Common Internet services & their features

The Internet offers a vast range of services and one of the most significant of these is the World Wide Web.

Use of the World Wide Web

Specialised software called a web browser is needed to make use of the features of the World Wide Web (WWW). The different packages on offer work in similar ways.

The WWW is divided into millions of sites called websites. These are files made of groups of pages, designed and set up by companies or individuals who wish to communicate with Internet users throughout the world.

Sometimes exam questions ask you to describe the uses of the Web.

The aim may be simply to spread information, talk to other people, or to sell, or find, services or products.

Each website has its own unique address, which is called the Uniform Resource Locator (URL). If you know the URL of the site you are looking for, you can type this straight into the address prompt of the browser.

• The address will take a standard format, and the full form of the address will start http://www......... http stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the standard method of publishing information as hypertext (see above) on the Internet. Many browsers will accept a URL without the http:// part of it.

You will not be expected to know the language HTML but you will be expected to know what HTML means and why it is important.

Web pages are written in a programming language called Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and the web browser automatically recognises these pages and tries to display them.