world-wide web

2 definitions found

world-wide web - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  world-wide web \world"-wide` web"\, n.
     The collective total of all computer installations that are
     connected to the internet and provide access to other
     computers connected to the internet, using hypertext transfer protocol
     , to computer files called web pages, which
     may have text, graphics, audio or animated video data, as
     well as pages which may provide data or information in all
     those forms.
  
     Syn: Web, the web, WWW.
          [PJC]

world-wide web - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  World-Wide Web
  WWW
  
     <World-Wide Web, networking, hypertext> (WWW, W3, The Web) An
     Internet client-server hypertext distributed information
     retrieval system which originated from the CERN High-Energy
     Physics laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland.
  
     An extensive user community has developed on the Web since its
     public introduction in 1991.  In the early 1990s, the
     developers at CERN spread word of the Web's capabilities to
     scientific audiences worldwide.  By September 1993, the share
     of Web traffic traversing the NSFNET Internet backbone
     reached 75 gigabytes per month or one percent.  By July 1994
     it was one terabyte per month.
  
     On the WWW everything (documents, menus, indices) is
     represented to the user as a hypertext object in HTML
     format.  Hypertext links refer to other documents by their
     URLs.  These can refer to local or remote resources
     accessible via FTP, Gopher, Telnet or news, as well as
     those available via the http protocol used to transfer
     hypertext documents.
  
     The client program (known as a browser), e.g. NCSA
     Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, runs on the user's computer
     and provides two basic navigation operations: to follow a
     link or to send a query to a server.  A variety of client
     and server software is freely available.
  
     Most clients and servers also support "forms" which allow the
     user to enter arbitrary text as well as selecting options from
     customisable menus and on/off switches.
  
     Following the widespread availability of web browsers and
     servers, many companies from about 1995 realised they could
     use the same software and protocols on their own private
     internal TCP/IP networks giving rise to the term
     "intranet".
  
     If you don't have a WWW browser, but you are on the
     Internet, you can access the Web using the command:
  
     	telnet www.w3.org
  
     (Internet address 128.141.201.74) but it's much better if you
     install a browser on your own computer.
  
     The World Wide Web Consortium is the main standards body for
     the web.
  
     An article by John December (http://sunsite.unc.edu/cmc/mag/1994/oct/webip.html)
     .
  
     A good place to start exploring  (http://ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/StartingPoints/NetworkStartingPoints.html)
      .
  
     WWW servers, clients and tools (http://w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Status.html)
     .
  
     Mailing list: <www-talk@www.w3.org>.
  
     Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.infosystems.www.misc,
     news:comp.infosystems.www.providers,
     news:comp.infosystems.www.users,
     news:comp.infosystems.announce.
  
     The best way to access this dictionary is via the Web since
     you will get the latest version and be able to follow
     cross-references easily.  If you are reading a plain text
     version of this dictionary then you will see lots of curly
     brackets and strings like
  
     	(http://hostname/here/there/page.html).
  
     These are transformed into hypertext links when you access it
     via the Web.
  
     See also Java, webhead.
  
     (1996-10-28)