Tutorials
2. Understanding the Internet
Page 3 - How does the World Wide Web work?

How does the World Wide Web work?

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks, or just plain links, are made up of text and/or graphics that can be clicked on with the mouse to access other pages, files, sound, and images. At this site, all links appear as yellow text that is underlined or as a graphic image (example: Next/Back buttons at the bottom of the page). When you move your mouse over a link, the cursor will change to a pointing hand. For those of you who use a text-based browser, links will be selectable with the cursor.

Graphics

Graphics can be used in many ways. The background image of this page is a graphic, as is the title image at the top of the page that says, "Inside the Internet: An Interactive Exploration of the World Wide Web." The buttons at the bottom of the page that lead to the previous and next pages are also graphics. Graphics are used much in the same way on the Web as they are in publishing&emdash;to enhance the appearance of the page.

HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the programming language in which web documents are written. It is very easy to learn and understand, although it may take some time to create pages such as those featured at this site. Tutorial 16 gives you a crash course into HTML programming.

HTTP Protocol

The HTTP protocol is the set of rules that tells the computers on the Internet how to transfer and handle HTML documents, as well as any other type of document or file available through a HTTP site.