What is the Internet?

When we refer to the Internet we are usually talking about the World Wide Web (WWWWWW: World Wide Web - a network of web pages and sites.) which is the most used feature of the Internet.

The WWW stores millions of web pagesweb pages : Pages on the internet which may contain text, pictures, movies, animation and sound. on web serversweb servers : A computer that is connected to the internet and has server software installed which allows it to deliver (serve up) Web pages via the World Wide Web.. These pages can contain text, pictures, movies, animation and sound. Web pages are written in a language or code called HTMLHTML: Hypertext Markup Language - language used to make a web page. (Hypertext Markup Language). A set of web pages is called a websitewebsite : A set of web pages..

Each web page has its own unique address or URLURL : Uniform resource locator - the unique address of any web document.. The URL will have the format "http" and a domain (such as ."co.uk"). What goes in between is arbitrary, but often has the term "www" such as in "http://www.name.co.uk", but it doesn’t have to (eg http://news.bbc.co.uk).

Most sites have a page that links the user to the other main areas of the site. This is called the homepagehomepage : A page that links the user to the other main areas of the site..

Web pages are connected by hypertexthypertext links: The feature that allows a text area, image or other object to become a link that retrieves another computer file (another web page, image, sound file, or other document) on the internet.. When a link is clicked you will be taken to another page which could be on another server in any part of the world.

When you move around web pages you are said to be surfingsurfing : Moving from web page to web page or moving between web pages the net. For this you need a program [program: An organised list of instructions that, when executed, causes the computer to behave in a predetermined manner. ] to read the pages (called a browserbrowser: A program that can read web pages.) such as Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer.

To search for a particular item or topic on the net you use a search engine [search engine: it is a web site which enables users to search the Internet using keywords to find other web sites ]. There are many different kinds of search engine, each using slightly different ways of searching and indexing web content. Google, MSN and Alta Vista are all examples of search engines, while Yahoo and Excite are web directories (a bit like the Yellow Pages phone book) which have a search function built in.