[ Home Page] [ Contents ] [ Z-NET Resources ] [ SearchLight ]
Today when people speak of Internet and the World Wide Web they often think of them as being one and the same. However, this is not the case. The WWW in combination with software such as Netscape, is actually a very a user-friendly software interface to Internet that has gained immediate popularity and has made the Internet accessible to anyone, regardless of their computer background.
In 1981 there were less than 200 mainframe computers on the Internet and most people using them were experts who constructed Internet or scientists who used it on a daily basis for their work. Locating information was usually as simple as checking your notes or asking a colleague. Retrieving the information often required the knowledge of multiple software packages.
By 1992 there were over a million mainframe computers on-line and locating information and keeping notes up to date could be a nightmare. The particle physicists at CERN invented a system of storing information that had the addresses of similar information stored within the information.
All of a sudden it wasn't necessary to keep lists of sites that contained information on particular topics, becasue the information itself contained links to other information.
However, there was still a drawback. Information wasn't widely available in web format. The first breakthrough cam with the creation of Mosaic. Mosaic was a program developed by computer science students at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing. Mosaic took web files and displayed them in a graphical format that was easy to understand and use. You could just point to the link, click on it, and retrieve the information. You didn't have to type a single UNIX command and you didn't have to be a computer geek to use Internet.
Mosaic became the popular for a few reasons. It was available to many different computers, it was free, it was easy to use, and it was fun.
In 1994 Netscape Navigator was introduced. It was developed by most of the same team that developed Moasic, but it had major enhancements that took it well beyond Moasic's capabilities. Netscape could deal with and present large areas of Internet that stored information in non-web formats making them available to the user.
Netscape has, for many purposes, taken over the role of many individual software packages that were necsssary to access the Internet in the past. Rather than having to learn telnet, ftp, gopher, and other software packages, you will focus on Netscape and Email as your primary access tool.
The lesson on Internet History and Putting All the Pieces Together will provide you with a comparison of Netscape/WWW and software tools of the past.
[ Home Page ] [ Contents ] [ Z-NET Resources ] [ SearchLight ]