DITA 03 - Internet & www

Session 03 of the DITA module looks at the network of computers that make up the internet and the World Wide Web (WWW), one of the main services using the internet. The WWW has only been in widespread usage since the early 1990s but in less than 20 years it has changed the way many people communicate with each other, work and shop. Now that web 2.0 functions, such as social networking and mash ups of multiple website functionality are commonplace there is no sign of the continued impact diminishing.

Internet hardware includes servers and client computing resources networked together in a resilient way, initially created by the US military in order to ensure continuity of service if parts of the network were attacked. Each computer (or wifi router) has a unique "IP (Internet Protocol) Address" e.g. 196.196.42.xx. Protocols are pre-agreed ways of sending computer information without which the Internet and WWW would not function. An example is TCP/IP.

A key innovation which lead to the WWW was creating a way of referencing all pages with a unique code or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator. When structuring information for a website a protocol called HTML or Hyper Text Markup Language is used to create semantic and presentational layout and context for the information being presented. An example of simple HTML coding can be seen at this link.

Using HTML code, an index file and two linked local files an example mini website about RH Hobbies has been created. HTML files were made using a text editor and then uploaded to City University Unix servers using SSL FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Once placed in a public directory with public access permission set, the mini website can be seen at WWW.