T he Web is a compendium of virutally countless Web-formatted (HTML) documents, known as Web pages (the terms document and page are often interchangeable). Web documents live on computers that run HTML (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) servers. Most HTTP (Web) servers are hosted on UNIX machines; however, personal computers (PCs) and Macintosh computers are also used. To access a Web server and display a Web page, you need client software known as a Web browser Browsers are so named because they are easy-to-use programs that allow you to freely browse Web pages for hours at a time.

W eb links (also known as hypertext, hyperlinks, hotspots, and jumps) are visually distinctive words, phrases, and graphics located on Web pages. In most browsers, links are colored (often blue) and/or underlined. When you seclect a link on a Web page, the file referenced in the link is downloaded from the server to your computer. Web pages can have any number of links embedded in them, creating an endless web of documents to sample.

I mportant:This is a deliberately simple explanation of the relationship between HTTP servers and the Web files they access. Servers also run special Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts which facilitate hypertext connections to local resources such as databases. Your will know more about CGI later when you learn about imagemaps and forms.

A Web page is simply a document written in the Web-formatting language, HTML. It can be one to many screens in length. When the Web was younger, Web pages offered software download sites and provided Web authors with a cyber soapbox. Now that the commercial nature of the Web is being exploited, Web pages are also used to advertise products, companies, and services. Most coporations are scrambling to create a strong Web presence in an effort to lure even a small percentage of the Web citizenry to their goods.

S ome Web documents are described using the the generic term home page. The most commonly referenced home page is the opening document to particular Web site, signifying the top of the site hierarchy and providing a generalized table of contents in the form of links. This could be a business site, such as the for Franklin, Beedle & Associates (http://ngtrunghieu.tripod.com) or a personal site such as the link at (http://ngtrunghieu.tripod.com). (**P1**).

A s more people establish a presence on the Web, personal sites are becoming more popular. They can include anything: scanned photos of the family, business information, your spiritual philosophy, a list of prime Web sites, your e-mail address, or your recipe of lasagna.

M ost browsers allow you to select a default home page, marking a consistent starting place for all of your Web-browsing adventures. Popular default home pages are documents containing a buffet of topics that link all over the Web. The Netscape home page (http://ngtrunghieu.tripod.com) or the NCSA What's New on the Web page (https://ngtrunghieu.tripod.com/trangtho/index.htm) frequently serve this function. (**P2**)