Comportants

Web Browsers

A web browser or some times simply called a “Browser” lets a client view web pages. When the client wants to view a particular web page, the client types the URL of the web page (eg: http://www.google.com) on the address bar of the browser requesting the web page. If the correct URL is typed the request will be sent to the appropriate web server, which will in response send the requested web page to the client machine. Web pages are coded using a language such as HTML. When the server sends the requested web page, what it really sends is the source code of the page (eg: written in HTML). When this source code is received at the client end the browser goes through the source code and renders the web page for the client to view. 

There are many browsers developed by many developers. Some of the browsers are available free of charge and some are commercial products. Also some of the browsers are bundled with the OS. A few of the popular browsers are:

•    Internet Explorer (Microsoft product)- comes with Windows OSs
•  Mosaic-First web browser, developed in 1993
•   Netscape navigator-a proprietary browser which was popular in the 90s
•   Opera – Original release in 1996,freeware
•   Mozilla Firefox - freeware
•   Safari- Initially developed for MAC OS
•   Konqueror- freeware, used in Linux

Web browsers

Web Servers

Web servers are software that is on the server side, which hosts web sites. When a client browser requests a web page the web server responds by sending the source code of the web page to the client. Two of the most common web servers are:

Ø  Apache –open source

Ø  Internet Information Services IIS (IIS) – Microsoft Product

Web development tools

Web pages can be developed using simple text editors or more user friendly tools. When using a simple text editor the developer has to do all the coding manually. Therefore it takes a lot of time and effort when using simple text editors. Notepad that comes with Windows OS is probably the most widely used text editor for designing web pages. Notepad is usually used by developers who have a good understanding of the HTML language.

On the other hand special web development tools offer many features that make the web developer’s job much easier. With these tools even novice developers also can develop web sites. Though these tools provide better user friendliness to developers there are a few drawbacks associated with them. Some of the most popular web development tools are Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage, Allair’s Home Site. For any web developer to have a good command on web development it is always good to get used to develop web pages using a simple text editor like Notepad.

Notepad

Adobe Dreamweaver

Microsoft Front Page

Allair’s HomeSite

Web development languages

Languages that are used in developing static web pages are known as “Markup Languages”. Web pages can be either static pages or dynamic pages. During this course only creation of static web pages will be discussed. The term “Mark up” means adding something more to documents. When developing pages with HTML this can be achieved by using HTML Tags (HTML tags will be discussed in the next chapter). HTML is just one of the markup languages used. Some of the other markup languages are SGML, XML (eXtensible Markup Language), DocBook, XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language), etc. During this course web pages will only be created using only HTML, since it is the most popular and simple markup language.