An Introduction to the Internet and the World Wide Web

Keywords

Internet, World Wide Web (WWW), interactive systems design, HCI resources, hypermedia

Introduction

The Internet is rapidly becoming a key resource for locating information relevant to a particular field, engaging in professional discourse, accessing published material, and checking on tomorrow's weather. It has become the foundation for tomorrow's electronic community, providing access to government, media, scientists, and friends and relatives. Access to the Internet is now becoming a requirement of doing business for many enterprises. Commercial use of the Internet is one of its fastest growing uses. Several factors have led to the dramatic increase in the size of Internet including increased bandwidth, relaxation of government restrictions, and less expensive connection options. One major factor which has led to the popularization of the Internet is the World Wide Web (WWW), which provides a hypermedia layer over information and resources available on the Internet.

The current Internet connects over 2 million hosts and nearly 25 million users on every continent in the world. Through the Internet, users can access the latest weather maps of North America, check the New York Stock Exchange quotes for the day, send electronic mail to colleagues on the other side of the world, browse through digital shopping centers, check out the latest electronic magazines, download images from a travelogue on eclectic tourist stops in the Southwest United States, among many other uses.

The Internet impacts us as human-computer interaction (HCI) professionals in two major ways: as users and consumers of the information provided on the Internet, and as designer of information sources and network-based computing systems. This tutorial will focus on exploring the technology and history which has led to the Internet of today, and exploring one of the key emerging technologies for providing information on the Internet, the World Wide Web. The tutorial is hands-on, providing direct experience with many of the tools for accessing the Internet and the information content available. In addition, we will design small information spaces based on hypermedia documents using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The tutorial is geared towards HCI professionals which do not have extensive familiarity with the Internet or the World Wide Web.

The tutorial will be presented in five parts. Parts One and Two will focus on the history, technology, and tools which underlie the Internet and provide students with the opportunity to utilize those tools to explore some of the information and resources which are available. Part Three will introduce the basic concepts behind the World Wide Web, and Parts Four and Five will provide information and experience with designing information spaces on the World Wide Web and writing documents to populate those spaces in HTML.

Introduction TO THE INTERNET

The most commonly used Internet services will then be discussed along with some of the security issues and concerns which arise as a result of the use of these technologies.

SURFING THE INTERNET

This section of the tutorial will present the Internet tools which are most commonly used to search for or browse information which has been "published" onto the Internet. These tools include: WAIS, Archie, Gopher, Veronica, and World Wide Web browsers such as NCSA Mosaic. Students will have an opportunity to use these tools to access information on the Internet. Suggestions will be provided to the students for how they might approach searching for various materials on the Internet.

WORLD-WIDE WEB CONCEPTS AND BACKGROUND

This section of the tutorial will present the concepts behind the World Wide Web. These concepts include: hypertext, multimedia, and the client/server model of network interaction. The history of the World Wide Web and a description of the most common WWW browsers will be presented along with a description of how browsers and WWW servers interact.

DESIGNING INFORMATION SPACES

Designing information spaces is not too dissimilar from the design of any computer interface, but it is a design exercise. To support this design exercise, this section of the tutorial will present a case study, some approaches to designing information content, and a 15 step model - the Hypermedia Systems Development Model - for designing information spaces. Students will have the opportunity to explore the system presented as a case study over the Internet.

WRITING DOCUMENTS IN HTML

The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the primary mechanism for creating content for information provided on the World Wide Web. HTML is a markup language used to create hypertext documents that are portable from one platform to another. HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for representing information for a wide range of applications.

Students will have the opportunity to gain experience designing HTML documents by creating personal home pages for themselves. They will also learn how to provide links from their home page to other interesting sources of information.

Berners-Lee, T., Cailliau, R., Luotonen, A., Frystyk Nielsen, H., & Secret, A. (1994). The World-Wide Web. Communications of the ACM, 37 (8): 76-82.

Fox, E.A. (1991). Advances in Interactive Digital Multimedia Systems. IEEE Computer, 24 (10): 9-21.