A Language Ifrofessional's Guide to the World Wide Web
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A LANGUAGE IFROFESSIONAL'S GUIDE TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB Carolyn G. Fidelman, Northeastern University and Agora Language Marketplace ABSTRACT The World Wide Web has recently become a household word, but what does it have to offer those in the language teaching and research fields? This article explains how the Web helps nontechnical users access on-line data without having to learn complicated commands or have extensive backgrounds in Internet technology. This new 'point-and- click' way of getting all that the Internet has to offer may be the long-sought 'killer application' of the information superhighway. Just as spreadsheets and word processing brought the personal computer into our lives, so too will the Web and its browser software, such as Netscape Navigator™ or NCSA Mosaic, make the Internet as user-friendly as our local library. This article takes the reader through some Web sites of interest to language professionals, examines copyright constraints on using Web data, discusses how to get set up for Webbing, and explains how to create individual Web documents. KEYWORDS Internet, World Wide Web, Network, Information, Professional Resources, Browsers, CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) At least 15,000 language professionals have electronic mail addresses. About 6,000 use the Internet not only for sending individual messages back and forth, but also for participation on-line professional discussion groups. According to a survey conducted in September 1994,1 about one third of these are also using the Internet to retrieve information on a variety of topics. They are using the Internet as their "virtual library." CALICO Journal, Volume 13 Numbers 2 & 3 113 The easiest way to find information on the Internet these days is with a system called the World Wide Web (also familiarly called "the Web" or “WWW” and an application called a Web "browser" (such as NCSA Mosaic or Netscape Navigator). This article will examine: 1. Internet basics 2. The World Wide Web: definition 3. World Wide Web navigation using a typical browser 4. Location of Web sites of interest 5. Copyright issues with Web information 6. Becoming a Web user 7. Navigating the Web 8. Authoring on the Web THE INTERNET: A TELEPHONE SYSTEM FOR COMPUTERS The Internet is today's equivalent of a telephone system for computers — consisting of about 40,000 inter-linked local and campus computer networks at companies, universities, and government agencies worldwide. In turn, these networks link about 4 million computers and 30 million people. Through a desktop computer connected to a local area network (LAN), one can share files with others within an organization, print documents on printers anywhere on a network, and exchange electronic mail organization-wide. If the network is part of the Internet, an individual computer can also talk to computers on any of the other 40,000 networks comprising the Internet — in much the same way that an individual telephone can reach phones anywhere in the world. IP Datagrams: Computers sending messages to each other The core of the Internet is IP, the Internet Protocol - a language that computers use to talk to one another. Stripping away all the wires, equipment, and software, the Internet is nothing more than 4 million computers exchanging IP messages with each other (usually referred to as “packets” or “datagrams”). Everything else — electronic mail, file transfers, browsing the Web — is accomplished by software that CALICO Journal, Volume 13 Numbers 2 & 3 114 sends requests for data from one computer to another, and other software that sends back the requested data, all in the form of IP messages. As shown in Figure 1, a user typically interacts with "client" software located on a desktop machine, which, in turn, exchanges requests and responses with "server' software (software that performs a service — typically by returning requested information) located somewhere across the Internet. All of the requests and responses are sent inside IP messages. For example, an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client will send a request for a file to an FTP server, which in turn will send back the requested file. A Telnet client lets you log onto a remote machine that is running a Telnet server (the Internet equivalent of dialing up a machine and logging in). An SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) client will exchange electronic mail with an SMTP server. A Gopher client will retrieve menus and files from Gopher servers, and an HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) client will retrieve hypertext documents from an HTTP server. THE WORLD WIDE WEB: ALL THE ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS IN THE WORLD The World Wide Web is the name given to the vast virtual library of documents stored on the millions of computers connected to the Internet. URLs: Dewey Decimal for the Internet A "Uniform Resource Locator," or URL, is a standard way to define how to find a document on the Web. Here are some annotated samples: CALICO Journal, Volume 13 Numbers 2 & 3 115 telnet://library.mit.edu uses the Telnet protocol to log into the machine library.mit.edu ftp://sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/ uses the FTP protocol to contact the machine sumex-aim.stanford.edu and retrieve a list of the files and sub-directories in the directory info-mac. (Note: this is the best source of Macintosh shareware in the world.) gopher://gopher.agoralang.com:2411/ uses the Gopher protocol to send a message to port 2411 (a port is analogous to a telephone extension), on machine gopher.agoralang.com, asking for the top-level gopher menu. http://agoralang.com/index.html uses the HyperText Transfer Protocol (http) to send a message to machine agoralang.com, requesting the hypertext document named index.html. In each case, the URL specifies a protocol (how to format the requests and responses sent inside IP messages), a machine name, an optional port number, and a directory/file path. Standard filename extensions (e.g. “.html" define the type of the retrieved document). If you have an Internet connection, all the appropriate software, and all the necessary administrative permissions (i.e. accounts and passwords where required), a URL tells how to retrieve and display the specified document. Web Browsers: Navigating the Web with ease In the past, retrieving a document from the Web was a complicated multi-step process. First one would use a protocol-specific program (e.g. an FTP client) to retrieve a document. Then the document would be downloaded2 to a desktop PC from the host computer. Finally, a document-type-specific program (e.g. a specific word processor or image viewing program) would be used to read the document. Web "browsers" complete the above process automatically. If a computer is directly connected to the Internet (either through a campus network or a dial-up "SLIP" or "PPP" connection — described later), and the PC runs a "browser," the user need only type in a URL. The browser does the rest— it uses the specified protocol to contact the specified machine, retrieves the specified document, and then displays the document. Most browsers can display a wide variety of document formats, and are able to automatically start "helper applications" to display additional formats. CALICO Journal, Volume 13 Numbers 2 & 3 116 Hypertext: Linking the Web together The internal language of the Web, that which holds it together, is hypertext. In the past, most Web documents consisted of a single medium (text, an image, or a sound file). Today, the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) provides a standard format for defining compound multimedia documents. An HTML document is a text file that provides instructions to a Web browser — telling it how to assemble and display a multimedia document (e.g. by providing text, format instructions, and a list of image files to retrieve and display). HTML includes mechanisms for defining a variety of user interactions, such as fill-in-the-blank forms and "mailto's" (i.e. “click here to send an e-mall message to the specified e-mail address”). The most important feature of HTML documents is the ability to include "links" — references to other Web documents. Think of these as “active footnotes.” When you are reading a document with your Web browser, and come across a link (usually shown as underlined or highlighted text), you can just Point-and-click and your browser will retrieve the referenced document. NAVIGATING THE WEB WITH NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR The original graphical Web browser is a program called "NCSA Mosaic," developed at the National Supercomputer Applications Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. NCSA Mosaic is freely available for download across the Internet. A number of newer browsers have been developed in the past two years, including a commercial product called "Netscape Navigator" (developed by some of the programmers who wrote the original NCSA Mosaic). The following figures illustrate the basics of using Netscape Navigator to navigate the Web. Other browsers operate in very similar ways. (Note: All of the illustrations in this article are from the Macintosh version of Netscape Navigator. Netscape Navigator and NCSA Mosaic are also available for the Windows and UNIX environments, CALICO Journal, Volume 13 Numbers 2 & 3 117 and operate identically in those environments. Many of the other available browsers only work on a single type of computer.) Manually entering addresses In many cases, the URL of a document will be known by a user — for example, by reading it in an article such as this one. As shown in Figure 3, Netscape Navigator, like all browsers, allows a user to simply type in that URL. Using a "link" to go to an address Typically, however, users will work from a standard “home page” — a document containing links to many other places.