Page 11 - DCAP408_WEB_PROGRAMMING

Unit 1: Internet Fundamentals

the way research is done. And it is not only the research community that is responsible for Notes
this. Library shelves are overflowing with journals and proceeding, and with acquisitions
budgets receiving deep cuts, a likely scenario for the future is one in which libraries archive
electronically, share holdings, and become information clearing houses instead of closets.
 Another very important application of Internet is multimedia. Live music concerts, radio
broadcasts, live or recorded television shows, interactive audio and webphone, and video
conferencing are no more a dream on Internet, even for a desktop PC user.
Internet provides a variety of information to everybody ranging from entertainment to serious
business application to areas of daily life such as:
 Magazines and newspapers
 Household shopping items
 Ordering novelties from anywhere in the world
 Radio and TV broadcast schedules and sometimes the broadcast itself

 Tour and travel plan guides and bookings, etc.
 Health consultation
 Tips for doing various things
 Talking to friends and relatives in any part of the globe
 Games of various kinds
 Language interpreter
 On-line education course material, examination conduction, advertising on popular
information sites, making payments on the net and getting an item, net banking.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. A few computers can be interconnected to share resources and exchange information
using a number of …………………
2. The original idea was to build a network capable of carrying military and government
information during a “…………………”.
3. ………………… databases library holdings, alerting services, pre-prints, and other
information systems are all changing the way research is done.

1.2 Web Browsers

A web browser is the software program used to access the World Wide Web that is the graphical
portion of the Internet. The first browser, called NCSA Mosaic, was developed at the National
Centre for Supercomputing Applications lab at Illinois in the early 1990s. The easy-to-use point-
and-click interface fuelled the growth of the Web. The web browser software program facilitates
a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically
located on a web page at a website on the www or a LAN. Text and images on a web page
normally designed to provide hyperlinks to other web pages at the same or different website.
Thus web browser enables point to point click to reach directly to the targetted web pages.
Some of the popular web browsers are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, AOL Explorer,
etc. Web browsers belong to HTTP user agent category. Browsers also provide in accessing
information provided by web servers in private networks or content in file systems.

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