What is the web?

A subset of the internet

The World Wide Web is part of a larger global network known as the internet. Web pages are files of content that are primarily text, but can contain images, videos, and audio files. They are linked through a technology called hypertext. We'll be using some various languages to create webpages over the next few days. Before we get into that though, we would like to discuss how the web works.

How does the web work?

Access

People access the web through software called a web browser, you've probably used one already. Let's break down the steps in how the browser renders a page.

• A user either follows a link, opens a bookmark, or types in a URL in the address bar of their browser
• The browser makes a request to the network, which routes the request to the web server the resource is located on.
• the server replies with a page and any affiliated content (such as images, video files, styling, interactive scripts)
• When the browser receives the content, it reads through the files and renders the page and its content

Web Servers

Web servers are specialized computers that are always connected to the internet, and are configured to send web pages to browsers when requested. To operate a web server, you typically buy space from a web hosting company, but it is possible to host pages in other ways too.