What is WORLD WIDE WEB ( www)

The World Wide Web (abbreviated as the Web or WWW) is a system of Internet servers that
supports hypertext to access several Internet protocols on a single interface. Almost every protocol
type available on the Internet is accessible on the Web. This includes e-mail, FTP, Telnet, and
Usenet News. In addition to these, the World Wide Web has its own protocol: HyperText Transfer
Protocol, or HTTP. These protocols will be explained later in this document.
The World Wide Web provides a single interface for accessing all these protocols. This creates a
convenient and user-friendly environment. It is no longer necessary to be conversant in these
protocols within separate, command-level environments. The Web gathers together these protocols
into a single system. Because of this feature, and because of the Web's ability to work with
multimedia and advanced programming languages, the Web is the fastest-growing component of
the Internet.
The operation of the Web relies primarily on hypertext as its means of information retrieval.
HyperText is a document containing words that connect to other documents. These words are called
links and are selectable by the user. A single hypertext document can contain links to many
documents. In the context of the Web, words or graphics may serve as links to other documents,
images, video, and sound. Links may or may not follow a logical path, as each connection isprogrammed by the creator of the source document. Overall, the Web contains a complex virtual
web of connections among a vast number of documents, graphics, videos, and sounds.
Producing hypertext for the Web is accomplished by creating documents with a language called
HyperText Markup Language, or HTML. With HTML, tags are placed within the text to accomplish
document formatting, visual features such as font size, italics and bold, and the creation of
hypertext links. Graphics and multimedia may also be incorporated into an HTML document. HTML
is an evolving language, with new tags being added as each upgrade of the language is developed
and released. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), led by Web founder Tim Berners-Lee,
coordinates the efforts of standardizing HTML. The W3C now calls the language XHTML and
considers it to be an application of the XML language standard.
The World Wide Web consists of files, called pages or home pages, containing links to documents
and resources throughout the Internet.
The Web provides a vast array of experiences including multimedia presentations, real-time
collaboration, interactive pages, radio and television broadcasts, and the automatic "push" of
information to a client computer. Programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic,
Cold Fusion and XML are extending the capabilities of the Web. A growing amount of information
on the Web is served dynamically from content stored in databases. The Web is therefore not a
fixed entity, but one that is in a constant state of development and flux.
For more complete information about the World Wide Web, see Understanding The World Wide Web.