Notes (Theory)

The Origins Of The World Wide Web

  • In order better understand the idea of content rights and how html pages exist on the web. It is useful to consider how content came to be on the world wide web to begin with

Tim Berners-Lee Inventor of the World Wide Web

"Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked" (Berners 2001, p.4)

  • What's interesting is the origins of the world wide web can be traced back to a single individual Tim Berners-Lee

Figure 8 - The Large Hadron Collider

  • In the mid 80's to early 90's Tim Beners-Lee was working at CERN, home of the particle accelerator the Large Hadron Collider
  • CERN is a huge collaborative international research project consisting of a steady stream of researchers coming and going at any given time
  • Often when a group of scientist left often much of their unpublished work was undiscoverable
  • In 1989 Beners-Lee proposed a hypertext system that would sit on top of the internet . His idea was to define a set technologies to allow computers running on different operating systems to communicate in a decent fashion. The system consisted of of the following primary technologies:

a "web" of notes with links (like references) between them is far more useful than a fixed hierarchical system. (Berners-Lee 1989)

Validating your HTML

https://validator.w3.org/ - Validating your HTML is a simple undertaking

  • As discussed above, HTML is a standard laid down by the W3C. As such, it is important that we uphold this standard. Not only is it considered good practice, you will also be required to submit valid HTML for your assessments

  • Luckily, the W3C provides a validator we can use (see image above). You just simply provide a link, or directly input you html (probably the easiest way). If you check the validity of your work regularly then, soon, before you know it, you will be writing valid HTML without thinking.

Where Do Websites Live

  • On the whole, web sites and web applications do not live on your computer
  • The reason I say on the whole is now using technologies such as electron and react native script use web technologies to create desktop an mobile applications However, to begin with we'll focus on the more traditional web architecture
  • There is a concept of front end and back end
  • Pages and resources are fetched via the Hyper(H) Text(T) Transfer(T) Protocol(P) and sent from server to your local computer
  • URL's are resolved to a IP address via the use of a DNS server
:authority: www.google.co.uk
:method: GET
:path: /
:scheme: https

An HTTP request header

Front End

  • When developers refer to the front end of a website the usually mean the HTML/CSS/JavaScript used to display the visual elements of a page

Back End

  • The back end refers to the functionality that lives on the web s server. Common server side languages are Python, PHP and RUBY.

Ownership

  • We've determined that web content is downloaded to your computer. However, it's important to understand that you don't own the rights to that content

  • The creator of that content which can be a company or individual/s owns the exclusive writes to that work as soon as it is created

  • The copyright lasts for 70 years after the creators death

  • Copyright owners can grant grant others use of their work. Rather than do this on an individual basis often general licenses are issued

Creative Commons

Creative Commons helps you legally share your knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world. We unlock the full potential of the internet to drive a new era of development, growth and productivity.

  • Lawrence Lessig founded Creative Commons (CC) in 2001 to create a series of easy-to-understand copyright licenses for online creative work. These licenses established the notion of “some rights reserved.” This allows creatives to share their work and apply certain restrictions at the same time

  • Check out https://choosealicense.com/ get an idea of the different types of licenses you can you for your own work

  • https://search.creativecommons.org/ allows you to search for free image resources. You should use this to find content for your websites

← Notes (Practical)→