This site will look much better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.

World Wide Web faq »

This document contains a list of frequently asked questions about the World Wide Web which particularly affect users at UCI. An excellent meta-index of information about the WWW can be found at BSDI. The comp.infosystems.www FAQ answers some basic questions about the WWW.

Contents

World Wide Web Summary

This summary was originally written by Tim Berners-Lee (CERN) with some changes/additions by Roy Fielding.

The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system.

The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be easily available anywhere. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups. Originally aimed at the High Energy Physics community, it has spread to other areas and attracted much interest in user support, resource discovery and collaborative work areas. It is currently the most advanced information system deployed on the Internet.

Clients and servers for many platforms exist and are under continual development.

Reader view

The WWW world consists of documents and links. Indexes are special documents which, rather than being read, may be searched. The result of such a search is another ("virtual") document containing links to the documents found. A simple protocol (" HTTP ") is used to allow a browser program to request a keyword search by a remote information server.

The web contains documents in many formats. Those documents which are hypertext (real or virtual) contain links to other documents or places within documents. All documents, whether real, virtual or indexes, look similar to the reader and are contained within the same addressing scheme.

To follow a link, a reader clicks with a mouse (or types in a number if he or she has no mouse). To search and index, a reader gives keywords (or other search criteria). These are the only operations necessary to access the entire world of data.

Information Provider View

The WWW browsers can access many existing data systems via existing protocols (FTP, NNTP) or via HTTP and a gateway. In this way, the critical mass of data is quickly exceeded and the increasing use of the system by readers and information suppliers encourage each other.

Providing information is as simple as running an HTTP server and pointing it at an existing directory structure. The server can automatically generate a hypertext view of your files to guide the user around. However, most information sites use a hierarchy of special HTML hypertext documents to organize the information provided. The term "Home Page" is commonly used to refer to the root node of a particular user or site's information hierarchy.

Any file available by anonymous FTP, or any internet newsgroup can be immediately linked into the web. The very small start-up effort is designed to allow small contributions. At the other end of the scale, large information providers may provide an HTTP server with full text or keyword indexing. This may allow access to a large existing database without changing the way that database is managed. Such gateways have already been made into Oracle(tm), WAIS, and Digital's VMS/Help systems, to name but a few.

The WWW model gets over the frustrating incompatibilities of data format between suppliers and reader by allowing negotiation of format between a smart browser and a smart server. This should provide a basis for extension into multimedia, and allow those who share application standards to make full use of them across the web.

This summary does not describe the many exciting possibilities opened up by the WWW project, such as efficient document caching, the reduction of redundant out-of-date copies, and the use of knowledge daemons. There is more information in the online project documentation, including some background on hypertext and many technical notes.


 

How can I make my own documents available to the web?

If you have an account on the ICS Suns, the easiest way is to simply create a personal public_html directory under your home directory. More information about how to do this is available in Creating your Own Web Space.
 

How can I learn HTML?

See Learning HTML for some suggestions where to start looking.
 

What are the Ethical Guidelines I Must Follow?

You must always obey the Ethical Use of Computing Resources guidelines to which you agreed before receiving an account on the ICS Suns.

Always obey the information provider's copyright. If you intend to use an image for anything other than personal use, first obtain permission from the original author/creator. Never save an image to a local disk if the author states that the images are for transient viewing only.
 

What else should I know?

See ICS WWW Resources for additional information.