Chapter 1

What Is the World Wide Web?


CONTENTS


Welcome to the exciting world of Web site development with Windows NT! As mentioned in the introduction, although this book is written for Web site developers who are already familiar with publishing on the Web, everything covered in this book is presented in a manner that is easy to understand-even if you are new to material discussed in this book. Before new terms and topics are discussed, they are clearly defined so that even if you do not have any prior knowledge of material discussed, you will still be able to follow this book. Although all chapters are self contained, if you are new to Windows NT, or publishing information on the World Wide Web (WWW) with Windows NT, you should read the first four chapters before moving on to other chapters. Chapters 1 through 4 discuss various issues related to developing a Web site using Windows NT. By studying the topics covered in these chapters, you'll be able to more easily understand material covered in other chapters of the book.

Before discussing various Web publishing tools and advanced Web publishing concepts, an introduction and a brief overview of the World Wide Web is in order. This chapter introduces you to the World Wide Web, Web sites, and home pages on the Internet. It is primarily for those who are not already familiar with the World Wide Web. If you are familiar with these topics, you might want to skim this chapter or skip it altogether and move on to the next chapter, which provides an overview of various aspects of choosing Windows NT to develop a Web site.

How It All Began

In order to make the best use of a new technology, it's often important to know how that technology evolved. Although many organizations have increasingly started to make use of the World Wide Web recently, the Internet used to be a very quiet and small network just a few years ago. This section discusses how the World Wide Web evolved into what it is today, and how it is revolutionizing information distribution and retrieval on the Internet.

Until the early 1980s, what is now called the Internet was a relatively small network called ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency network of the Department of Defense). This small network was mainly used as a research tool for about 15 years. After the Internet was created, many universities and government organizations got connected to it to exchange and distribute information. Although at first the Internet was used exclusively for educational purposes, commercial organizations realized the potential of the Internet and connected to it, as well.

The World Wide Web was created to address information distribution problems on the Internet. Until the creation of the World Wide Web, almost all information distribution was accomplished through e-mail, FTP, Archie, and Gopher. E-mail (electronic mail) became widely used for exchanging information between various groups of people as well as individuals. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) was used to transfer files from one computer to another. Archie was used to locate various files on the Internet. Due to its very nature, before long information was scattered all over the Internet. Therefore, unless you knew where information you needed was located, you had no way of searching for it. This became a major problem when someone had to navigate the Internet in search of information. Because a well-organized information infrastructure was missing, the Internet could not be used to its full potential.

As a solution to this problem, Gopher was invented at the University of Michigan. Gopher is a database of information that is organized by using a hierarchical menu interface. Gopher was designed to narrow a user's search from general information to very specific information by offering the user selections of topics from various layers of menus. To extend the amount of information that can be provided, Gopher sites were often connected to other Gopher sites. Although Gopher proved to be a more efficient way of locating and distributing information, its capabilities were limited. Mainly, information distributed by way of Gopher was virtually limited to plain text, and access to information at various locations was not very well organized. Furthermore, Internet information technologies that were being used around that time were plagued with limitations, such as the following:

Due to these and other limitations, a new platform-independent method had to be invented to distribute information on the Internet. This issue was addressed at the European Particle Physics Laboratory CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) in Geneva, Switzerland, when HyperText Markup Language (HTML) was created. HTML was derived from a document-formatting language called Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). HTML was designed to be a document markup language that's easy to learn, use, and transmit over the Internet. HTML is simpler to use and easier to learn than SGML. To transmit HTML documents on the Internet, a TCP/IP (Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) based protocol was invented. This protocol became known as HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP). The World Wide Web was born with the creation of HTTP and HTML. The Web addresses many of the limitations listed earlier by providing content providers with a powerful medium to distribute information. Web servers speak HTTP to transmit HTML files, and Web browsers use HTTP to retrieve HTML files. Web browsers display various objects, both static and interactive (such as text, images, and Java applets), upon retrieving them from Web servers.

With the unification of text, graphics, video, sound, and interactive applications, the World Wide Web has become an exciting medium of information interchange compared to Gopher. Thanks to the World Wide Web, someone looking for information is finally able to browse various information sources and easily travel from one source to another by following various hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are objects that refer to Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) of Web pages. When a user clicks on a hyperlink, he or she is transferred to the Web page to which the hyperlink is linked. URLs can be thought of as addresses of Web pages. Every Web page has one or more URLs associated with it. With the help of special applications and browsers, the World Wide Web has quickly become a vehicle for text and multimedia distribution on the Internet. The World Wide Web gained much of its popularity after Mosaic (Web browser) was released in 1993 by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

No matter how rich the content is, if users have no way of searching for this information, it is of little value to anyone. Locating information on the Internet has become easier thanks to the many search engines and Web-site cataloging databases that have been deployed on the Web such as Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/) and WebCrawler (http://www.webcrawler.com/). These databases offer search capabilities that allow users to search for Web sites they are interested in by using a few keywords.

The World Wide Web is perhaps the most influential vehicle of information distribution since the invention of the television. The recent boom in the number of Web sites on the Internet attests to this fact. As more and more people gain access to the World Wide Web through online services or directly by way of a local Internet Service Provider (ISP), many organizations will focus more on using the World Wide Web to keep their customers informed of new products, carry out business transactions, and provide customer service.

Life on the Internet before the World Wide Web

Before the World Wide Web, the Internet was a more educational network than it is now and was primarily used by researchers and students to correspond and share information with each other. Although this was a great way of using the Internet, it was clearly not used to its full potential. Prior to the World Wide Web, because most users accessing the Internet were accessing it via text-based information retrieval applications, life on the Internet was not very pleasant. Although various Internet services such as mail, FTP, and newsgroups existed before the World Wide Web, these services were more or less standalone services and were not very well integrated. Furthermore, in order to have any control over the layout of a document published on the Internet, someone typically had to use a complicated document-formatting language such as Tex or LaTex or along with a special compiler to compile it to a postscript file. These postscript files were usually made available to users through FTP. However, for a user to view these postscript files, a special postscript interpreter or a printer that supports postscript was required. Due to such complexities, most users who could have taken advantage of the Internet were not able to do so.

Why Is the World Wide Web So Popular?

The World Wide Web is so popular because it addresses most limitations of Internet information distribution applications that existed before Web browsers. In the past, virtually everything on the Internet was in plain text format. Due to this, information could not be richly formatted or presented in a way that is easy to browse and search. However, information on the World Wide Web can be formatted to make the information more presentable, easy to view, and easy to understand. For example, when a complex topic is discussed, it is often easier to explain it by using diagrams, charts, video clips, and even interactive applications as opposed to plain text. The World Wide Web offers a medium to present information in a way that combines the strengths of all these visual aids.

Before the World Wide Web, using the Internet generally meant obtaining and using a UNIX shell account, which typically gives the user a UNIX command prompt that can be used to invoke various UNIX text-based applications. Due to the way most UNIX applications work and their often cryptic text-based interfaces, the learning curve was too high for most people to familiarize themselves with UNIX. Although people are generally willing to try out new things, the lack of user-friendly interfaces held back a lot of people from even getting on the Internet. Most people use Microsoft Windows-based or Macintosh-based computers to do most of their work. For these users who are very comfortable with graphical user interfaces (GUIs), learning UNIX text-based applications and their cryptic commands and hot keys became a challenge. Because of this (although the Internet was around for a long time before the World Wide Web), a noticeable commercial growth on the Internet was not visible until the World Wide Web was created with client-end applications for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. The success of online services such as America Online, CompuServe, and Prodigy is a result of providing users with user interfaces that are powerful but easy to use. For example, most things that can be accomplished with online services can be accomplished on the Internet through Internet bulletin board services and newsgroups for a fraction of the cost of using an online service. However, most users prefer using an online service because it offers the ability to obtain and distribute information with easy-to-use graphical user interfaces. The World Wide Web brings this power not only to users of online services but also to the entire Internet community that has a TCP/IP link to the Internet.

The World Wide Web is platform independent because it is based on a client/server paradigm. Typically, the server platform is transparent to users browsing a Web site. This is another reason for the success of the World Wide Web. Because Internet standards and protocols defined by CERN were not proprietary standards, everyone was free to implement his or her own Web server and Web browser that complies with Internet standards and specifications. Due to this freedom and openness, organizations like NCSA, Netscape, and Microsoft got the opportunity to research and extend existing Internet standards such as HTML to facilitate broader uses of the World Wide Web. Thanks to the effort of such pioneers, the World Wide Web continues to evolve and become a more mainstream medium of information dispersal by giving content providers more options and control over what they publish on the Internet.

Compared to other information distribution vehicles, the World Wide Web is a very attractive medium because the cost of publishing data and making it available to a global audience is relatively low. Furthermore, by registering a Web site with various search engines and Web site cataloging databases, you can potentially get your customers to come to you for information when they need it. This is different from traditional ways of advertising, such as television advertising, in which advertisers take the information directly to their customers.

Clearly, by setting up a Web site, you will be catering to a different kind of audience. Usually someone visiting your Web site is there because he or she needs access to some information. Therefore, when designing your Web site, you should keep in mind that your first priority is to make the information at your Web site as easily accessible as possible.

The Changing Nature of the World Wide Web

Like most technological inventions of this decade, the World Wide Web itself is going through some major changes. What has been witnessed in the last few years is just the beginning of the World Wide Web. Various organizations are just beginning to realize the potential of the World Wide Web and are setting up Web sites on the Internet. Although some of these organizations might not have a clear agenda just yet as to what to accomplish with their corporate Web site, they certainly want to establish a presence on the Internet. Various organizations are using the Web for different tasks.

Although at first the World Wide Web was created so that students and researchers can share information in a timely manner, more and more organizations are beginning to use it for commercial purposes. Because the Web was originally created for noncommercial purposes, it originally lacked secure data transferring protocols. However, this trend is changing thanks to new secure HTTP protocols that encrypt data before it is transferred through the Internet. Thanks to these secure HTTP protocols, even if someone is eavesdropping on what is transferred between a Web server and a Web client, that person will not be able to do any harm with the data because it is encrypted with robust data encryption algorithms such as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer).

Before scripting languages such as VBScript, Web pages used to be static. Thanks to new Web technologies such as Java, JavaScript, and VBScript, content providers will have more control of information they publish on the World Wide Web. These new technologies can be used to create interactive Web pages that respond to various user interactions without utilizing resources of a Web server. As a result of these technologies and secure data transfer protocols, there will be more commercial growth on the World Wide Web. This will induce more organizations, as well as individuals, to get connected to the Internet, and access and distribute information on the World Wide Web. Chances are that once people and organizations discover the wealth of benefits the Internet has to offer, they will start using it more and contribute to the growth and increased use of the World Wide Web. Although some may view the commercialization of the World Wide Web to be detrimental to the well-being of the Internet, increased commercial use will actually benefit the Internet because many new technologies will come into existence to address various limitations of current technologies. These new technologies can also be used for educational purposes just as well as they can be used for commercial purposes. Therefore, although the Web is changing, these changes will make the Internet an even better medium of information retrieval and distribution. For example, Microsoft has announced that their upcoming Windows NT and Windows 95 update will come with Internet Explorer 3.0, which is part of Microsoft's plan to make Internet Explorer the main user interface of both operating systems.

Increased Bandwidth of Internet Connections

In addition to the Web being used for commercial purposes, the content of the Web is also changing. Currently, limited network bandwidth is holding back a lot of development that can take place on the Web. For example, when visiting a Web page that describes something very technical, rather than showing some static images, it will help to show a video clip of various concepts being discussed in action. However, for such content to be distributed, high-speed Internet connections have to be available at reasonable rates across the country. Thanks to the telecommunications reform bill, there will be more competition among Internet Service Providers (ISPs). As a result of this, phone companies will start providing ISDN services at more reasonable rates, which will allow most users to upgrade their relatively slow 14.4 Kbs (kilobits per second) and 28.8 Kbs modem links to 64 or 128 Kbs ISDN links. In addition to this, cable companies will also start offering Internet access service to their customers. Because cable TV wires can carry more information at the same time than ISDN phone lines, when cable companies realize the potential of providing Internet service and start offering it, users will be able to enjoy high-speed Internet connections to their homes. These high-speed Internet connections will make it possible for content providers to provide information composed of text and graphics, as well as video and sound. Such high-speed connections can also be used to distribute video streams on the MBone (Multicast Backbone on the Internet).

Growth of the World Wide Web

Within the past few years, the number of Internet hosts has grown by a scale of a few magnitudes. If you look at Figure 1.1, you will notice that the number of Internet hosts has been almost doubling annually since 1991. Because such a growth was not visible before the birth of the World Wide Web, it is clear that the World Wide Web is responsible for most of this growth.

Figure 1.1: The Internet has been growing rapidly since 1991.

The recent increase in the number of Internet hosts is a result of an increasing number of commercial organizations establishing a presence on the Web.

How Others Are Using the World Wide Web

Various organizations are using the World Wide Web for a variety of different purposes, from keeping users informed of new technologies via a Web site to allowing users to interact with each other by setting up forums at a Web site.

Lately, many organizations have begun to utilize the World Wide Web to conduct business on the Internet. Thanks to secure Internet data transfer protocols, it is now possible to conduct business on the Internet without risking an eavesdropper misusing various information provided to the merchant, such as credit card numbers and other personal customer information. To conduct business on the World Wide Web, many vendors have set up secure Web sites where customers can browse an online catalog and immediately make purchases using a credit card. Although such mechanisms are still not widely deployed, very soon they will become more popular than mail-order catalogs where customers call a toll-free number to place orders. The World Wide Web offers the vendor the ability to change prices immediately based upon prevailing market conditions, offer new products as they become available, and take out products from the catalog that are no longer in inventory. These benefits make the World Wide Web a much better medium for transacting business. When a sales catalog is put together for a Web site, several thousand copies of this catalog need not be produced for customer use, saving printing material and money, as well as time. This will allow vendors to pass the savings along to customers and be more competitive.

Organizations that market products and services such as cable TV, long-distance phone service, water, and gas might not be able to serve some Internet users due to geographical limitations. These organizations won't directly benefit from setting up a Web site. However, they have done so for establishing a better public image.

Because information can be immediately made available to millions of users, the World Wide Web is an ideal medium for distributing news. Many news organizations have set up Web sites for distributing news on the Internet. Although some sections of these Web sites are restricted for their customers, usually the latest headlines are made available for anyone to browse.

Some organizations have also begun using the World Wide Web to host discussion groups on the Internet. Some of these discussion groups are hosted by Internet news servers, while others are hosted using sophisticated CGI (Common Gateway Interface) programs. By setting up forums to discuss issues related to various products and services being sold by a vendor, use of the product can be encouraged and support costs can be reduced by allowing users to help themselves when they run into problems.

One of the best features about the Internet and the World Wide Web is that many resources are available free of charge for its users. This is partly due the fact that its roots come from an educational and research background where people generally share information with each other for free. This trend has continued despite the increased commercialization of the World Wide Web. Many organizations offer public services to the Internet community as a way of saying thanks for numerous Internet services they make use of. WebCrawler, an Internet search engine maintained by America Online, is an example of such a public service.

In later chapters of the book, you will be shown how to implement various information systems at your Web site to use the Internet to accomplish a variety of tasks. You will then be able to use your Web site to accomplish most of the tasks mentioned previously.

Various Aspects of Publishing on the World Wide Web

The Web is quite different compared to traditional mediums of information distribution such as newspapers, radio, and television. (Yes, it's considered traditional now!) The next few sections explore various advantages and drawbacks of publishing information on the World Wide Web.

Advantages of Publishing on the Web

Recently, many organizations have set up Web sites on the Internet. If you know the name of a company, you can now often get to its Web site by using vname as the the company's Web site address. Also, TV commercials and other product literature increasingly refer to HTTP addresses. This is a harbinger of a new mainstream medium of advertising. The cost savings of publishing on the Web can be very large when it is no longer necessary to print color brochures and mail them to prospective customers. By utilizing the Web, organizations can publish various pieces of product literature on the Web and allow customers to access this information. All this can be done at a fraction of the cost involved in keeping customers informed through traditional methods. Furthermore, information at a Web site can be kept up-to-date as necessary-not something that can be done in a cost-effective manner when printed manuals are involved.

The cost savings and time savings are two of the most significant advantages of using the Web to distribute information. When information is added to a Web site, it is immediately available to millions of users. No other information distribution medium has the capability to distribute information to such a large audience at a relatively minor cost. In addition to being able to provide information in a time-effective manner, by utilizing the Web you can also get customer feedback as soon as a customer transmits the feedback to your Web server. Also, by incorporating multimedia and new technologies such as Java to a Web site, you can make the content of a Web site richly interactive to make the information being presented more appealing to Web surfers.

Drawbacks of Publishing on the Web

Using the World Wide Web to distribute information has some drawbacks. One of the biggest drawbacks is the lack of security standards for transmitting sensitive data on the Internet. Because the World Wide Web was born in an academic environment, security was not initially a major concern. With the increasing commercial use of the Web, however, security has become a major concern. Several companies such as Microsoft and Netscape have come up with various data encryption technologies that can be used to make the Internet a secure place to do business. These security mechanisms, however, are not widely implemented by all Web browsers. Therefore, security concerns arise when sensitive data is transmitted on the Internet. However, this will change when more and more Web browsers (especially proprietary browsers of online services) start supporting various data encryption mechanisms.

Another drawback of publishing on the Web is the lack of content formatting control. Although standard HTML offers many document formatting attributes, its capabilities are somewhat limited. Use of Netscape or Microsoft Enhancements to HTML, however, enables content published on the Web to be better formatted. Unfortunately, not all Web browsers support these HTML "enhancements." This is a major drawback because when special HTML tags are used in a Web page, content might appear almost unintelligible for users who use browsers that do not support HTML tags such as Netscape enhancements to HTML. For example, users of various online services with technologically challenged Web browsers will not be able to enjoy Web sites as much as users who use Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

How to Use the Web to Your Advantage

Although there are certain disadvantages when publishing on the Web, its advantages far outweigh the previously mentioned drawbacks. By using the Web judiciously, you will be able to provide content to users in a timely and visually appealing manner. Also, you can use the Web as an efficient medium to communicate with customers and to obtain feedback and other information. In Chapter 16, "Introduction to Windows NT CGI Programming," you learn how to set up a feedback form used to obtain feedback from users browsing your Web site. Furthermore, by using other Internet services such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol), you will be able to distribute software to users visiting your Web site. After reading the rest of this book, you will be able to set up an outstanding Web site and unleash the potential of Web-site development with Windows NT.

Architecture of the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is made up of Web sites and home pages. Using HTTP, Web servers transmit information requested by Web browsers. The following sections introduce Web sites and home pages.

Web Sites

Web sites can be thought of as TV broadcast stations. However, unlike TV broadcast stations, Web sites broadcast information on a per-demand basis. When a Web browser connects to a Web server and requests information from the Web server, the information is transmitted to the Web browser, and the connection is closed. You can generally have your own Web site up and running in just a few weeks (in all likelihood, much sooner after reading this book!). Refer to Figure 1.2 for a simple diagram of how Web sites and Web clients are connected to the World Wide Web. As you can see in Figure 1.2, the Web is mostly a client/server environment. However, the Web is moving towards a distributed processing environment with the aid of client-side scripting languages such as VBScript and JavaScript.

Figure 1.2: Users connected to the Internet can access any Web server on the World Wide Web by using a Web browser.

Compatibility
Figure 1.2 illustrates how Web servers and clients are linked to the Internet. Because all these Web servers and clients use HTTP to communicate with each other, various hardware platforms and operating systems can act as Web servers and Web clients. Because HTML documents are not platform dependent, they are compatible across a number of hardware platforms.

When a user accesses a page at a Web site, usually more than one HTTP connection is made. Generally, a separate connection is made for each object, such as a graphics file or Java applet, that's embedded in the document being accessed. For example, if you type netstat at the command prompt when someone is accessing your Web site, you will notice that usually more than one connection is made by the user accessing your Web site. What you see in Figure 1.3 is the result of a page being accessed by a Web browser. As you can see, several connections are made by the Web browser accessing the page. This is because, typically, a new connection must be made for each object (graphic, sound file, Java applet, and so on) on the page the client is accessing.

Figure 1.3 Multiple HTTP connections are usually made for a single Web page if it contains embedded graphics or other objects.

Technical Note
HTTP is a connectionless protocol. A connectionless protocol is a protocol that does not need a persistent connection. When an HTTP request is received by a Web server, the data is sent to the client. When the requested data has been transmitted, the connection is closed. Often a request for a page creates more than one connection. This happens if various inline graphics or other objects are on the page. Each connection is good only for retrieving one graphic or other object from the Web server.

Requirements for Setting Up a Web Site

When setting up a Web site, certain key hardware components are required. Hardware requirements for setting up a Web site with Windows NT are discussed in detail in Chapter 5, "Determining and Fulfilling Your Requirements." Various key components of a Web site are illustrated in Figure 1.4. Although some peripherals listed in Figure 1.4 are not required, depending on the nature of your Web site and the information you intend to publish on the Web, having them will make matters much easier for you.

Figure 1.4: The anatomy of a typical Web site.

To set up your Web server, a computer capable of running Windows NT and that is connected to the Internet is required. To make matters easy when installing applications and using the contents of the CD-ROM that accompanies this book, a CD-ROM drive is recommended. Furthermore, if you intend to make large amounts of data available for browsing at your Web site, you will also need to set up a Web database interface using CGI. You will be shown how to do this in Chapter 18, "Publishing Databases on the Web."

If you intend to make certain documents and figures that are already in printed form available at your Web site, you can save time by scanning such images and diagrams as opposed to creating them from scratch. Although a tape backup drive and a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) are not required to set up a Web site, these two components can save you a great deal of time as well as money. Because your Web server will be up and running all day, if there is a power failure, Windows NT should be given time to shut down your server successfully. If not, sudden power outages, spikes, and surges can be detrimental to the health of your server. Having a tape backup drive will also be useful in the unlikely event that your hard disk becomes corrupted or someone accidentally deletes some files. A UPS or a tape backup drive can easily pay for itself the first time you use either of them.

How Web Servers Work

The World Wide Web is a collection of servers on the Internet that speak HTTP, which is a "connectionless protocol." Web servers listen for incoming HTTP requests and when an HTTP request is received, the requested data is sent to the client. Refer to Figure 1.5 for an example of this interaction.

Figure 1.5: Web servers serve HTTP requests made by Web browsers by transmitting documents, graphics, and other objects requested.

If information requested by a client is simply a Web page consisting of plain text, a few images, sound, or other objects, the Web server simply transmits these objects at the request of the client. More work is involved, however, when dynamic content must be provided by the Web server. CGI is used by Web servers to invoke various applications on the server to provide dynamic content to users browsing a Web site. Refer to Figure 1.6 for a graphical representation of how Web servers invoke CGI scripts to provide dynamic content.

Figure 1.6: Web servers use CGI to process user input and provide dynamic content, possibly from a database, to users visiting a Web site.

Typically, CGI scripts receive input when a client fills in a form and submits it to the Web server. The Web server then invokes the CGI script after creating certain CGI environment variables. As shown in Figure 1.6, this process begins when a client first requests an HTML document containing a form from the Web server. After the form is sent to the client, the connection is closed. When the user fills in the form and submits it to the server, the server executes the CGI script with the information that was put into the form. The CGI script then processes the data, possibly by accessing a database, and sends a message to the client who invoked the CGI script. This message typically contains the results of processing input provided by the client and provides a link to another page so that the user can continue to browse the Web site.

Information can also be processed at the client side without any interaction with the Web server. Be sure to read Chapter 19, "Adding Java to Your Web Site," Chapter 20, "Creating Interactive Web Pages with JavaScript," and Chapter 21, "Unleashing the Power of VBScript" to learn how various scripting languages can be used to process information at the client side without using resources of the Web server.

Technical Note
Web servers usually listen on port 80 for incoming HTTP requests from Web browsers.

Introduction to Home Pages

Home pages are documents formatted in HTML that might contain inline graphics or other objects. HTML documents are in plain text (usually ASCII) format and can be created with any text editor. In Chapter 10, "Web Site Development Tools," you will be shown how various applications can be used to create HTML files. In Chapter 6, "Installing and Using Microsoft Internet Information Server," and Chapter 7, "Publishing on the Web with WebSite, Purveyor, and Netscape," you will be shown how to set up the Microsoft Internet server or another Web server to host a Web site. Just like the World Wide Web, HTML is evolving. More and more features are being added to HTML to accommodate various needs. HTML has been standardized by the World Wide Web consortium.

URL
For more information about standard HTML and proposed HTML enhancements to standard HTML, visit The World Wide Web Consortium's Web page at
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/

Just because a Web browser such as Netscape or Microsoft's Internet Explorer supports a "neat" HTML tag, that doesn't mean that it is a valid HTML. When using HTML enhancements that are beyond standard HTML, you should be aware that when someone looks at your Web site with a browser that supports only standard HTML, your pages might not be rendered properly.

Homepages can contain inline graphics or other objects. Listed here are a few commonly used file formats found in Web pages:

File Type
Extension
AIFF sound
.aiff
AU sound
.au
GIF image
.gif
HTML document
.html or .htm
JPEG image
.jpg or .jpeg
MPEG movie
.mpeg or .mpg
PostScript file
.ps
TIFF image
.tiff or .tif
Plain text
.txt
QuickTime movie
.mov
XBM bitmap image
.xbm

Tools
When you embed various objects in file formats not commonly supported by Web browsers, you should always include a link to downloadable software that can be used to view the files you make available.

Various graphics formats like the ones mentioned previously and new technologies such as Java, JavaScript, VBScript, Microsoft Internet Studio, and Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) are capable of presenting information to a global audience in a way information has never been presented before.

Web Publishing Tools

To make the task of developing Web sites easier, many Web site development tools are available. Due to the large number of Microsoft Windows users, many Web page development applications are available for Windows NT. These tools can be classified into two categories: Web page development applications and Web database publishing applications. By using Web page development applications, it is possible to develop the static contents of your Web site, and Web database publishing applications allow you to provide dynamic data to users by linking a database on your server to a Web page.

Web Page Development Applications
Many Windows NT Web publishing applications are available for developing Web pages. Although most of these tools are simple HTML editors, a new breed of WYSIWYG Web page creation applications are coming into existence. With these powerful tools, publishing on the Web will become easier and less time-consuming.
Although initial versions of Microsoft Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word were limited in functionality, more recent versions have many added features to make Web publishing tasks easier to handle. For example, the current version of Internet Assistant handles inline images, document backgrounds, various text colors, font attributes, tables, and many other document formatting attributes. Because all these features are accessible through an easy-to-use GUI, someone without any Web publishing experience can publish content on the Web by using Microsoft Internet Assistant. In addition to Microsoft Internet Assistant for Word and FrontPage, other WYSIWYG HTML editors such as Netscape Gold will be available by the time you read this book. In the near future, thanks to these powerful tools, a knowledge of HTML will no longer be necessary to publish on the Web. However, familiarity with HTML will enable you to have more control over what you publish on the World Wide Web.
In addition to Microsoft, other companies, such as Netscape, will be unveiling various Web publishing suites that you can use to publish information on the Web. These Web publishing suites will make setting up and maintaining a Web site easier by enabling you to concentrate on the contents of your Web site instead of worrying about how it should be formatted with HTML.
As powerful Web publishing tools are developed, an HTML knowledge will not even be necessary. Very soon, what word processors such as Microsoft Word did for document publishing will be done to Web publishing by Web publishing suites. Before Word processors came into existence, a person who wanted to create a richly formatted document had to learn a rather complex document markup language and use that and a special compiler to design documents. Thanks to inexpensive microcomputers with feature-rich word processors, this drudgery is no longer necessary.
Web Database Interfaces
Although providing plain text, images, and sound by way of the Web has tremendous potential, the benefits of it are limited. Because one of the main advantages of setting up a Web site is being able to provide information in a timely manner, publishing databases on the Web has many advantages. You can use several Web database applications for Windows NT to publish databases on the World Wide Web. These database publishing applications are easy to install and offer a great deal of functionality. Through the utilization of such interfaces, databases on an NT server can be made available to users browsing a Web site. With the aid of CGI, such database interface applications can be set up to enable users visiting a Web site to update and query databases.

Requirements for Web Publishing

Many Web authoring services will do all your Web authoring for a price. However, if you are setting up your own Web server, you might as well spend some more time familiarizing yourself with Web publishing and do it yourself. To publish on the Web, you can exploit the user-friendly and robust environment of Windows NT. Thanks to many Web publishing applications available for Windows NT, even with no prior Web publishing experience, it's easy to create an outstanding Web site.

To learn Web site development, the single most important thing you need is time. On the Internet, many resources are available that teach you how to publish on the Web. For more information on publishing content on the Web, you might want to visit Yahoo!'s World Wide Web authoring resources page.

URL
Yahoo!'s Web authoring resources page:
http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Authoring/

The next sections outline a few key requirements for developing a Web site with Windows NT.

Internet Connection

When hosting a Web site, the biggest bottleneck is usually the connection that connects the Web server to the Internet. Therefore, you should obtain the fastest Internet link you can afford for your Web server. Thanks to the new telecommunications reform bill, you will have more freedom when selecting an ISP. Due to the nature of the wire used by cable TV, if your local cable TV company is also providing Internet service, you will be able to obtain a high-bandwidth Internet connection that might even be cheaper than an ISDN connection in some areas. If a cable-based ISP is unavailable in your area, you should consider obtaining an ISDN line for your Web server. A dual channel ISDN line is all digital and can transmit about 4.5 times more data than a 28.8 modem connection in the same amount of time. However, if both options mentioned earlier are unavailable to you, you will have to go along with a 28.8 Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) Internet connection. This might be painfully slow when you have multiple users accessing your Web site; however, there is a way to provide users accessing your Web site near T1 (high speed/bandwidth Internet connection) speeds while still using only a 28.8 POTS link to the Internet. You learn how this can be accomplished in Chapter 5, "Determining and Fulfilling Your Requirements."

Windows NT Server or Workstation

A Web site can be set up with Windows NT server as well as Windows NT workstation. Although both versions of NT provide a user-friendly, robust, and secure platform to develop a Web site, NT server is optimized for network traffic. Therefore, if you will be hosting a Web site that will be accessed by many users at the same time, it's better to use Windows NT server. Because there are certain restrictions when upgrading from Windows NT workstation to Windows NT server, you should carefully evaluate various benefits and drawbacks before setting up your Web site on a computer that runs Windows NT workstation. Furthermore, Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) is distributed free with Windows NT server and offers a great deal of functionality. Microsoft's Internet Information Server is certainly the most feature-rich, free Web server available for Windows NT! Most likely, a lite version of IIS will be available for Windows NT Workstation 4.0. However, it will not be as powerful as the version of IIS shipped with Windows NT Server 4.0.

Compatibility
When a Windows NT Workstation installation is upgraded to Windows NT server, it cannot be set up as a Backup domain controller.

Windows NT-Compatible Hardware

Having hardware that's compatible with Windows NT can save time as well as frustration. Windows NT is very sensitive about the hardware it runs on. It's always wise to use hardware that is in the Windows NT hardware compatibility list. This list contains hardware that has been tested with Windows NT. Furthermore, devices in the hardware compatibility list are also guaranteed to have Windows NT drivers. When choosing key system components such as I/O cards, motherboards, SCSI controllers, and mass storage devices, make sure they are compatible with Windows NT. You might save some money at first by going with a product that does not support NT that is from a vendor who denies the existence of NT, but you might end up wasting more money and time when you start having problems.

Time and Patience

You can accomplish a lot with some time and patience. This is especially true when it comes to Web-site development. Although your life as a Windows NT Web-site developer will be much nicer compared to that of a UNIX Web-site developer, some time has to be invested to learn new concepts and technologies. Thanks to the user-friendly environment afforded by Windows NT, you will have many powerful and user-friendly Web-site development tools at your disposal. You will be shown how to use these tools later in the book. Although it might seem time consuming, you should still invest the time in learning how to use the Web page creation, database publishing, and graphic manipulation tools covered in later chapters of the book. By learning how to use these tools and their features, you will be able to develop an outstanding Windows NT Web site.

Patience will pay off splendidly, especially when you start exploring advanced Web-site development tasks such as publishing databases on the Internet and writing CGI and Java programs. Although sometimes it might seem as if nothing works, don't give up! Web-site development is very rewarding when everything finally works the way it should. The more problems you encounter when you do things and the more patience you have, your reward and self satisfaction at the end of each project will be that much greater!

Summary

This chapter covered various fundamental topics about the World Wide Web that you need in order to understand topics covered in subsequent chapters. You were first introduced to the World Wide Web, its architecture, and its evolution. Next you were shown how Web servers work and how home pages on Web servers can be used to distribute information on the Internet. The section on home pages covered various Web publishing tools and how you can utilize these tools to make Web publishing tasks easier to handle.

What's Next?

The next chapter discusses various aspects of choosing Windows NT to develop a Web site. By understanding various strengths and weaknesses of NT, you'll be able to develop your Web site by taking advantage of the strengths of Windows NT and finding solutions and workarounds for the various limitations of Windows NT.