Ever since the advent of computers, researches have indulged in a continuous quest to bring the world closer through the computers. This effort gave birth to Internet. It is through Internet that today millions of people communicate and share information, regardless of their location. The end of the 1980’s saw the emergence of World Wide Web, which heralded a platform independent means of communication enhanced with a pleasant and relatively easy to use graphical interface. There are number of Web sites on the Internet and most of us plan to create our own. But before you do so, it is very important to get familiar with the basic terminology that is used in web design

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web came into being in 1991.The most outstanding feature of the World Wide Web is hypertext, a method of instant cross-referencing. In most of the web sites, certain words or the phrases appear in text of a different color than the rest; often this text can also be underlined. When you select these words, you will be transferred to the site or page that is relevant to this word or phrase. There can be buttons, images, or portions of images that are click able. Just as a household in the world, each web page in the world has a unique Internet address, sometimes called the URL.

Client and Server

The client is any computer on the network that requests services from another computer on the network. To be able to request services and access the resources, present on some other computer on the network, the client should have adequate access permissions. Clients are software programs used to access files on the server, typically a web-browsing program such as Netscape Navigator or Internet explorer. Client software has to match up to a specific kind of server software and each server requires a specific kind of client software.

A server   is a computer that receives requests from the client computers, processes these requests and sends the output to the respective client computer that has placed the requests. The range of services that a server can offer a client is based on the permissions possessed by the client. The server computer defines these permissions. A Web Server is a computer that is dedicated to provide Web services to the clients on he Internet. Web Services are often provided through web sites that are hosted on a web server that is accessed by a client.

Browser

Browser contains the basic software that is required in order to find, retrieve, view and send information over the Internet. To access the contents of a website, user must have a browser that can help them to locate a Web site on the Internet. Most popular browsers are Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Opera.

TCP/ IP

Transmission control protocol or Internet protocol is a basic communication language or protocol of the Internet. When we set up with direct access to the Internet, our computer is provided with the copy of the TCP program just as every other computer that we can send and receive information having similar TCP.

IP Address

An Internet protocol address is a specific set of numbers referring to the server’s exact location on the network. An IP address leaves your fingerprints whenever you “surf� on the Internet.

URL

A unique resource locater is a link that is used to access the Web sites on the Internet. The URL is unique for each Web site and typically based on the nature of the Web site.

Domain

Domain name is the computer’s name that is registered on the Internet. Domain names have two or more parts separated by dots. The first part is the specific machine’s name and the sub network and the part on the right is the server and the type of server.