From the user's point of view, the page
is the basic unit of the web. Web pages are written
in the HTML language and sent
to web browsers by a web server using
the HTTP protocol.
A web page has a similar format to a page from a book or magazine,
with text and
graphics
displayed
in a layout, and is displayed in a normal
computer application window.
Scroll bars are displayed if the page is too long
or too wide, and you
can perform the usual windowing functions such as minimize,
maximize, change size, and close.
There are billions of web pages in existence on the Internet. Web pages
have been published on almost every subject imaginable by almost
every
type
of person
and organization.
There
are a wide
range of applications available
that enable the construction of web pages, although most word
processors now
let you
save
documents in HTML format making basic creation quite straightforward.
You can sometimes tell from the name of the page whether it is an organization
or a personal home page, because individual's home pages sometimes include "~" or "^",
as in:
http://www.twenty.net/~jsmith/home.html
Graphics are displayed in web pages if they haven't been turned off in your
configuration settings to increase the download speed. With most browsers you
can right-click on a picture and select "View Image" to view it by
itself, or "Save Image As" to save the file to your computer for
later viewing with another application. Graphics come in a wide range of formats.
At one time GIF's were the most popular, but lately they are going out
of style.
As you navigate through a chain of web
pages, you can click on the Back button on your browser to go back, and Forward
to go forward again.
