Web Servers

• The working of the Web involves:
  1. A server: Delivers a file when a client ask for it
  2. A Client


• A server delivers a file when a client asks for it.

Web Browsers

• Web browsers are applications that run on a user’s personal computer. To provide the interactive graphical interface for searching, finding, and viewing text documents, sounds, animations, and other multimedia resources on the Web.

Search Engines

Finds information in seconds. Divides between:

• Individual personal search engines: can search entire public Web.


• Enterprise search engines can search intranets, and


• Mobile search engines can search PDAs and cell phones.

Web Page Maker and Site builders

• HTML documents are simple ASCII text files saved to disk without any formatting at all.


• HTML translators are built into many word processing programs – export a word processed document with its text styles and layout converted into HTML tags: For example Microsoft word can open a page directly on HTML extension but it could cause the page that is embedded with graphics to load into the word processor very slowly

Plug-ins and Delivery Vehicles

• Plug-ins allows the users to view and interact with new types of documents and images.


• Helper applications or players display or run files downloaded from the Internet through browser but it does not integrated into the operation of the browser.


• Many plug-ins are design to perform special task therefore, if the web page contains embedded, compressed images for example, it will not be display unless the plug in is installed. So most of the designers will direct a user to a site where the missing plug-in may be found.


• Text and document plug-in such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, for example special fonts and graphic images are embedded into the file and travel with it. This is to make sure that the users can view that file precisely as what the document’s maker intended.


• Images plug-in enable to view vector format so that Flash for example can be viewed at the correct size and with a maximum numbers colors supported by the computer.


• MIDI files are compact but it depends on the computer’s MIDI setup for quality. Speech files can be encoded into a token language and sent at great speed. Sound elements can be also embedded into QuickTime, Windows media, AVI and MPEG movie files. Some can also be multicast so that the users can listen t o the same data streams without duplication of data across the Internet.

Beyond HTML

• Within HTML servers and browsers, tags such as <   OBJECT   > or< EMBED > enable text, sound, images, animations and motion video across the Web.


• Java applets and JavaScripts are built into most browsers, so that the developers can design local interaction and activities without a lot of communication between client- and server based Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programming. (CGI is a standard for interfacing external applications with the information servers such as http or web servers.)


• 3-D on the web are now possible with Intel’s Internet 3-D graphic Software using Adobe Director for development and Shockwave player for delivery.