Foreword

Making the Web Work for You

Foreword

The Web is the newest format for interacting with the Internet. The Internet continues grow at an astonishing rate. Three years in the row the number of registered computers serving the Internet has more than doubled, with 6.6 million computers in 1995. Over 22 million users are in North America, with over 40 million users world wide and predicted to grow to over 200 million for the year 2000.

Using the Web

The word Web (World Wide Web, WWW or W3) stands for a way to interconnect and display text and multimedia files on your personal hard drive, and/or within and across computer networks, especially the Internet, a collection of millions computers in thousands of networks. In two years the web has grown from 100 sites to 100,000 sites by the end of 1995, that is 1000 fold growth. These webbed multimedia documents can include text, image, sound and digital video. Web browser is a phrase for the software programs that can retrieve and display these Web documents. There are many competing browser programs, including titles such as Netscape, Mosaic, Samba, Internet Works, Air Mosaic, Netcruiser, Cello, and Mac/Web or Win/Web. The browser in turn connects you to an array of special purpose programs and tools. To use the Web to find what you want is to learn to be a Webwalker, or to use a more common expression, to be a net surfer or to surf. Follow the links and see where they lead!

Creating and Maintaining the Web

Having mastered the art of Webwalking with the browser, you may decide to add to the Web yourself, to become a Webwriter or page author. To format and setup documents/files for a web browser means learning to use HyperText Markup Language or for short, HTML. It is not a programming language, just a primitive form of text editing expanded to include multimedia objects. Depending on your skills, the going market range for HTML authoring now sells for $35 to $200 an hour. It is consequently very much worth your while to learn to do your own pages and it is not really very difficult to learn to use the most basic steps.

The skill level above Webwriter is a Webmaster. The Webmaster is a communication specialist needing the conceptual knowledge of radio, television and print publishing merged with the skills of a professional educator, computer programmer and business manager. Since but a very few have all of these skills, a Webmaster must be a team builder. The Webmaster is responsible for the creation and management of the server software, the software that responds to the requests of the client software (e.g., Mosaic or Netscape). Those wishing to do forms and interactive maps and graphics will need some introductory Webmaster skills, but a Webmaster is concerned with a wide range of Internet server tools: web server, gopher, listserv and netnews (computer email conferencing) administration, FTP (file transfer processes), remote server management, site security and so forth.

Houghton@wcuvax1.wcu.edu