In some ways the Internet web service is one of the simplest on the Internet. To create a web, users construct a directory tree containing text files containing HTML and possibly containing graphics files. Here is an abbreviated form of the Rocksoft web directory tree (as it was at one stage in the past):
Together the files in the directory tree form a web. To see the web, a web client (e.g. Netscape Navigator) somewhere on the Internet specifies the name of the computer that holds the web (the webserver) and the name of the file within the web's directory tree. For example:
The URL can be reduced to the following components:
http:// --- The protocol with which to fetch the file. www.ross.net --- The name of the webserver. /webhints/ --- The path to the target directory on the webserver. titles.html --- The name of the requested file.
When a client (such as Netscape) requests and receives an HTML file, it displays the text in the HTML file on the screen as a page. If the page contains graphics, these are not coded in the HTML file. Instead the HTML points to the graphic file. When a client sees such a pointer, it automatically requests the graphic file from the webserver. When the server returns the file, the client displays the image on the page. Because the HTML files can point to the graphics files, but the graphics files can't point back, a web consists of two separate groups of files: the HTML files that define the structure of the web, and the graphics files that are are hauled along for the ride.
In addition to graphics, pages can contain audio, video, and
other kinds of media. As a result, non-HTML files are sometimes
referred to as media objects.
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