HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
NOTE
Nearly all large corporations and medium-sized businesses and
organizations are using web technology to manage projects, order
materials, and distribute company information in a paperless envi-
ronment. By locating their documents on a private, secure web
server called an
intranet
, they take advantage of the technologies
the World Wide Web has to offer while keeping the information
contained within the company.
1
The Web Is Graphical and Easy to Navigate
In the early days, using the Internet involved simple text-only applications. You had to
navigate the Internet's various services using command-line programs (think DOS) and
arcane tools. Although plenty of information was available on the Net, it wasn't neces-
sarily pretty to look at or easy to find.
Then along came the first graphical web browser: Mosaic. It paved the way for the Web
to display both text and graphics in full color on the same page. The ability to create
complex, attractive pages rivaling those founds in topics, magazines, and newspapers
propelled the popularity of the Web. These days, the Web offers such a wide degree of
capabilities that people are writing web applications that replace desktop applications.
A
browser
is used to view and navigate web pages and other information on the World
Wide Web. Currently, the most popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer,
Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome. In addition, more and more people
are using mobile devices to access the Web, most of which have their own browsers.
Hypertext or Hypermedia?
If the Web incorporates so much more than text, why do I keep calling the Web a
hypertext system? Well, if you're going to be absolutely technically correct about it,
the Web is not a hypertext system—it's a hyper
media
system. But, on the other
hand, you might argue that the Web began as a text-only system, and much of the
content is still text-heavy, with extra bits of media added in as emphasis. I prefer the
term
hypertext
, and it's my topic, so I use it. You know what I mean.
