Overview of the Web

The web is a global information retrieval system which is organized by hypertext documents with links to other files which can be other hypertext documents, sound files, audio files (movies), and graphics files.

The web is based on the TCP/IP protocols that define (among other things) how computers on the Internet communicate with each other. The Internet existed first, then the web -- and some special protocols-- were developed around 1991.

What can be done on the web?

Publishing on the web is a lot like publishing in any other medium. You are trying to convey information to an intended audience, and as you would expect, fitting the content to the audience is the primary consideration. But there are things you can do that are difficult or impossible in any other medium.

• You can present information in a variety of forms:

  • Text - list of sites
  • Still Images - Funny Face
  • Animated Images - Mountain Hawk
  • Video - Human skull transforms to orangutan skull
  • Sound - One chief exec or Another.

  This enables you to present information in the form which makes the most sense for what you are trying to convey (A picture is worth a thousand words...").

• You can present the information in a way that is interactive, to a point:

  • Image maps
  • Forms
  • Java

  This means you can make it easier for the user to get to the information they really want.

• You can organize information in multiple ways simultaneously:

  This means you can reach multiple audiences with the same information, presented in the way that makes the most sense for their particular needs, without needing to maintain multiple copies (the information doesn't change, the reader's path through it does.)

A number of specialized terms and concepts will be discussed during this seminar. If you are not already familiar with them, you may wish to browse through the glossary. These terms include: Client/Server, Global Information Resources, Home Page, HTML (HyperText Markup Language), Hypertext, Internet, Multimedia, Network, Port Number, Protocols and Standards, URL (Uniform Resource Locator) , and World-Wide Web (WWW) .

How the Web works

HTML

Most documents on the web are in HTML, Hypertext Markup Language. Hypertext Markup language is a way of taking a file of plain text and telling the browser about the structure of the document and about how to display the document. It's a sort of computerized 'typist's instructions'. HTML is NOT a programming language. HTML documents can include sections of programming, like Javascript, and can also 'include' related image files (.gifs and .jpgs).

The Lehigh Web Server

The Lehigh Web server lives on the machine called www.lehigh.edu. Lehigh web spaces, however, live in AFS space (reachable from the machines called 'UNIX workstations'), in special subdirectory on each account (/public/www-data/). For editing and uploading purposes, these directories can be reached from the AFS workstations, the Compute server, and the Network Server.

Topics in this Seminar

• Creating your home page space on the Lehigh Web Server
• Managing your web space
• The basics of creating and marking up a document in HTML
• Creating pages on the Lehigh Server
• Creating pages on a PC and uploading them to the server
• Some authoring issues.