Although the terms Web and Internet are often used
synonymously, they're actually two different things.
The Internet is the global association of computers that carries data
and makes the exchange of information possible. The World Wide Web is a
subset of the Net--a collection of interlinked documents that work together
using a specific Internet
protocol called HTTP
(see "How
does the Web work?"). In other words, the Net exists independently
of the Web, but the Web can't exist without the Net.
The Web began in March 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee of the European
Particle Physics Laboratory (a collective of European researchers better
known by its original name CERN, or Conseil Européen pour la Recherche
Nucleaire) proposed the project as a means to better communicate research
ideas among members of the far-flung organization.
The Web uses a metaphor of individual pages, usually combined to make up
sites. Web pages are written in HTML,
or Hypertext Markup Language, which tells the Web browser
how to display the page and its elements. The defining feature of the Web is
its ability to connect pages to one another--as well as to audio, video, and
image files--with hyperlinks. Just click a link, and suddenly you're at a
Web site on the other side of the world. (Before the Web, you had to type in
exact Net addresses or wade through a series of menus to get where you
wanted to go.)
Despite its cool hyperlinking ability, the early Web labored for a while
in obscurity, a little-known alternative to the less technically advanced Gopher
protocol. But in February 1993, Marc Andreessen, then developing for the
National Center for Supercomputing
Applications, introduced the first graphical Web browser, called Mosaic.
(Andreessen went on to cofound Netscape Communications in April 1994.) And
the rest, as they say, is history.
The Web is based on a set of rules for exchanging text, images, sound,
video, and other multimedia files, which is collectively known as HTTP,
or hypertext transfer protocol. Web pages can be exchanged over the
Net because browsers (which read the pages) and Web servers (which store the
pages) both understand HTTP.
