World Wide Web

These tutorials are about the history of the Internet and an overview of the technologies of the Internet.

Web Browsers

A Web Browser is a piece of software that allows you to explore the World Wide Web, most commonly in with a nice graphical user interface.

There are currently many web browsers out there. The two most common are Microsoft Explorer and Netscape Navigator. These are the two big boys of the browser world, locked in a struggle equivalent to the one between the United States and the former Soviet Union. However, just like there are many other countries out there that may get overlooked or trampled in the battle, there are many Web browsers out there. And many of the Web browsers out there are freeware.

The key historical browsers are still available if you look for them: ViolaWWW, Mosaic, Cello, Lynx. There are also many new competitors out there. Some are serious attempts at competition with Microsoft and Netscape, others are pet projects developed by people sick of the big two. Just to name a few, a cursory search yielded: Amaya, Opera, Tabsurf, Xana, NeoPlanet, Ariadna, and Mozilla. A search on CNet yielded roughly five hundred matches, of which at least fifty had to be independent browsers, mostly free.

Web Sites

Of course, the purpose of a Web browser is to explore Web sites. But before looking at the types of Web sites out there it is useful to define some terms. The first is Internet Service Provider (ISP), the second, Online Service. The two are not the same thing, although they may be intertwined at the corporate level.

An ISP provides a subscriber with a connection to the Internet, and usually technical support if there are problems with the connection. It functions as a gateway to the Internet.

An Online Service is a destination on the Web people go to because it provides some service. Some are free, some are by subscription. For instance Microsoft has extensive online documentation on the Web.

The gray area occurs with something like AOL. Is AOL an ISP or Online Service? The answer is that AOL is an Online Service. AOL would prefer that everything you do you do on AOL computers and not leave the site to go explore the World Wide Web. The reason they provide Internet access is when they tried to refuse to do so people left in droves and joined ISPs instead.

So what types of Online Services are out there? The biggest type is something like AOL that tries to be a centralized, commercially driven community trying to be everything, and sell anything, to everyone. Most Online Services are more focused and consists of single topic Web sites. These include:

• Search Engines
• Tutorials - online education and training
• Online Help - FAQs, topical search engines
• Software - online support, downloads, sales
• Commercial - online sales brochures
• Entertainment - games, media commentary
• Financial - banks, stock quotes and trades
• Personal - personal home pages
• Informational - online museums, tour guides.

It is easy to keep coming up with topics and sub-topics. The point is that anything that can be put into print can be put on the Web, and if it is a destination that people use as a resource, it constitutes and online service, which is simply a service-provider of some sort that exists online to provide electronic information.

These pages can be found at: [http://academ.hvcc.edu/~kantopet/]
Copyright 2003 -- Peter L. Kantor[kantopet@hvcc.edu]
Last Updated August 2003