Internet

The Internet is a system connecting millions of computers around the world. World Wide Web (www) is the most popular feature of the internet, it presents rich content, including multimedia clips and even live radio and video. You view this content on Web pages by using a Web browser, such as KidSplorer.

Getting around on the Internet

Each Web page has a specific address, sometimes known as a URL (uniform resource locator). You can type the address to go directly to the page. It indicates a number of things: for example, with http://www.devicode.com, HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), tells your computer how to communicate with the Internet computer. (Hypertext is a method of writing content for the Internet.) WWW indicates that the site is on the World Wide Web. The .com suffix indicates a commercial site (as .edu is used for educational institutions or .org for other organizations).

The most common way to move around the Web is by clicking text or pictures called links, or hyperlinks, which have addresses coded into them. Your mouse pointer changes to a hand shape when it passes over a link. You can either browse (surf) the Web at random or search for a page of interest to you by using a search service, which can search the Internet for words you specify. Also, portal sites (such as yahoo.com) contain preselected links to popular pages.

Glossary of internet terms

Browser
Software that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.

Cookie
The most common meaning of "Cookie" on the Internet refers to a piece of information sent by a Web Server to a Web Browser that the Browser software is expected to save and to send back to the Server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the Server.

Domain Name
The unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on the right is the most general. A given machine may have more than one Domain Name but a given Domain Name points to only one machine. For example, the domain names: devicode.com, mail.devicode.net

Email -- (Electronic Mail)
Messages, usually text, sent from one person to another via computer. E-mail can also be sent automatically to a large number of addresses.

Fire Wall
A combination of hardware and software that separates a Network into two or more parts for security purposes.

FTP -- (File Transfer Protocol)
A very common method of moving files between two Internet sites.

Home Page (or Homepage)
Several meanings. Originally, the web page that your browser is set to use when it starts up. The more common meaning refers to the main web page for a business, organization, person or simply the main page out of a collection of web pages, e.g. ?Check Devicode new Home Page.?

HTML -- (HyperText Markup Language)
The coding language used to create Hypertext documents for use on the World Wide Web. HTML looks a lot like old-fashioned typesetting code, where you surround a block of text with codes that indicate how it should appear.
The "hyper" in Hypertext comes from the fact that in HTML you can specify that a block of text, or an image, is linked to another file on the Internet. HTML files are meant to be viewed using a "Web Browser".

HTTP -- (HyperText Transfer Protocol)
The protocol for moving hypertextfiles across the Internet. Requires a HTTP client program on one end, and an HTTP server program on the other end. HTTP is the most important protocol used in the World Wide Web (WWW).

Hypertext
Generally, any text that contains links to other documents - words or phrases in the document that can be chosen by a reader and which cause another document to be retrieved and displayed.

Intranet
A private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use. Compare with extranet.

ISP -- (Internet Service Provider)
A company that provides access to the Internet.

Network
Any time you connect 2 or more computers together so that they can share resources, you have a computer network. Connect 2 or more networks together and you have an internet.

WWW -- (World Wide Web)
Frequently used (incorrectly) when referring to "The Internet", WWW has two major meanings - First, loosely used: the whole constellation of resources that can be accessed using Gopher, FTP, HTTP,telnet, USENET, WAIS and some other tools. Second, the universe of hypertext servers (HTTP servers) which are the servers that allow text, graphics, sound files, etc. to be mixed together.