World Wide Web

One of the most successful Internet applications has been the World Wide Web. The Web is an Internet client-server, hypertext, distributed, information retrieval system. The most common communications protocol is HTTP. The web was pioneered by Tim Berners-Lee.

Many people incorrectly refer to the World Wide Web as "The Internet". However, there are many more components to the internet than just the web, such as E-Mail, Instant Messengers or Usenet, even though such are also increasingly available through the World Wide Web via web-based user interfaces.

Not only is there a great deal of "stuff" out there on the web, as seen with weblogs full of casual opinions. There is also a great deal of very useful Information And Activism Websites, webrings, wikis, archives, as well as academic texts and even complete books.

Web technology is moving away from putting content into static pages and towards placing information in relational databases. These databases are flexible structures that assemble content on-the-fly and deliver it to end-users.

See also: Internet | anonymous Web surfing

A Tangled Web

The web contains a staggering amount of information and data. The scope of the web is constantly growing. Because there is such a vast wealth of un-organised information, many people need help on How To Search. If even people find the correct web site, many users give up before they find the information they were after.

A difficulty for web users has been in navigating the network of hyperlinks. This is because the connections between nodes is complex and layouts of differing pages are diverse and rich. This is because the internet is mostly self-constitutional.

Related Links

• Self-Organization and Identification of Web Communities by Gary Flake, Steve Lawrence, C. Lee Giles and Frans Coetzee

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