History of the Internet and How the Web Works

The Internet started out as a project called ARPANET, done by the United States government's Department of Defense, as a means of communication for organizations engaged in defense-related research in the 1960’s. In the 1970’s Internet Protocol, or IP, technology was developed as a means to transfer data or documents, such as email, over a network in order to make the communication more global. Shortly after, the standard protocol was invented, called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), which allowed users to link other branches of complex networks directly to the Internet. When the National Science Foundation took over much of the TCP/IP technology from ARPANET they established a distributed network of networks capable of handling far greater traffic. In 1985, the National Science Foundation began a program to establish Internet access across the United States and ARPANET was shut down by the Defense Communications Agency in 1989 due to limited funding and support from the military. After the Internet was established across the U.S. it began to grow rapidly.

In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, along with his partner, Robert Cailliau, created a prototype called the  World Wide Web as a management system that used a “hypertext” process to link related documents over a network. The Web is just one of the ways information can be shared over the Internet. It works by allowing documents to be linked to one another using hypertext links. All the linked documents form the Web. The prototype the Web uses is called HTTP, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which are the first four letters of the majority of websites. For a computer to be able to be a part of the Web it has to be running special web server software that allows it to handle HTTP. When actually using the Web, the browser makes the request for documents and the server returns the documents for the browser to display. This is just a brief summary of how the Web works as a prototype for the Internet.

Sources:

• http://wdvl.internet.com/Internet/History/
•  Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst Robbins (3^rd Edition)

Web Design 1: Goals for this class

My goals for this class are to learn more about how to create HTML, to learn how to set up websites, and to understand how websites operate. I am really looking forward to learning more about web design because I know it will greatly help out with my career...whatever field that may be in graphic design. Almost every business, company or individual has or will want a website as a means of advertising their business, product, etc. I believe knowing web design will give me an upper hand against those who don't. Also, a wider range of skills to add to my resume will increase my chances of finding a career. Another goal I have is to take web design 2 to further my knowledge of making websites since knowing how to create websites can be a really helpful tool in the field of graphic design. So in short, my goals of learning web design 1 and web design 2 are short-term goals to help me reach my long-term goals which consist of graduating college with a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Communications, finding a career for myself, and loving what I do with that career so I can not only come home at the end of the day supporting my family but being able to be happy as well because I enjoy designing and doing it for a living.