Session 2:
In this session we looked in greater depth at what the internet and World Wide Web are and how they function. A lot of the lecture towards the end became a little complicated (for my tiny mind), but once the practical session had finished I definitely felt more confident in what was taught in the lecture. Phew.
The Internet
We first distinguished between the World Wide Web and the internet. An analogy was given whereby the internet was compared to a road and the World Wide Web to a car which is used to drive on the road (Butterworth, 2011). The internet was original created by the US military in the 1960’s. The internet’s main function is to allow ‘remote’ computers to communicate and share information. The internet had obviously had a huge impact on the way in which we communicate and share information with each other. Some people also believe it’s having huge effects on the way in which we think and how our brains operate.
The World Wide Web
The www was created by Tim Berners-Lee in the early 1990’s. It was originally intended for the sharing of information between academics, but due to the quality and efficiency of its design, it soon became clear that it could be used in a wider context. Many industries have been hugely affected by the web, none more so than the music industry, due to the easy methods available to users who want to share and download files.
Servers and Clients
The server-client function is the function that allows the internet and WWW to operate. The machines which provide services to other machines are servers (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-infrastructure9.htm) . The machines which are used to connect to these servers are clients. Servers are programmed to ‘listen’ for and pick-up on any information being sent to them. The server will then send back information to the client from where the message originally came from (Butterworth, 2011). The servers contain web pages and the clients are what decode and allow us to view the pages.
Hypertext, Data Mark-up and Language
We then moved onto discuss Hypertext, Data Mark-up and Language. Hypertext is basic terms is a form of natural language text that allows you to link with other areas of a document. This inking is what allows a user to view referenced materials and links. These documents of which are linked to the ‘original’ document can be in the form of media, music or text. The Hypertext Mark-up Language is what allows linking of documents to take place on such a large scale (Butterworth, 2011).
Creating Webpages
From here we looked at how to create a webpage and what goes in to their formulation, something I’ll try and summarise below in the ‘lab’ section.
From here I had to change the information which was contained with the example, adding things such as my name, my course title, a few links to various websites and an image (see link below for HTML version).
http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abkb654/index.html
LAB SESSION 2
This practical session was aimed at understanding how to produce and link some (very) simple linked hypertext pages and then convert them into web pages.
The first task was to browse a website which gave advice and guidance on how to set up an HTML page. The one recommended to us was http://www.w3schools.com/html/.
We were then asked to find out about three different tags, of hich I chose the first three on the list:
1. Paragraphs
<p>
2. Line Breaks
<br>
3. Horizontal rules
<hr>
We were then asked to play around with a simple HTML set up. The example given was:
A Simple HTML Page With Hyperlink
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>A Simple HTML Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
A web page using HTML to produce
a hyperlink to
<a href="http://www.city.ac.uk/">
City University</a>.
</BODY>
</HTML>
I copy and pasted this simple example into Wordpad and saved the file as ‘first.html’. It was saved as HTML file to ensure that it was recognised in the Hypertext Mark-Up Format Language. I then opened the file in Internet Explorer to view it as an HTML file.
From here I had to change the information which was contained with the example, adding things such as my name, my course title, a few links to various websites and an image (see link below for HTML version).
http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abkb654/index.html
This is as far as I reached in this session (due to it only being for an hour) and will be completing it in next weeks class.
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