Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Dreamweaver and the Internet
Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 (or just Dreamweaver ) is a Web site creation and manage-
ment tool. To better understand what this means, you will review some basic terms and
concepts associated with Web sites.
The Internet and the World Wide Web
The Internet is a huge global network made up of millions of smaller computer networks
that are all connected. A network is a series of computers that are connected to share
information and resources. Within each network, one computer or more is designated
as the server. A server is the computer that stores and distributes information to the other
computers in the network. The Internet provides a way for people to communicate and
exchange information via computers, whether they are across the street or across the
globe. All of the computers connected to the Internet can communicate and exchange
information. Figure 1-1 uses a series of roadways to represent the interconnected net-
works that make up the Internet.
Figure 1-1
Illustration of the Internet
As the Internet has evolved, different protocols have been developed to allow infor-
mation to be shared in different ways. A protocol is a set of technical specifi cations that
defi nes a format for sharing information. Creating an agreed-upon protocol allows a
programmer to create software that can interact with all the other software that uses the
same protocol. For example, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ( SMTP ) is an agreed-upon
format used by most e-mail software. Without this standard protocol, there would be
many incompatible e-mail formats, and you would be able to exchange e-mail only with
people who were using the same e-mail software. Another common Internet protocol is
File Transfer Protocol ( FTP ), which is used to copy fi les from one computer to another
over the Internet.
In 1989, Timothy Berners-Lee and his team of scientists at CERN (the European
Council for Nuclear Research) invented the World Wide Web as a means for scientists
to more easily locate and share data. The World Wide Web ( WWW or Web ) is a subset
of the Internet that has its own protocol, HTTP, and its own document structure, HTML.
HTTP ( Hypertext Transfer Protocol ) controls the transfer of Web pages over the Internet.
HTML ( Hypertext Markup Language ) is the most common language that provides
instructions on how to format Web pages for display. A Web page is an electronic docu-
ment of information on the Web; a group of related and interconnected Web pages is
 
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