Page 17 - DCAP408_WEB_PROGRAMMING

Unit 1: Internet Fundamentals

browser also interprets HTML tags as links to other Web sites or to other Web resources – these Notes
include graphics, multimedia files, newsgroups, or files which can be downloaded. Depending
on the kind of link, it will perform different actions.

Example: If the HTML code specifies the link as another home page, the browser will
retrieve the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) specified in the HTML file when the user clicks on
the underlined link on the page. If the HTML code specifies a file to be downloaded, the browser
will download the file to your computer.

The Server Side

The Web follows a client-server model. The server is called Web Server and the clients Browsers.
The user usually runs a client program (or web browser) that can communicate with a server
program (or web server) on a (remote) host computer. To access the information, the client sends
the users’ request to the server. The server handles the request and sends the response to the user.

A Web Server is the most visible part of your Internet. The Web server hosts Web pages and these
pages generally represent the organization and its business. These Web Pages are files in a
specialized format known as Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML). A Web Server communicates
with browsers using the HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), which runs over TCP/IP.
HTML files are text files with special tags. HTML files do not contain proprietary custom symbols
or formatting characters. All formatting is specified with special combinations of ASCII text
characters. HTML files can include text or graphic links, which users can click on to move to
another location in the same file or to another file on any web server in the world.
Implementation and maintenance of Web server are very critical functions. These can range
from personal Web Servers to Heavy-duty freeware, shareware to commercial ones.

Did u know? On which factor the choice of Web Server depends?
The choice of Web Servers would depend on the volume of the Web pages that you expect
to put up and the number of clients accessing them.

Figure 1.4

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