How It All Works

The big picture

elegant picture

What Happens

  • WWW browser requests
    a document

  • Document is sent by
    server

  • Browser figures out
    how to display document
    & does so 
     .

Implications for HTML authors

  1. To make a document available to the world, one has to put it in a special place on a computer that is running the HTTP Server Software
  2. The HTML author has only nominal control over how the browser displays the document--this will change from browser to browser (i.e., Netscape to Mosaic, etc.) and from platform to platform (i.e., Windows to Unix to Mac)

A (two-word) Glossary of Acronyms:

HTTP = HyperText Transfer Protocol
the way that the documents are transmitted across the Internet
HTML = HyperText Mark-up Language
the language that the documents are written, to tell the browser how to display the document

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last modified on 16 May 1996

How It All Works
http://brillig.NebrWesleyan.edu/~glarose/summary/workshop/hardware.html
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