Today when people speak of Internet and the World Wide Web they often think of  them as being one and the same. However, this is not the case. The WWW is actually software running in two different places enabling users to access graphical information..World Wide Web software running on a server, in combination with a web browser  such as Netscape or MicroSoft Explorer allows users to view web pages such as this one. Before the web software such as ftp, telnet, and gopher were used to gather text based information and download programs. Today the  web browser makes many of these functions "painless". The web is actually a very a user-friendly software interface to Internet that has gained immediate popularity  and has made the Internet accessible to anyone, regardless of their computer background.

In 1981 there were less than 200 mainframe computers on the Internet and most  people using them were experts who constructed Internet or scientists who used it on a daily basis for their work. Locating information was usually as simple as  checking your notes or asking a colleague. Retrieving the information often required the knowledge of multiple software packages.

By 1992 there were over a million servers on-line. No longer is a mainframe  necessary. Today's PCs have far more computing power than the orignal mainframes. With the proliforation of PC servers, locating information and keeping notes up to date could be a nightmare. The particle physicists at CERN invented a system of storing information that had the addresses of similar information stored within the information.

All of a sudden it wasn't necessary to keep lists of sites containing information on particular topics, becasue the information itself contained links to other information.

However, there was still a drawback. Information wasn't widely available in web format. The first breakthrough came with the creation of Mosaic. Mosaic was a program developed by computer science students at the University of Illinois'  National Center for Supercomputing. Mosaic took web files and displayed them in a graphical format making it easy to understand and use. You could just point to  the link, click on it, and retrieve the information. You didn't have to type a single UNIX command and you didn't have to be a computer geek to use Internet.

Mosaic became the popular for a few reasons. It was available to many different computers, it was free, it was easy to use, and it was fun.

In 1994 Netscape Navigator was introduced. It was developed by most of the  same team that developed Moasic, but it had major enhancements that took it well beyond Moasic's capabilities. Netscape could deal with and present large areas of Internet that stored information in non-web formats making them available to the  user.

In the following years, Netscape continued to add features and was joined by Microsoft Explorer as the two major web browsers.

Netscape and Explorer have taken over the role of many individual software  packages that were necsssary to access the Internet in the past. Rather than having to learn telnet, ftp, gopher, and other software packages, you can do quite a bit with Netscape or Exolorer, and Email as your primary tools.

The lesson on Internet History and Putting All the Pieces Together will provide you with a comparison of current tools and earlier software tools. 

A Fun Way to Cruise the Web

Random surfing is a great way to get a feel for what the web is like. You experience the best and the worst of the web sites. You encounter the frustrations,  delays and errors of the net, but it's still fun. Here's an activity I originally created in August of 1995. By January of 1996 the web had changed so much that I rewrote  the lesson to include material that didn't exist a few months ago.

Note:  This activity presents users with a list of random web pages from various search  engines.  In 1995, it was possible to surf all day and not come across a single x-rated web page.  Today you can be sure a link will pop up much more frequently.  School should be aware of this before using the activity.

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