By the end of this section of the practical, the students should be able to:
Develop a better understanding of the Internet and World Wide Web
Explain how domain names are used on the Internet
Learn about domain names, Internet Service Providers, what they do, and
how to select one
Understand how does a basic website work.
1 Introduction
The Internet is a collection computers (single personal computers or workstations on a school or
a company network) and other devices linked together around the world in such a way that
information can be sent from any computer. The Internet is often described as ‘a network of
networks’ because all the smaller networks of organisations are linked together into the one giant
network called the Internet. It is important to understand that the Internet and the World Wide
Web (WWW) is not the same thing. The WWW is component of the Internet which allows
computer users to locate and display multimedia-based documents on almost any subject over
the Internet. Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP is the communications protocol for
exchanging files on the WWW.
1.1 Browsing the WWW
1.1.1 Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
1. Browse the Internet and find THREE of your favourite sites. Document the following for
each of the sites:
i. The URL of the Website
ii. Fully qualified domain name
iii. Generic top-level domain
iv. Country-code top-level domain
v. Site category (commercial, entertainment, education, etc) based on the generic top-level
domain
Fully qualified Generic top-level Country-code top- Site
URL
domain name domain suffix level domain Category
1.1.2 Investigating Domain Names
1. Using an Internet search engine like www.google.com, browse around and try to find one
URL example for each of the generic top-level domains such as *.edu, *.gov, *.com, *.net.
Domain URL
edu
gov
com
net
2. Many Internet Service Providers provide the service of registering a domain name for you.
Browse to www.checkdomain.com, and use the resources there to check if your name is
already registered as a domain name.
3. List the URL of TWO Websites that handles domain name registration service in Malaysia.
i. _______________________________
ii. _______________________________
1.1.3 Using Search Boxes Effectively
1. When using search utilities on the Web, knowing how to use search boxes effectively can
make your work easier. The expression AND, OR, NOT and NEAR can be used to narrow
down a search and the keywords host, link, title, filetype and image can make your searches
more powerful.
2. The following table lists explanations and examples of each. Please note that not all search
engines accept these keywords or expressions.
Keyword or
Description
Expression
AND Finds both words on the same page
+ Finds both words on the same page
OR Finds one word or the other
- Excludes pages that contain following the -
NOT Excludes pages that include a word following the NOT
NEAR Finds two words close to each other
Title Keyword to search the title of the Web pages
Title: Web Programming
Link Keyword to find pages that contain a link to the specified URL
Link:www.amazon.com
Image Keyword to find all pages that contain the specified image file
Image: lotr.jpg
Filetype If you prefer to see a set of results with a specific file type
filetype:pdf
3. Use the above keyword or expression to perform searching on the Web.
1.1.4 Tracking Packets
1. Identify a Website that can find the IP addresses associated with the given domain names:
thestar.com.my and mycen.com.my.
Website IP address
thestar.com.my
mycen.com.my
2. Type this IP address into address field of your browser to access the Website without using
their domain names.
1.1.5 Exploring a Completed Website
A website is a collection of documents known as webpages that contain information: images,
words, digital media, and the like. The main page in a website is called a homepage, and other
pages in a website are called subpages. These are connected by hyperlinks, which are spots on a
page (usually text or images) that, when clicked, take the user to different location. This can be
another subpage, another location on the same page, or another website altogether.
1. Download greenshoppers.zip into your work folder. Right click and choose Extract All/
Extract Files to unzip the content.
2. A new folder named greenshoppers will be created. Double click the folder to access to the
files inside it.
3. Open index.html in your browser.
4. Click on a hyperlink provided in the webpage. Text links appear in a different color from the
rest of the text and often underlined. When you move your cursor over a text link or over a
graphic link, it changes from an arrow to a hand.
5. Observe the address bar of your browser. When you click the hyperlinks, you’re actually
accessing to multiple HTML documents in the same folder.
6. Your images and other media files must also be included in same folder of your html files.
7. Now, that you have understood what are the contents of a website, you must also learn how
to publish them into the WWW for public viewing.
1.1.6 The Web Programmer’s Toolbox
1. The Web Programmer’s Toolbox is the most common tools used in Web programming –
some are programming languages, some are not.
2. Search the Web for information on the history of the following technologies, and write a
brief overview of those histories:
a. TCP/IP
b. SGML
c. XHTML
d. ARPAnet
e. BITNET
f. XML
g. Javascript
h. Flash
i. Servlets
j. JSP
k. JSF
l. PHP
m. Ruby
n. Rails
o. Ajax
