The World Wide Web (WWW) is a huge online collection of information and a browser such as Microsoft IE, Netscape Navigator or Firefox, is used to access the web. Both text and pictures can be displayed on user ' s computer screen using a browser. Voice can also be played using a browser combining other applications. User can easily select contents from a web or jump to other web sites through hyper links built in one site.

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the application protocol that transfers the distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information behind the World Wide Web systems. HTTP is also used as a generic protocol for communication between user agents and proxies/gateways to other Internet protocols, such as SMTP, NNTP, FTP, Gopher and WAIS, allowing basic hypermedia access to resources available from diverse applications and simplifying the implementation of user agents. The HTTP is a request/response protocol. A client sends a request to the server in the form of a request method, URI and protocol version, followed by a MIME-like message containing request modifiers, client information, and possibly body content, over a connection with a server. The server responds with a status line, including the message's protocol version and a success or error code, followed by a MIME-like message containing server information, entity meta information, and possibly entity body content.

Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) is a secure message-oriented communications protocol designed for use in conjunction with HTTP. S-HTTP is designed to coexist with HTTP's messaging model and to be easily integrated with HTTP applications. Several cryptographic message format standards may be incorporated into S-HTTP clients and servers. S-HTTP supports interoperation among a variety of implementations and is compatible with HTTP. Another popular technology of making secured web communication is HTTPS, which is HTTP running on top of TLS or SSL for secured web transactions.

Uniform Resource Locator ( URL) is the syntax and semantics for a compact string representation of a resource available via the Internet. For example, we use URL to locate web addresses and FTP site addresses. URLs are sequences of characters, i.e., letters, digits, and special characters. URLs are written as follows:

<scheme>:<scheme-specific-part>, for example, http://www.javvin.com

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) enables text and pictures formated and displayed on screens by browsers. However, two browsers may display an HTML document differently due to the preference of the browser. Each HTML document is divided into two parts: a head tha contains information about the document such as the title, keywords, author, description etc. and a body that contains the information to be displayed, such information including text, pictures and hyper-links to other documents or web pages.

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) facilitates the sharing of structured text and information across the Internet. XML tags are not predefined. You must define your own tags. XML uses a Document Type Definition (DTD) or an XML Schema to describe the data and XML with a DTD or XML Schema is designed to be self-descriptive.

XML is not a replacement for HTML. Actually, XML and HTML are complimentary to each other. XML and HTML were designed with different goals:

• XML was designed to describe data/information and to focus on what data/information is.
• HTML was designed to display data/information and to focus on how data/information looks.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing news headlines and other Web content. RSS becomes a popular means of sharing content between sites. RSS solves myriad problems webmasters commonly face, such as increasing traffic, and gathering and distributing news. RSS can also be used for additional content distribution services.

Wireless Markup Language (WML) is a markup language based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) used to construct web pages for display on mobile and wireless devices . The WML specification is developed and maintained by the WAP Forum, an industry-wide consortium. If a mobile phone or other communications device is WAP-capable, it has WML micro-browser loaded in it that fully understands WML.

World Wide Web (WWW) Technologies

Related Terms: World Wide Web, HTTP, HTML, XML, RSS, URL, Browser, WML