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Information about Webpage

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A screenshot of a web page.


A Web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext links.

Web pages may be retrieved from a local computer or from a remote web server. The web server may restrict access only to a private network, e.g. a corporate intranet, or it may publish pages on the World Wide Web. Web pages are requested and served from web servers using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Web pages may consist of files of static text stored within the web server's file system (static web pages), or the web server may construct the (X)HTML for each web page when it is requested by a browser (dynamic web pages). Client-side scripting can make web pages more responsive to user input once in the client browser.

A web page is a type of web document.

Color, typography, illustration and interaction

Web pages usually include instructions as to the colors of text and backgrounds and very often also contain links to images and sometimes other media to be included in the final view.

Layout, typographic and color-scheme information is provided by Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) instructions, which can either be embedded in the HTML or can be provided by a separate file, which is referenced from within the HTML. The latter case is especially relevant where one lengthy stylesheet is relevant to a whole website: due to the way HTTP works, the browser will only download it once from the web server and use the cached copy for the whole site.

Images are stored on the web server as separate files, but again HTTP allows for the fact that once a web page is downloaded to a browser, it is quite likely that related files such as images and stylesheets will be requested as it is processed. An HTTP 1.1 web server will maintain a connection with the browser until all related resources have been requested and provided. Browsers usually render images along with the text and other material on the displayed web page.

Dynamic behavior

Main article: dynamic web page


Client-side computer code such as JavaScript or code implementing Ajax techniques can be provided either embedded in the HTML of a web page or, like CSS stylesheets, as separate, linked downloads specified in the HTML (using for example .js file extensions for JavaScript files). These scripts may run on the client computer, if the user allows them to, and can provide a degree of interactivity between the web page and the user after the page has downloaded.

Browsers

A web browser can have a Graphical User Interface, like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera, or can be text-based, like Lynx. Web users with visual impairments may use a screen reader to read out the displayed text, or they may use a more specialized voice browser in the first place. Such users will want to enjoy the benefit of the web page without images and other visual media.

Users of fully graphical browsers still may disable the download and viewing of images and other media, to save time, network bandwidth or merely to simplify their browsing experience. Users may also prefer not to use the fonts, font sizes, styles and color schemes selected by the web page designer and may apply their own CSS styling to their viewed version of the page.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) recommend that all web pages should be designed with all of these options in mind.

Elements of a web page

A web page, as an information set, can contain many kinds of information, which is able to be seen, heard or interact by the end user:
Perceived (rendered) information:
*Textual information: with diverse render variations.
*Non-textual information:
** Static images on raster graphics, typically GIF, JPEG or PNG; or vector formats as SVG or Flash.
** Animated images typically Animated GIF and SVG, but also may be Flash, Shockwave, or Java applet.
** Audio, typically MIDI or WAV formats or Java applets.
**Video, WMV (Windows), RM (Real Media), FLV (Flash Video), MPG, MOV (Quicktime)
* Interactive information: more complex, glued to interface; see dynamic web page.
** For "on page" interaction:
*** Interactive text: see DHTML.
*** Interactive illustrations: ranging from "click to play" image to games, typically using script orchestration, Flash, Java applets, SVG, or Shockwave.
*** Buttons: forms providing alternative interface, typically for use with script orchestration and DHTML.
** For "between pages" interaction:
*** Hyperlinks: standard "change page" reactivity.
*** Forms: providing more interaction with the server and server-side databases.
Internal (hidden) information:
* Comments
* Metadata with semantic meta-informations, Charset informations, DTD, etc.
* Diagramation and style information: information about rendered items (like image size attributes) and visual specifications, as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
* Scripts, usually JavaScript, complement interactivity and functionality.
Note: on server-side the web page may also have "Processing Instruction Information Items".


The web page can also contain dynamically adapted information elements, dependent upon the rendering browser or end-user location (through the use of IP address tracking and/or "cookie" information).

From a more general/wide point of view, some information (grouped) elements, like a navigation bar, are uniform for all website pages, like a standard. These kind of "website standard information" are supplied by technologies like web template systems.

Rendering

Web pages will often require more screen space than is available for a particular display resolution. Most modern browsers will place scrollbars in the window to allow the user to see all content. Scrolling horizontally is less prevalent than vertical scrolling, not only because those pages do not print properly, but because it inconveniences the user more so than vertical scrolling would (because lines are horizontal; scrolling back and forth for every line is much more inconvenient than scrolling after reading a whole screen; also most computer keyboards have page up and down keys, and many computer mice have vertical scroll wheels, but the horizontal scrolling equivalents are rare). However, web pages may utilize page widening for various purposes..

A web page can either be a single HTML file, or made up of several HTML files represented using frames. Frames have been known to cause problems with navigation, printing, and search engine rankings[1], although these problems occur mostly in older-generation browsers. Their primary usage is to allow certain content which is usually meant to be static, such as page navigation or page headers, to remain in one place while the main content can be scrolled as necessary. Another merit of using a framed web page is that only the content in the "main" frame will be reloaded.[2] Frames are rendered very differently, depending on the host browser and for this reason, the usage of frames is typically frowned upon in professional web page development communities[3]. With design technologies such as CSS becoming more widespread in their usage, the effect frames provide can be made possible using a smaller amount of code and by using only one web page to display the same amount of content.

When web pages are stored in a common directory of a web server, they become a website. A website will typically contain a group of web pages that are linked together, or have some other coherent method of navigation. The most important web page to have on a website is the index page. Depending on the web server settings, this index page can have many different names, but the most common are index.htm and index.html. When a browser visits the homepage for a website, or any URL pointing to a directory rather than a specific file, the web server will serve the index page to the requesting browser. If no index page is defined in the configuration, or no such file exists on the server, either an error or directory listing will be served to the browser.

When creating a web page, it is important to ensure it conforms to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for HTML, CSS, XML and other standards. The W3C standards are in place to ensure all browsers which conform to their standards can display identical content without any special consideration for proprietary rendering techniques. A properly coded web page is going to be accessible to many different browsers old and new alike, display resolutions, as well as those users with audio or visual impairments.

URL

Main article: Uniform Resource Identifier


Typically, web pages today are becoming more dynamic. A dynamic web page is one that is created server-side when it is requested, and then served to the end-user. These types of web pages typically do not have a permalink, or a static URL, associated with them. Today, this can be seen in many popular forums, online shopping, and even on Wikipedia. This practice is intended to reduce the amount of static pages in lieu of storing the relevant web page information in a database. Some search engines may have a hard time indexing a web page that is dynamic, so static web pages can be provided in those instances.

Viewing a web page

In order to graphically display a web page, a web browser is needed. This is a type of software that can retrieve web pages from the Internet. Most current web browsers include the ability to view the source code. Viewing a web page in a text editor will also display the source code, not the visual product.

Creating a web page

To create a web page, a text editor or a specialized HTML editor is needed. In order to upload the created web page to a web server, traditionally an FTP client is needed.

The design of a web page is highly personal. A design can be made according to one's own preference, or a pre-made web template can be used. Web Templates let web page designers edit the content of a web page without having to worry about the overall aesthetics. Many people publish their own web pages using products like Geocities from Yahoo, Tripod, or Angelfire. These web publishing tools offer free page creation and hosting up to a certain size limit.

Other ways of making a web page is to download specialized software, like a Wiki, CMS, or forum. These options allow for quick and easy creation of a web page which is typically dynamic. Wikipedia, WordPress, and Invision Power Board are examples of the above three web page options.

Saving a web page

A local copy of a web page may be saved to one's computer, as long as no copyright laws are violated. Most GUI browsers will contain all the options for saving a web page. These include, but are not limited to:
  • Saving the rendered text without formatting or images - Hyperlinks are not identified, but displayed as plain text
  • Saving the HTML file as it was served - Overall structure will be preserved, although some links may be broken
  • Saving the HTML file and changing relative links to absolute ones - Hyperlinks will be preserved
  • Saving the entire web page - All images will be saved, as well as links being changed to absolute
  • Saving the HTML file including all images, stylesheets and scripts into a single MHTML file. This is supported by Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox only support this if the MAF plugin has been installed. An MHTML file is based upon the MHTML standard.
Common web browsers, like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera, give the option to not only print the currently viewed web page to a printer, but optionally to "print" to a file which can be viewed or printed later. Some web pages are designed, for example by use of CSS, so that hyperlinks, menus and other navigation items, which will be useless on paper, are rendered into print with this in mind. Space-wasting menus and navigational blocks may be absent from the printed version; other hyperlinks may be shown with the link destinations made explicit, either within the body of the page or perhaps listed at then end.

See also

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ [2]
3. ^ [3]
World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, a user views web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks.
..... Click the link for more information.
A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network.
..... Click the link for more information.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

File extension: .html, .htm
MIME type: text/html
Type code: TEXT
..... Click the link for more information.
XHTML

File extension: .xhtml, .xht, .html, .
..... Click the link for more information.
A navigation bar (also known as links bar or link bar) is a subregion of a web page that contains hypertext links in order to navigate between the pages of a website.
..... Click the link for more information.
Hypertext most often refers to text on a computer that will lead the user to other, related information on demand. Hypertext represents a relatively recent innovation to user interfaces, which overcomes some of the limitations of written text.
..... Click the link for more information.
A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on a different website.

Hyperlinks are part of the foundation of the World Wide Web created by Tim Berners-Lee, but are not limited to
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web server can mean one of two things:
  1. A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and

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An intranet is a private computer network that uses Internet protocols, network connectivity to securely share part of an organization's information or operations with its employees. Sometimes the term refers only to the most visible service, the internal website.
..... Click the link for more information.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communications protocol used to transfer or convey information on the World Wide Web. Its original purpose was to provide a way to publish and retrieve HTML hypertext pages.
..... Click the link for more information.
web server can mean one of two things:
  1. A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and

..... Click the link for more information.
A static Web page is a Web page that always comprises the same information in response to all download requests from all users.

Contrast with Dynamic web page.

Most of these advantages and disadvantages apply to normal HTML pages in particular.
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within a specific web page, in response to mouse or keyboard actions or at specified timing events. In this case the dynamic behavior occurs within the presentation.
  • Using server-side scripting to change the supplied page source between
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    • Client-side scripting generally refers to the class of computer programs on the web that are executed client-side, by the user's web browser, instead of server-side (on the web server).
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    This article may contain original research or unverified claims.
    Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
    This article has been tagged since September 2007.

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    Cascading Style Sheets

    File extension: .css
    MIME type: text/css
    Developed by: World Wide Web Consortium
    Type of format: Stylesheet language
    Standard(s): Level 1 (Recommendation)
    Level 2 (Recommendation)
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    cache (IPA:/kæʃ/, like "catch" [1]) is a collection of data duplicating original values stored elsewhere or computed earlier, where the original data is expensive to fetch (due to longer access time) or to
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    within a specific web page, in response to mouse or keyboard actions or at specified timing events. In this case the dynamic behavior occurs within the presentation.
  • Using server-side scripting to change the supplied page source between
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    • JavaScript
    Paradigm: multi-paradigm
    Appeared in: 1995
    Designed by: Brendan Eich
    Developer: Netscape Communications Corporation, Mozilla Foundation
    Typing discipline: dynamic, weak, duck
    Major implementations: SpiderMonkey, Rhino, KJS, JavaScriptCore
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    “AJAX” redirects here. For other uses, see Ajax.
    Ajax, or AJAX, (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) is a web development technique used for creating interactive web applications.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    graphical user interface (GUI) is a type of user interface which allows people to interact with a computer and computer-controlled devices which employ graphical icons, visual indicators or special graphical elements called "widgets", along with text, labels or text
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of proprietary graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Maintainer: Mozilla Corporation / Mozilla Foundation

    OS: Cross-platform
    Available language(s): Multilingual,[1] EULA in English only[2]
    Use: Web browser
    License: Mozilla EULA for binary redistribution

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    Maintainer: Opera Software ASA

    OS: Cross-platform

    Use: Internet suite
    License: Proprietary
    Website: [1] Opera is a cross-platform web browser and Internet suite developed by the Opera Software corporation.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    command line interface or CLI is a method of interacting with an operating system or software using a command line interpreter. This command line interpreter may be a text terminal, terminal emulator, or remote shell client such as PuTTY.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Maintainer: Thomas Dickey

    OS: Cross-platform

    Use: web browser
    License: GPL
    Website: lynx.isc.org Lynx is a text-only Web browser and Gopher client for use on cursor-addressable, character cell terminals.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen. This interpretation is then represented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a braille output.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    A voice browser is a web browser that presents an interactive voice user interface to the user. In addition, it typically provides an interface to the PSTN or a PBX. Just as a visual web browser works with HTML pages, a voice browser operates on pages that specify voice dialogues.
    ..... Click the link for more information.


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