world-wide web \world"-wide` web"\, n.
   The collective total of all computer installations that are
   connected to the internet and provide access to other
   computers connected to the internet, using hypertext
   transfer protocol, to computer files called web pages, which
   may have text, graphics, audio or animated video data, as
   well as pages which may provide data or information in all
   those forms.

   Syn: Web, the web, WWW.
        [PJC]

	

	World-Wide Web
WWW

    (WWW, W3, The Web) An
   Internet client-server hypertext distributed information
   retrieval system which originated from the CERN High-Energy
   Physics laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland.

   An extensive user community has developed on the Web since its
   public introduction in 1991.  In the early 1990s, the
   developers at CERN spread word of the Web's capabilities to
   scientific audiences worldwide.  By September 1993, the share
   of Web traffic traversing the NSFNET Internet backbone
   reached 75 gigabytes per month or one percent.  By July 1994
   it was one terabyte per month.

   On the WWW everything (documents, menus, indices) is
   represented to the user as a hypertext object in HTML
   format.  Hypertext links refer to other documents by their
   URLs.  These can refer to local or remote resources
   accessible via FTP, Gopher, Telnet or news, as well as
   those available via the http protocol used to transfer
   hypertext documents.

   The client program (known as a browser), e.g. NCSA
   Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, runs on the user's computer
   and provides two basic navigation operations: to follow a
   link or to send a query to a server.  A variety of client
   and server software is freely available.

   Most clients and servers also support "forms" which allow the
   user to enter arbitrary text as well as selecting options from
   customisable menus and on/off switches.

   Following the widespread availability of web browsers and
   servers, many companies from about 1995 realised they could
   use the same software and protocols on their own private
   internal TCP/IP networks giving rise to the term
   "intranet".

   The World Wide Web Consortium is the main standards body for
   the web.

   An article by John December
   (http://sunsite.unc.edu/cmc/mag/1994/oct/webip.html).

   A good place to start exploring
   
(http://ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/StartingPoints/NetworkStartingPoints.html).

   WWW servers, clients and tools
   (http://w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Status.html).

   Mailing list: .

   Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.infosystems.www.misc,
   news:comp.infosystems.www.providers,
   news:comp.infosystems.www.users,
   news:comp.infosystems.announce.

   The best way to access this dictionary is via the Web since
   you will get the latest version and be able to follow
   cross-references easily.  If you are reading a plain text
   version of this dictionary then you will see lots of curly
   brackets and strings like

   	(http://hostname/here/there/page.html).

   These are transformed into hypertext links when you access it
   via the Web.

   See also Java, webhead.

   (1996-10-28)