What is the Web?

The World Wide Web, WWW or simply the Web is a network of documents working in a hypertext environment.

The files - web pages – are stored in computers which act as servers. The web pages are organized in websites – groups of pages – maintained by a webmaster.

There is almost always a 'home page' which introduces the rest of the website - the homepage will contain hyperlinks to other pages within the site.

You have to use a web browser – a special program able to access and download web pages.

To surf the Web, access and retrieve web pages, you need a computer with an Internet connection and a web browser. Web pages are written in a programming language called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and the browser automatically recognizes these pages and displays them. Popular browser examples include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Netscape Navigator and many others.

The home page is a webpage that is set to be displayed when the browser program is started. The user can return to the homepage by clicking a button known as the Home button. It provides the introduction to the site with hypertext links to all the other pages of the site. In text there are usually links of a different colour and they are often underlined. Picture and icons can also be the link and they can be spotted by moving the cursor over them. The cursor is normally an arrow, but it changes to a hand with a pointing finger when it moves over a link.

Surfing is a type of exploration the Web when a user starts on any web page and follows links leading to other pages.

Search engine is a program that is able to search through large quantities of text according to specific instructions. A search engine uses special programs to collect information about websites on the World Wide Web and stores the information in a database. The user can search the database to obtain a list of links to relevant websites. To search the user types keywords into a search box. The search engine then displays a list of website links relevant to the given keywords. Some examples of search engines are Google, AltaVista or Yahoo.