Web page
As Web Page ( a contraction of the words "Web" and side ), Web Document, Web Page, or short side is a document as part of an offer or a website on the World Wide Web, accessed with a browser by specifying a Uniform Resource Locators ( URL) and can be offered by a web server. In this context one also speaks of a HTML page or an HTML document.
History
The first website was written on 13 November 1990 by Tim Berners -Lee on a NeXT computer and published - a day after he had published together with Robert Cailliau neugefasstes a concept for a global hypertext project.
Construction
Web pages usually consist of structured text, can be integrated in the images and other multimedia elements. The essential feature of Web pages is that it references, so called hyperlinks to other web sites and together form the hypertext. Here, each document has at least one address (URL ) via which it can be accessed in a web browser. Web pages can have static (fixed ) or dynamic content. Dynamic content is generated each call, preferably based on the result of a database query. In addition, the same content can be presented in different ways, such as print version or text version.
Web pages are usually downloaded from the Internet or an intranet, but can also be on a local storage medium may be, for example, a hard disk is stored. The set of web pages of a website is called a site, website, web presence, website, or colloquially as the homepage.
Reception of websites
Web pages are perceived differently than printed pages of text. English eye tracking experiments in which the eye movement of the reader followed showed that most visitors to a website skim the text ( scan ), while with the eyes first scan the upper edge and the left edge of the content area. The result is an F- shaped area that is looked at by most visitors. Visitors who come to a website through a search engine, keep it there, preferably according to their search term ( keyword) out. From these facts, special requirements for the web text result.
Creation
The creation and design of websites is summarized under the term web design. Based language for creating web pages is the markup language HTML, the formatting additionally by formatting languages such as Cascading Style Sheets ( CSS) can be influenced. Especially for creating dynamic pages more languages have been developed with the help of complex structure of websites (see website) can be created.
Dynamic Websites
Unlike static websites, which are technically an HTML document on the web server, web sites are often generated dynamically or active at the moment of the request. This is useful when a Web page is to contain very current information such as stock quotes or weather forecasts. In this case, the Web server executes a program which has previously been developed specifically for this task. It transmits the data together, for example, databases and creates the HTML document. This is then transferred from the web server to the browser and displayed to the user.
Another application arises from the need to respond to user input, such as typing a keyword into a search engine. The software of the search engine created using the search term, a list of matching links and creates a web page that represents the user this list comfortable.
The ability to dynamically generate web pages in response to user input and database content, made the Web quickly becoming a universal platform for many types of applications. The benefits are independent of operating systems and other properties of the clients. Basic requirements are only a network connection to the server and a Web browser.
To generate dynamic web pages, each program comes into question, which can be run on the server system. To simplify the programming, but standards were as the Common Gateway Interface (CGI ) is introduced to make web applications regardless of the nature of the web server as well. The majority of CGI applications have been and are written in the Perl programming language. To technologies such as PHP, J2EE and. NET developed Due to the rapidly increasing demand by very powerful servers to run web applications.
Since the contents of extensive websites are usually added by several persons, in such projects a content management system (CMS ) is often used. There are pushing more and more mostly PHP - and MySQL-based solutions in the free software on the market that are even for inexperienced programmers to use quickly, as long as they do not exceed a certain complexity.
Dynamically generated static websites
With the standardization of XML and XSLT, the W3C has shown a way in December 2000, as can also be "real" and thus static HTML documents generate dynamic paths that can take it in complexity with the database extracts a CMS or even still surpass: kept simple and limited to the content, but this well-structured output data in XML will be implemented through a custom XSL transformer into valid, complex HTML, which is then present as a static document retrieval on the Web server.
Advantage is especially the higher performance because of the expense of the host computer, complex websites only compile on request, is omitted and the server therefore can handle more traffic. Another advantage is the greater flexibility in the design. Unlike traditional CMS, where the database contents are inserted into prefabricated and relatively rigid HTML templates, a structured XML output document layout and user interface generated from the HTML document essentially determined by. This allows the amateur compatible production of even long and coherent content via XML editor and their presentation in easy rezipierbarer form, such as webgerechtes eBook, with a single "Website" from several screen pages can be made that are "folded" by CSS and be easily scroll or can be controlled via the menu navigation. Also the design of entire websites as graphical user interfaces with multiple, parallel -to-use elements is possible.
The main obstacle to widespread use of this considerably extended opportunities regarding representation and data retention was previously the Microsoft Internet Explorer, which has to date as leader until the 2009 released version 8 also with regard to adequate CSS standards compliance.