Yesterday’s post covered the basic concepts of the most popular part of the internet, that is the world wide web.
One of the most commonly used forms of viewing data from one computer on another device connected to it via the internet is through an application commonly known as a “web browser” or “internet browser” or just “browser”.
The browser is just a software application that runs on a computer, phone, pad or other similarly functional computing device. Most commonly the browser connects to a software application on another server via the internet. The sending application is generically called a web server. There are a wide variety of specifically branded web servers with names like Apache and Internet Information Server (IIS). They all perform the same basic functions but have different features performance attributes and costs to acquire and operate.
The data sent from the web server computer is in a standard format (there are a variety of these) and the browser knows how to interpret the data it gets because it understands the structure of the data because of it’s standard formatting and codes that tell the browser how to display and interpret it. The displayed data is called a web site.
You can see the term world wide web led to a number of related naming conventions – web site, web server, web browser as these all depended on the world wide web to perform the functions for which they were intended.
Surfing the Web
Surfing the web became the commonly used term for viewing various different websites in your browser. This could be via multiple searches for specific information or by using links from one site to another.
Surfing has become a popular pastime for both entertainment and gathering knowledge. In one sense the internet is just the worlds largest library (although I would not believe everything I read there, except this blog of course).
Not Just About Websites
It is important to note although the most common use of the internet is via web sites; the basic concept of the internet, i.e., two or more computers connecting and exchanging information/data in a way each understands and can interpret, enables much more than just web site functionality.
Remote connections to computers, e-mail, file transfer protocol (FTP), voice over IP; are just a few of the other common functions that can be executed using an internet connection.