Lesson 01

Lesson 01

Introduction to HTML and the World Wide Web

The Internet has been around since the late 60's, as it was being used by the Defense Department and certain universities for research. However In 1989, a physics researcher named Tim Berners Lee wanted to find a universal information sharing system. He mostly needed it for the physics community, so they could transport documents back and forth. He wanted to make certain that this system contained a consistent user interface, links between documents and to make sure that anyone regardless of computer platform could exchange information using this medium.

March 1991, his dream became reality. This new information sharing system was later known as the World Wide Web, and people are putting 100,000 new Web Pages up on it everyday! In January of 1992, the World Wide Web was made available to the public, and by the end of this year there were 50 servers in Operation Worldwide, mostly at Universities.

The first browser created was in 1993 and was called the Mosaic browser. This was created by Marc Andreessen, a bright programmer who is now Vice President of Netscape Communications. The Mosaic browser was the first interface available for the World Wide Web. By the end of this year, there were over 100 servers in operation.

By the end of June in 1994, there were over 2,500 servers in operation. Just six months later, there were over 10,000 servers.

The high speed growth rate did not go unnoticed. Tim Berners Lee and other Physics Researchers decided to form an organization to foster this development. This organization, known as the World Wide Web Consortium, is responsible for determining WWW standards. Here's their URL:

http://www.w3.org

The web started to get commercialized in 1995. This is when your ISP's (Internet Service Provider's) found they could charge a set fee to connect you to the internet. This is also when Amazon.com and Corey Rudl started the two oldest Associate programs on the internet (more about that in another lesson). Today, there is more than 300,000 web servers world wide. Each of these servers contain anywhere from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of individual web pages and websites.

You don't need a server to publish your own information on the Web. You can go to any of these free services and get free webspace. With the free space these places give you, you can publish hundreds of free pages. Please let me list a few sites:

http://www.xoom.com (for personal pages)

http://www.geocities.com (for personal pages)

http://www.hypermart.net (for businesses)

http://www.tripod.com (for businesses)

Assignment - Check out the URL's above that offer free Webspace. Spend at least 30 minutes at each site, and read their Terms of Service (TOS). Get familiar with their policies and get familiar with all there requirements of obtaining free webspace. Also, check out the World Wide Web Consortium and stay there for 30 minutes minimum. Try to get a pulse for what's going on there as well.

No Questions this lesson. See ya in Lesson 02!