Lecture
The World Wide Web
(Web Development Lecture 1)
What is the World Wide Web?
• A huge resource of information
• Logically unified, but physically distributed
• Unified: Anyone from any where can access the
information using a very simple scheme consisting of
hyperlinks & URL’s
• Distributed: The info is stored on Internet-connected
computers that are spread all over the globe
Who is allowed to access the Web?
• Anyone and every one with a computer and a connection to the
Internet
• No nationalistic, ideological, racial, or religious restrictions
• In Pakistan, Web is accessible from any city or town that has a
phone available
The Web is unlike any previous human invention
Because it is a world-wide resource, important to all
and shared by all of the people in the world
Enough about who can access it. Now let us focus
upon how to access it
As some of you may know, the Web is a collection of
Web pages; accessing the Web means accessing one
of those Web pages
How do I access/visit a Web page?
1. Turn your computer on
2. Connect to the Internet through a modem or through your computer
network
3. Launch the browser
4. Type in the URL of the Web page that you want to visit
Browser
• The tool used for accessing the content of the Web
• Browser and the content of the Web have the same relationship as the
TV has with TV programs
• 1993 - The 1st major browser “Mosaic” was developed at the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Initially handled text only, later graphics-viewing capability was added
• Most popular: chrome, Internet Explorer, safarie,Netscape Navigator
What is a URL?
• Universal Resource Locator
• The unique address assigned to each unique page on the Web
• Examples:
•http://dawn.com
•http://www.vu.edu.pk/
•http://www.smeda.org.pk
Are there any access charges?
• Most of the info on the Web is available for free
• There is some for-payment content on the Web, which is generally
paid with the help of a credit card
How do I navigate the Web?
• You go from one Web page to another my clicking on a hyperlink
• I’ll explain it to you through the example of my own Web page
URL
links
Hyperlinks
• The underlined pieces of text in blue are called hyperlinks
• Each hyperlink is a gateway to another Web page
• All you have to do is click on the hyperlink to go to the page corresponding to
that hyperlink
How many Web pages are there?
• In 1999 there were 800 million Web pages (15 trillion (1012) text characters)
• In the year 2015, the number is estimated to be 50 billion
• If you spend a minute reviewing each of these pages, it will take more than
15,000 years to go through them all
What is secret behind the explosive growth
of the Web?
• Anarchy – any page is allowed to link to any other
• There are no controls over who puts what on the Web
• Everyone can put whatever they want to put on the Web –
and they do!
• DRAWBACKS:
• Inconsistent quality of pages
• Broken links
Some of the popular Web sites?
• Microsoft – Most popular software developer’s Web site
• Yahoo – Most popular multi-service Web site
• Amazon – most popular shop on the Web
• CNN – most popular news Web site
• Google – most useful search engine
What is a Web site?
• A collection of related documents available on the Web
• The first portion of the URLs in the Web pages of a Web site is the same e.g.
• http://www.vu.edu.pk/
• http://www.vu.edu.pk/~altaf
• http://www.vu.edu.pk/cs101
are the URLs of three distinct Web pages on a single Web site
What is a home page?
• The first, top-most page of a Web site, just like the cover of a magazine
• VU’s home page is at http://www.vu.edu.pk
What is a Search Engine?
• They continuously scan the Web and compile a list of all the
Web pages & keywords found on those pages
• The search engine with the largest such list (or index) is
Google – with a list of over 2 billion Web pages and over 330
million images
• We use the search engine by typing a “keyword” or “query”
on its Web page. It looks for those keyword in its index, and
displays a list of Web pages that contain that keyword
I know I can read off the Web. Am I allowed to put
my stuff on the Web?
• Definitely. You just need to have a computer that is hooked up to the Internet.
• You do not require anyone’s permission to put your Web page(s) on the Web
• Your Web page will be available to all the millions of users that have access to
the Internet the moment you place it on the Web
Am I allowed to put my stuff on the Web? (cont.)
• Next week you’ll have the opportunity to do just that
• You’ll learn how to develop your own Web page
• And how to make it available on the Web
Internet ---- Web
• The “Internet” and the “Web” are not the same
• In fact, the “Web” is a service that runs over the
“Internet”. In addition to the Web, there are many
other services that run over the Internet
• Internet is like the network of roads in a city, whereas
Web is a service like the Bus Service that run over those
roads. Just like other services can use the roads (e.g.
wagons), so can other services on the Internet (e.g. ftp).
We’ll have more to say about this later in the course
• However, The following refer to the same thing:
• World Wide Web, Web, WWW
What info is available on the Web?
• Information about almost every thing known to mankind and then
some!
• The info is in the form of:
• Text
• Graphics
• Animation
• Video
• Sound
Impact of the Web on:
•Computing
•Society
•Commerce
Impact of the Web on Computing
(Cost)
• Every one wants to use the Web
• That has spurred the demand for computers
• That, in turn, has reduced the cost of computers, software, and Internet
access drastically
Impact of the Web on Computing
(Ease of use)
• The computers are becoming easier to use because the target users are
becoming less and less sophisticated
• In the olden times only techies used computers; now my 4-year old
knows things about the machine that I never did and probably, never
will
Impact of the Web on Society
• User-friendly communication has become much more affordable – the
global village is shrinking
• Business persons can stay in touch with their businesses even without being
there – for some, that has resulted in the destruction of their family life
Impact of the Web on Commerce
• Huge impact
• The moment I take my business to the Web, it becomes possible for my
customers – even those that I do not know about - to find out about me
without me being physically present in their city
• Suddenly, I’m running a global business
Who invented the Web & Why?
• Tim Berners Lee – British physicist
• 1989 – At the European Center for Nuclear Energy Research (CERN) in
Geneva
• He just wanted a way by which scientists could easily share documents
over computer networks
The key weakness of the Web?
• The Web (as it currently exists) was designed for humans to read, not for
computers to understand and manipulate meaningfully
• Computers face great problems in dealing with the current text- and graphics-
based content of the Web
What’s the problem with this page?
• You (a human) see this page and immediately understand what my name is
• How would a computer know the same fact?
• For that, the computer needs some help in form of a statement:
• Name=“Altaf Khan”
• Occupation=“Teaching”
• Employer=“Virtual University”
• And so on
Precisely for this reason, the Web of the future will be
different from the Web of today
The Web of the future will be called the Semantic
Web
Future of the Web: Semantic Web
What unique feature distinguishes the Web of today with the Semantic Web of
tomorrow?
Whereas, today’s Web’s content is designed for humans to read; the Semantic
Web’s content will be designed for computers to understand meaningfully
However, the Semantic Web is not a replacement but an extension of the present
Web, in which information is given well defined meaning
The Semantic Web
• Some progress is already being made for adding “Semantic Content” on to
the Web, but a lot more will happen in the next 5 years
• To find further info about this exciting development read Tim Berners Lee
and his co-worker’s paper: “The Semantic Web” that is available on the Web
as:
http://www.sciam.com/2001/0501issue/0501berners-lee.html
