The Internet

The Internet

• An interconnected network of computers globally• Computers are able to communicate and share

information with one another from remote locations

• Used for– Communication– Information– Entertainment– Education– Business

Internet: History• Created in the late 1950’s by the Advanced

Research Projects Agency(ARPA) of the United States Military

• They wanted to create a communication system that could survive a nuclear attack

• Original name was ARPANet – called that after a network of cables and switches that made the ARPANet operate

• In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s more people got their own PC’s and the internet became available to the public

Today’s Internet

• The applications for the internet and how we use it is vastly different then it was 10 years ago

• On a piece of Paper– # 1-10– Give me ten ways that the internet, itself, is

different today than it was ten years ago (where we use it, how we use it, what we use it for)

Internet Terms• ISP (Internet Service Provider)– Companies that provide access to the internet

• WWW – World Wide Web– Collection of millions of hypertext documents

• HTML (HyperText Markup Language)– The most common language of hypertext document– Links to databases of text, images, graphics and

animation• HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)– The set of rules that govern how documents written

in HTML are interpreted by the browser

Website Terms

• URL (universal resource locators)– The unique “web address” of a specific page on

the internet– Domain Namehttp://www.mywebaddress.com/people/jane.html

• Transfer Protocol: Set of rules that interpret the written code

• Hostname: don’t need to type this

• Second Level Domain: usually the name of the organization

• Top Level Domain

• .ca, .uk, .org

The Internet Browser• Allows You to Navigate through millions of hyperlinked pages of text, graphics, video and sounds

• “surfing the net” is not the internet – just the most popular use of the internet

• Address Box – where you enter the domain name• Buttons

Favourites

• Also called bookmarking• Why do we use favourites– Organize links to favourite web pages– Saves the URL in your browser– Allows for quick access• It’s all about efficiency• If you have regular reading – makes things a lot easier

• We did this at the beginning of the semester

Creating a Website

• Next week, we will start creating our own websites

• There are many, many factors that together will make a good website

• Able to navigateeasily around the website through use of hyperbuttons

Creating a Website

• All websites should have– Balance • All graphical elements are visually connects• Often symmetrical (same on both sides)

– Consistency• Only use 2 styles of text• Similar colour scheme throughout the website

– Creativity• Use of text, images, video, etc.

Today’s Assignment• We are going on the net!!!• 1) Go to a website that you feel is professionally

made (sports teams, tv shows, newspapers)– In Word – write how they have designed a successful

website. Go through the things we have just talked about (layout, balance, consistency, creativity)

• 2) Surf the web and find a website you feel could be improved– In Word – write how you feel it could be improved using

the tools we talked about– Your report should be 1-2 pages outlining the positive

example of website design and a negative example– In your report include a “screen shot” of the homepage of

each the negative and positive example