History on the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (WWW) is a library of resources available to computer users through the global internet. The Web and the internet are often used interchangeably but strictly speaking the internet is a collection of computer networks which communicate directly with each other and the World Wide Web is the library of resources available via the internet. By the end of 2002 there were more than 100,000 networks and over 120 million users connected via the internet. Internets support a range of different services. A few of the most popular include: E-mail (electronic mail): allows messages to be sent from one person to another, or to many others, via computer.FTP (File Transfer Protocol): is a set of standard conventions allowing the easy transfer of files between different computers.User groups: allow the automatic global distribution of messages among thousands of users who are members of particular interest groups.Telnet: is a system that allows a user to ‘log on’ to a remote computer. The Word Wide Web is also an internet service. It enables users to view a wide variety of information, including archives, library resources, and current world and business news. Users generally navigate through information on the Web with the aid of a program known as a browser or client. The browser displays text, images, sound and other information in the form of a page, which is obtained from a WWW server. The user can navigate through information by pointing to specially designated hypertext or other objects on the screen. These objects link the user to other Web pages on the internet. Web pages are formatted using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). The World Wide Web was developed by Timothy Berners-Lee at the CERN research facility near Geneva in 1989. Originally it was to allow information-sharing among teams of physics researchers.