CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO WEB
PAGES
 The Internet
 Internet is a large number of computers connected
together to share information.
 It is a collection of networks (a network of networks)
sharing digital information via a common set of
networking and software protocols.
 It is a network of networks that consists of millions of
private, public, academic, business, and government
networks, of local to global scope, that are linked
together.
 Nearly anyone can connect their computer to the
Internet and immediately communicate with other
computers and users on the network.
 The Internet has become an industry in its own
respect.
 The Internet…
 The Internet began in the late 1960s as an experiment in the
design of robust computer networks.
 The goal was to construct a network of computers that could
withstand the loss of several machines without
compromising the ability of the remaining ones to
communicate.
 Funding came from the U.S. Department of Defense, which
had a vested interest in building information networks that
could withstand nuclear attack.
 The result was a network called ARPANET developed by
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United
States Department of Defense.

 Later ARPANET was replaced by National Science Foundation

Network (NSFNET) accessible to research and education
organization in 1990s.
 The Internet…
 The Internet, as a “network of networks”, consists of many
computers, called servers or hosts, which are linked by
communication lines.
 These hosts are located in different part of the world and
connect millions of people.
 The administrators of these hosts may make information or
software stored on them publically available, so that others
can view, download or use the data.

 Another important thing that has contributed for growth of

Internet is ownership.
 Until now, nobody owns the Internet.
 Its unique design transformed it into a source for innovation
that anyone in the world could use.
 However, its backbone: servers and Internet Service Providers
(ISP) are owned by private as well government organizations.
 The Internet…
 The Internet – it is a huge network of
computer networks
 An infrastructure (connectivity among a
large number of machines world wide)
 a connection of computer networks using
the Internet Protocol (IP)
Internetworking
 When two or more separate networks

are connected for exchanging data or

resource, they become Internetworking
 The Internet…
 The Internet has, in a short space of time,
become fundamental to the global economy.
 More than a billion people worldwide use it, both
at work and in their social lives.

 Generally, the services of internet are:

 World Wide Web (WWW)

 Electronic mail

 File Transfer (ftp)

 Discussion Groups

 Internet Chat

 Search Services
 The Internet…
7

 What's the difference between the

Internet and the World Wide Web
(WWW)?
 the Web is the collection of web sites and
pages around the world; the Internet is
larger and also includes other services
such as email, chat, online games, etc.

Web Programming
 World Wide Web
 World Wide Web (WWW) is a collection of
interconnected documents and other resources
linked by hyperlinks.
 Hyperlink is also called hypertext or simply link
 Hyperlinks are reference or navigation element in
a document to another document.
 WWW is a massive storehouse of information that
resides on internet.
 WWW was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 at
the European Nuclear Research Center (CERN) in
Switzerland.
 www (world wide web)
 World Wide Web...
 Berners-Lee created WWW by bringing together
three technologies that were already in
development at the time:
 Markup Language – a system of instructions and
formatting codes embedded in text.
 Hypertext – a means of embedding links to other
documents, images, and other elements in a
document.
 Internet – a global network of computers where clients
request service and servers provide services

 WWW pages are connected to one another using

hypertext that allows you to move from any page
to any other page, and to graphics, multimedia
 World Wide Web...

Fig WWW pages and how they are interlinked

 The Web consists of many millions of internet-
connected servers, each with information on them to
share.
 World Wide Web...
 These documents can be formed of
anything from plain text to multimedia or
even 3D objects.
 The computers on which the information is
stored, called servers, deliver this
information over the Internet to client
computers using a protocol.
 The protocol just provides a mechanism
that allows a client to request a document,
and a server to send that document.
 The goal of a web server is to serve
 World Wide Web...
 WWW is a client/server architecture where client
machines request service from server machines.
 Web servers are computers which offer information
to the reader. They store web pages and transmit to
the client.
 The backbone of the web is the network of web
servers across the world.
 These are really just computers that have a particular
type of software running on them: web server
 web server: software that listens for web page
requests
 Apache
 Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) (part of Windows), etc..
 The web server software knows how to speak the
 World Wide Web...
 Web server Software:
 Accept data from the client.
 responds to client request for information.
 The web browser is also particularly clever in the way it
displays what it retrieves.
 Web pages are written in a certain language, and the browser
knows how to display these correctly, whether you have a
huge flat screen or a tiny screen on a handheld device or
phone.
 The language the page has been built with gives the browser
hints on how to display things, and the browser decides the
final layout itself.
 web browser: fetches/displays documents from web servers
 Mozilla Firefox
 Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)
 Apple Safari
 Google Chrome
 World Wide Web...

Figure 1.2 How WWW works: retrieving a web page from server by clients
 Introduction (cont’d)
15

 A web page
 A document with a mark-up language called HTML
 The basic unit of information storage on the www

Web document can be categorized into 3 types:

i) Static
ii) Dynamic

iii) Active

Static document
Fixed content document and stored on a server
The client can get only one copy of that document
The HTML is used to create static document
Web Programming
16

Dynamic Documents
 Don’t exist in predefined format
 Created by a web server
 When a browser request arrives, the web server runs
an application that creates the dynamic content.
 The server software returns the output of the program
as a response to the browser
 A fresh document is created for each request
 The content of dynamic document can vary from one
document to another.
 Eg: CGI common gateway interface
 Is a technology that creates and handles dynamic
documents Web Programming
17

 Php, asp, ISP, CSS

 Active Document
 For many applications, we need a program to be run at
the client side. These are called active documents.
 Eg. We want to create a program that creates animated
graphics on screen or interact with the user
 When a browser requests the document, the server
sends a copy of the document in the form of bytecode
 The document runs at the client side.
 An active doc is transported from server to client in the
form of binary. It means it can be compressed at the
server side and decompressed at the client side

Web Programming
 URI, URL, and URN
 URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier, which is used to
identify resource on the web.
 A URI identifies a resource either by location, or a name, or
both.
 More often than not, most of us use URIs that defines a
location to a resource.

 URIs can be classified as Uniform Resource Locators (URLs),

as Uniform Resource names (URNs), or as both.
 A uniform resource name (URN) functions like a person's
name, while a uniform resource locator (URL) resembles
that person's street address.
 In other words, the URN defines an item's identity, while
URI, URL, and URN…

Fig Uniform Resource Identifier

 URI, URL, and URN…
 The World Wide Web can be conceived as a large
group of resources placed in different computers
all around the world.
 These resources can be found and linked through
URIs.
 URI identifies resources by assigning them
addresses in a given network.

 A URL is a type of URI that's used to describe the

location of a specific document.
 A URL doesn't define the type of content to be
found (texts, images, movies, etc.), it only shows
where to find it.
 URI, URL, and URN…
 A common URL is composed by four parts:
 The protocol: this specifies which protocol is used to access the
document. It is also called URL scheme.
 The computer name: gives the name of the computer, usually
a domain name or IP address, where the content is hosted.
 The directories path: Sequence of directories that define the
path to follow to reach the document.
 The file name: The name of the file containing the resource.

 For example, http://www.htmlquick.com/reference/tags/span.html

Protocol: http://
Computer name (domain name): www.htmlquick.com
Directories path: /reference/tags/
File name: span.html
 URI, URL, and URN…
 Other examples of URL are:
 mailto:John.Doe@example.com

 ftp://ftp.is.co.za/rfc/rfc1808.txt

 tel:+1-816-555-1212

 telnet://melvyl.ucop.edu/

 file:///home/username/books/

 A URN identifies a resource by name in a given

namespace but not define how the resource maybe
obtained.
 URN functions like a person's name, while a URL
resembles that person's street address.
 In other words, the URN defines an item's identity,
while the URL provides a method for finding it.
Domain Name Registration
 A domain name is a unique name for a web site, like
http://www.w3schools.com.
 Domain names must be registered to be used for websites.
 When domain names are registered, they are added to a large
domain name register.
 In addition, information about the web site, including the IP
address, is stored on a DNS server.

 Getting a domain name involves registering the name you want

with an organization called ICANN (Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers) through a domain name registrar.
 For example, if you choose a name like "example.com", you will
have to go to a registrar, pay a registration fee and get registered.
 That will give you the right to the name for a year, and you will
have to renew it annually.
Domain Name Registration...

 Domain registration information is maintained by

the domain name registries, which contract with
domain registrars to provide registration services
to the public.
 An end user selects a registrar to provide the
registration service, and that registrar becomes
the designated registrar for the domain chosen
by the user.
 Only the designated registrar may modify or
delete information about domain names in a
central registry database.
Domain Name Registration...

 A domain name registrar is an organization that

manages the reservation of Internet domain names.
 There are numerous domain name registrars.

 Some of the popular ones are:

 www.godaddy.com — This is a very popular

registrar and possibly the biggest today

offers .com domain names for $9.99.
 www.dotster.com — This fairly popular registrar

provides fairly cheap domain prices ($15.75 plus

20 cents per domain).
 www.register.com — This domain name registrar

has been in business for a very long time.

 Web Hosting
 To make your Web site visible to the world, it has to be hosted
on a Web server.
 Hosting your web site on your own server is always an option.

 Here are some points to consider:

 Hardware Expenses
 To run a real web site, you will have to buy some powerful
server hardware.
 Don't expect that a low cost PC will do the job.
 You will also need a permanent (24 hours a day ) high-speed
connection.

 Software Expenses
 Remember that server-licenses often are higher than client-
licenses.
 Also note that server-licenses might have limits on number of
users.
 Web Hosting...
 Labor Expenses
 Don't expect low labor expenses.
 You have to install your own hardware and software.
 You also have to deal with bugs and viruses, and keep your server
constantly running in an environment where everything could
happen.

 To let others view your web pages, you must publish your web
site.
 To publish your work, you must copy your site to a web server.
 Your own PC can act as a web server if it is connected to a
network.
 The most common approach is to use web hosting providers.
 Web hosting means storing your web site on a public web
 Web Hosting...
 Some of the web hosting providers are:
http://www.justhost.com/
http://www.ipage.com/
http://www.fatcow.com/
http://www.webhostinghub.com/

 Things to Consider with selecting web hosting providers:

 24-hour support
 Make sure your ISP offers 24-hours support.
 Don't put yourself in a situation where you cannot fix critical
problems without having to wait until the next working day.
 Toll-free phone could be vital if you don't want to pay for long
distance calls.
 Web Hosting...
 Daily Backup
 Make sure your ISP runs a daily backup routine, otherwise
you may lose some valuable data.

 Traffic Volume
 Study the ISP's traffic volume restrictions.
 Make sure that you don't have to pay a fortune for
unexpected high traffic if your web site becomes popular.

 Bandwidth or Content Restrictions

 Study the ISP's bandwidth and content restrictions.
 If you plan to publish pictures or broadcast video or
sound, make sure that you can.
 Web Hosting...
 E-mail Capabilities
 Make sure your ISP supports the e-mail
capabilities you need.

 Database Access
 If you plan to use data from databases on your
web site, make sure your ISP supports the
database access you need.
Domain Name System (DNS)

 DNS refers to Domain Name System.

 DNS is a powerful Internet technology for converting domain names to
IP addresses.
 Its special mission is to be a mediator between the IP addresses which
is the system-side names of the websites, and their user-side alpha-
numeric names.

 While it's easy to remember the name of a website, it's quite hard
to remember the exact IP address.
 For example, everybody knows about www.google.com, but if you
had to remember "74.125.45.100", things would have been much
harder.
 DNS solves this problem.
 Every time a domain name is typed in a browser it is automatically
passed on to a DNS server, which translates the name into its
Domain Name System (DNS)…

 DNS began in the early days when the Internet

was only a small network created by the
Department of Defense for research purposes.
 Host names of computers were manually entered
into a file (called HOSTS.TXT) which was located
on a central server.
 Each site/computer that needed to resolve host
names had to download this file.
 Until the mid-1980s, this approach was to convert
domain names to IP addresses.
 As the numbers of Internet users started to grow
faster and faster, this system reached its limits
fast.
Domain Name System (DNS)…

Hierarchy of Domain Names

 At the top of the DNS hierarchy are 13 root name servers,
which contain name server information for all of the
generic top-level domains
 Top level domains are .com and .org as well as country-
specific DNS addresses such as .uk or .nz.
 The name servers for each of these top-level domains
contains name server information for domains within that
top-level domain.
 So the name server for .com will contain information about
microsoft.com but will not contain information about
microsoft.co.uk.
 Your name server will have to contact the server that
Domain Name System (DNS)…
Domain Name System (DNS)…

 All DNS records actually end with the period

character (.)
 Period (.) represents the root of the DNS

hierarchy, but it's rarely printed and is usually

just assumed.
 For example, if you take the domain name
www.microsoft.com.
www.microsoft.com, here is how it is organized
. Root domain
com The com. top-level domain
microsoft The domain microsoft within .com
www The host www within the domain
microsoft.com.
Domain Name System (DNS)…
 ICANN controls the “root domain”, which includes all the top
level domains.
 These are marked in a green oval for clarity.
 The Root DNS servers know all about the authoritative DNS
servers for the domains immediately below them. e.g.
firewall.cx, cisco.com, microsoft.com etc.
 These Root DNS servers can tell you which DNS server takes
care of firewall.cx, cisco.com, microsoft.com and the rest.

 When someone wants to visit the Cisco website, they go to

their web browser and type http://www.cisco.com after a few
seconds, the website is displayed.
 But what happens in the background after they type the
address and hit enter is pretty much unknown to most users.
Domain Name System (DNS)…

 Common top level domains:

– .edu
– .biz
– .gov
– .cat
– .mil
– .int
– .info

 Common country codes:

– .uk
– .us
– .eu
– .et