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(POPULAR SCIENCE) -- Many people use "Internet" and "World Wide Web" interchangeably. They shouldn't, and here's why.
The Internet, of course, is the maze of phone and cable lines, satellites, and network cables that interconnect computers around the world. The Web is the name given to anything on the Internet that can be accessed using a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL.
This addressing system (such as www.cnn.com) brought the Internet to the mainstream in the 1990s, eliminating the complicated commands and prompts that users previously had to type to access information. The vast majority of the content you access with a URL are files written in a code called Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. We know HTML files as Web pages.
When do you use the Web?
There are plenty of situations in which you use the Internet but not the Web -- like when you send e-mail, obtain an MP3 using a peer-to-peer program like Limewire, or send an instant message with a program like ICQ. And some Web addresses don't start with "www."
Because of smarts built into browsers and the major Web servers, it's usually not necessary to type "www" before a Web address. Enter a URL and your browser sends a request to a server to find the site; the server will often recognize the site even without the prefix (popsci.com, for example).
But if it can't, your browser will add the prefix and resubmit it -- or it will ping larger and larger servers, hoping to find a match. Even though you didn't type "www," it will show up in your browser when the connection is made.
The future of the Web
You'll have to be careful, however: Some servers that are less sophisticated aren't capable of making corrections to URLs, so you might not find your site if you leave out the otherwise inessential three Ws.
"In an ideal world, URLs would neither be seen nor heard," says Ian Jacobs of the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is working on a Web that'd require no typing.
Users would find Web sites via search engines like Google and click on links for everything else. The consortium is working on universal guidelines for Web architecture that will make surfing the Web easier, especially for anyone with a physical disability.
The Internet, of course, is the maze of phone and cable lines, satellites, and network cables that interconnect computers around the world. The Web is the name given to anything on the Internet that can be accessed using a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL.
This addressing system (such as www.cnn.com) brought the Internet to the mainstream in the 1990s, eliminating the complicated commands and prompts that users previously had to type to access information. The vast majority of the content you access with a URL are files written in a code called Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. We know HTML files as Web pages.
When do you use the Web?
There are plenty of situations in which you use the Internet but not the Web -- like when you send e-mail, obtain an MP3 using a peer-to-peer program like Limewire, or send an instant message with a program like ICQ. And some Web addresses don't start with "www."
Because of smarts built into browsers and the major Web servers, it's usually not necessary to type "www" before a Web address. Enter a URL and your browser sends a request to a server to find the site; the server will often recognize the site even without the prefix (popsci.com, for example).
But if it can't, your browser will add the prefix and resubmit it -- or it will ping larger and larger servers, hoping to find a match. Even though you didn't type "www," it will show up in your browser when the connection is made.
The future of the Web
You'll have to be careful, however: Some servers that are less sophisticated aren't capable of making corrections to URLs, so you might not find your site if you leave out the otherwise inessential three Ws.
"In an ideal world, URLs would neither be seen nor heard," says Ian Jacobs of the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is working on a Web that'd require no typing.
Users would find Web sites via search engines like Google and click on links for everything else. The consortium is working on universal guidelines for Web architecture that will make surfing the Web easier, especially for anyone with a physical disability.
