The Internet, the Web, and HTML

Sure, you've heard of the Internet, but what is it exactly? Simply put, the Internet is a collection of computers that are all connected to each other. Many people have 24-hour, high-speed broadband connectionsthrough DSL, cable, or satellitewhile others use a modem to link their home computers during a certain amount of time each day. Regardless of the type of connection, once you're on, you and your computer become a part of the Internet and are linked to every other computer that's also connected at that moment.

The World Wide Web, for its part, is much more ethereal. It is an ever-changing, kaleidoscopic collection of hundreds of millions of documents, all of which reside someplace on the Internet and are written in some form of HTML.

HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, has two essential featureshypertext and universality. Hypertext means you can create a link in a Web page that leads the visitor to any other Web page or to practically anything else on the Internet. It means that the information on the Web can be accessed from many different directions. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web, wanted it to work more like a person's brain and less like a static source of data, such as a book.

Universality means that because HTML documents are saved as Text Only files, virtually any computer can read a Web page. It doesn't matter if your visitors have Macintosh or Windows machines, or whether they're on a Unix box or even a handheld device like a Palm. The Web is open to all.