wide Web and Intranets.

CLIENT: A software application that makes requests of a server application for information or tasks to be executed by the server on behalf of the client; clients and servers communicate via specialized protocols.

COOKIE: A text file (or memo) that is created and stored on your hard drive (C:\Windows\Cookies) by the WWW server contacted by the browser. This text file is identified with the Web site and can hold any information.

DYNAMIC CONTENT: Live data, retrieved from an interactive database or a form on the browser.

ETHERNET: A popular type of local-area network (LAN) that many offices use to link computers, printers, and servers.

FIREWALL: A system or set of systems through which all traffic between an internal network and an external network (usually the Internet) must pass. A firewall allows only authorized traffic to continue to the other side, where "authorized" is defined by the firewall owner's security policy.

GIF: (Graphics Interchange Format), A bit-mapped graphics file format for compressing images to a file size that's manageable to download.

HTML: (Hypertext Markup Language) A language used to build Web sites (pages). Contains standard tags, which determine how a Web page looks when your browser displays it. HTML tags also display the hyperlinks that interconnect information on the World Wide Web.

HTTP: (HyperText Transfer Protocol) A networking protocol for retrieving HTML documents. The client software application used in HTTP transactions is a web browser.

JPEG: (Joint Photographic Experts Group), A bit-mapped graphics file format popular for compressing images to a file size that's manageable to download.

LAN: (Local Area Network) A network in which all hosts are in close physical proximity (roughly, within the same building or set of adjacent buildings).

ODBC: (Open DataBase Connection) A connection to remote databases (such as Sybase or Oracle) via other middleware instead of software.

PPP: (point-to-point protocol) A protocol for making Internet Protocol connections over a telephone line.

TCP/IP: (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) The driver software that connects PCS and networks to the Internet.

URL: (Universal Resource Locator) The URL is the address of an Internet file. Usually it consists of four parts: protocol, server (or domain), path, and file name.

WEB MASTER: The individual responsible for maintaining the Web server.

WEB SERVER: (hardware) The host computer that contains HTML pages and possibly other forms of content served to clients via HTTP.

WEB SERVER:(software) The application that retrieves the data or executes the tasks requested by the browser(client).

XML: (eXtensible Markup Language) The newest Web page language used to supplement HTML. It enables the insertion of metatags into the Web pages. These tags enable precision searching, faster sorting of tables of data and seamless file swapping between programs.

ACRONYMS:

ASP - Active Server Pages

ATM - Asynchronous Transfer Mode

BTC - Business Task Communications

CGI - Common Gateway Interface

CSE - Client Server Encyclopedia

GIF- Graphics Interchange Format

GUI - Graphic User Interface

HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language

HTTP - Hypertext Transport Protocol

IDC - Internet Database Connector

IE - Internet Explorer