Till Now ……….

We learnt about several important milestones

on the modern computing journey that
started with the Analytical Engine, and as of
today, has brought us to the hand-held
computer
Today’s Goal

• To Become familiar with one of the most popular

activities on computers – the World Wide Web

• We want to become familiar with the Web’s structure

• About how the Web works

• About its evolution, and where it is going

What is the World Wide Web?

• A huge resource of information

WWW...
•Logically unified, but physically distributed

Logically unified: Any one from any where can access

the information using a very simple scheme consisting
of links & URLs
Physically distributed: The information is stored on
Internet-connected computers that are spread all over
the globe
Who is allowed to access the Web?
• Any one and every one with a computer and a connection
to the Internet

• No nationalistic, ideological, racial, or religious

restrictions

• Web is accessible from any city or town that has an

availability of phone lines
The Web is unlike any previous
human invention.

Because it is a world-wide resource,

important to all of the people in the
world
How do I visit a Web page ?
1. Turn your computer on
2. Connect to the internet through a modem or Local Area
Network
3. Launch the browser (mostly Internet Explorer)
4. Type in the URL of the Web page that you want to visit
 Browser

• Browser is the tool through which we access the content of

the Web

• 1993 - The 1st major browser “Mosaic” was developed at

the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

• Initially handled text only, later graphics-viewing capability

was added
What is a URL?

• Uniform Resource Locator

• The unique address assigned to each unique page on the Web

Examples
• http://www.dawn.com

• http://www.cnn.com

• http://www.smeda.org.pk
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 by clicking

on a link
 Links
• The underlined pieces of text in blue are called links

• Each link is a gateway to another Web page

• All you have to do is click on the link to go to the page

corresponding to that link
How many Web pages are there?

• In 1999 there were 800 million Web pages

• In year 2002, the number is 8 billion
• In the year 2005, the number is 580 billion
What is secret behind the explosive growth of the Web?

• Any page is allowed to link to any other

• No controls over who puts what on the Web
• Everyone can put whatever they want

• DRAWBACKS:
–Inconsistent quality of pages
–Broken links
The most 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.course.com
–http://www.course.com/parker2002
What is a Web Search Engine?

• Search engines continuously scan the Web and

compile a list of all the Web pages that they find

• 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
“search key word” 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
Can we place our stuff on the Web?

•Yes , we can
• we do not require anyone’s permission to put our Web
page(s) on the Web
• Our Web page will be available to all the millions of
users that have access to the Internet.
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.

• 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!

• 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

• Every one wants to use the Web

• That, in turn, has reduced the cost of computing
drastically
• In the olden times only techies used computers
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
Impact of the Web on Commerce

• Huge impact
• The moment one takes his business to the Web, it becomes
possible for all the customers to find out about him without
being physically present in their city
• Suddenly, one is 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 a computer network
The key weakness of the Web?

• The Web (as it currently exists) was designed for

human to read, not for computers to understand and
manipulate meaningfully

• Computers have a great problem in dealing with

the current text and graphics based Web
The Future: The Semantic Web

What unique feature distinguishes the Web of today with the

Semantic Web of tomorrow?
Today’s Web’s contents are 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
in well defined meaning
What have we learnt today?

1.What is the World Wide Web?

2.How does it work?

3.The impact of the Web on computing, society, and

commerce
Goal of the Next Lecture

1. To become familiar with various types of computers with

respect to their applications and scale

2. To become familiar with the basic components of a

computer