World Wide Web or Web or WWW or W3
The World Wide Web is a part of the Internet and can be broadly defined as a global collection of interlinked text and multimedia files.
So what does this mean, and why is it so great?
The answer is hypertext. Hypertext allows you to jump or link from one source to another. Let's say you are reading a book about the battles of the Civil War. The book refers to the locations of the battles and has a small map of America showing each battle site. If you want to know more about either the site or the battle, you have to check the index of the book or get another reference to provide you with more information.
If you are looking at this information on the Web, the author may have "linked" each site to a map of America and provided you with more information about each camp. You can "click" on any highlighted word, and this leads you to new files which may link to audio or video files of descendants of slaves discussing their family history, or you can link to the Museum of African Slavery to explore the history of slavery and emancipation. In fact, the number of links is endless. Now, of course, you already know this because you are taking this course on the Web and you have been busily clicking away, traveling all over the world to get information.
The Web contains a wealth of information on virtually any subject. Anyone with access to a commercial service provider like America Online, AT&T WorldNet, or a local internet service provider (ISP) can get on the Web.
On the Web, you can read articles in newspapers, check out the course listings for universities and colleges, research US Supreme Court decisions, check the weather in any part of the world or the latest products offered by many companies, view museum collections, find stock prices, locate recipes, hear music excerpts, download software programs, watch clips from videos, and find a million other things.
The amount and range of material and information on the Web is mindboggling and is growing exponentially every day.
