Talk:World Wide Web

Java and JavaScript

Java and JavaScript are way too specific for an article about the Web as a whole. If we devoted sections to these then we'd also have to devote sections to Flash, Silverlight, VBScript, CSS, SVG, XML, etc. Much better to instead have just one section that talks about web pages in general and the content they made contain. I've started this section off by merging the content from the Java and JavaScript sections, but it will need lots more rewriting to be up to par. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:54, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Section removed. I moved JavaScript part up to Ajax. The Java bit was an apology more than anything useful. You're welcome to do your rewriting but I think not needed as it was and it has been a month. -SusanLesch (talk) 00:54, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Section : CHACHING

??? random section about minor point??? 79.181.122.28 (talk) 09:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

More than 1 billion internet users now online

Maybe it could worthj mentioning? "Comscore, a company that tracks internet usage, calculates that 1 billion people who logged on to the world wide web in December 2008 – the first time this number have ever been online in a single month." Source: [1] 84.210.63.90 (talk) 07:53, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

World Wide Web - Dispute of sites

I have been trying to find where to contact if there is a rogue type of site that was originally set-up with permission, relationship terminated, but control of the site is continuing without authorization utilizing information prior to the desolution of the business relationship? Any help would be appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.42.2.34 (talk) 16:50, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Web with a capital W

I know it's been done to death, as has the I on internet, but there seems to be some overkill here by those who love their capital Ws. First, please note that a small w for the web now seems to be universal in print and in the press in the UK, so this is only under discussion because someone somewhere has already established that the web is mostly American and so this article should use US spelling conventions.

First, what does this unreferenced sentence mean? "Additionally, Web (with a capital W) is used to indicate its status as an abbreviation", found under 'WWW prefix'?

Second, can we agree that, even if THE Web is a grand thing, even more important than the sun, that needs a capital letter, there are other uses of the the word in this article that do not even refer to THE Web. I refer to adjectival uses. So can we do without the capital on some or all of these? Web server, Web page, Web languages, Web resources, Web sites, Web addresses, Web beacons, Web standards, Web content, Web technology, Web searches, Web response times, Web traffic and Web editor.

One logical reason for this (apart from asking who capitalises adjectives anyway?) is that even if THE Web needs capitalising, then many people including web designers and web authors hold, at home and at work on their computers many potential web things that are not part of THE grand, unified Web. These may include a web server, several web pages, written in future web languages (like HTML 5), that are not publicly available web resources, parts of potential web sites... you get my drift - items from all of the above list that are web-like but not part of the grand public World Wide Web.

So can I go ahead and tone this capitalisation down a bit? --Nigelj (talk) 10:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I have left this note here for best part of a month, and now gone ahead and done as described. I also removed that baffling, unsourced sentence. --Nigelj (talk) 21:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Speed Issues

It's entirely unclear what is meant by "speed issues", "latency", and "response times" in this article. Are we talking about time to ping the webserver, connect to the web service, get the page headers, get partial content, get the entire page, or get the entire page with all embedded elements completely rendered? Presumably time to return the entire body, but that's an educated guess rather than what the page informs me of. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.246.209 (talk) 18:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC) No, latency means how long (after a browser asks a web server for something... anything, really) does it take for a web server to respond. The more time (generally measured in miliseconds) it takes for the server to respond, the higher the latency. When latency is high, that means that the server either cannot cope woith the number of requests per second it is reciving, or or it means that the browser's connection to the internet is slow. Since latency times can varry dynamicly due to changing circumstances of loading on the server, latency goes up and down all the time for any particular web page, even if the web page content might remain static (or not, as the case may be). Allthenamesarealreadytaken (talk) 23:40, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

alternatives to the www. prefix

I was hoping this page would mention, or link to a page listing, common other url prefixes besides www. I'm thinking of m. myself. Mathiastck (talk) 01:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Does this help? Addressing Schemes. -SusanLesch (talk) 02:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if Mathiastck was talking about the 'www' in, for example http://www.w3.org, rather than the 'http'? If so, the answer is that there is no technical 'meaning' to this whatsoever. The people who created the site could have chose any combination of valid characters, or none at all. For example http://w3.org, http://people.w3.org, http://www2.ibm.com, http://123.example.org, http://en.wikipedia.org and, indeed, http://m.example.org are all valid, although no website may have actually been published using some of them. The http part (the scheme) has a precise technical meaning, and the last two (or three, in e.g. http://a.b.co.uk) parts (the domain) have to be registered and paid for with a valid domain name authority, but the bit between these two parts is entirely up to the publisher of the site. This is covered in World Wide Web#WWW prefix and in more detail in URL and URI scheme#Generic syntax, although it does get complicated as you dig deeper and none of these really tackle the simplest cases, I don't think. Maybe we should make the basics clearer, here or somewhere? --Nigelj (talk) 11:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

More eyes, please?

Could a few other experienced editors have a look at Global Internet usage and its recent Talk? I am a bit worried by the low quality of this article, but would appreciate other input. --Nigelj (talk) 17:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Abbreviation?

The opening sentence named "www" an abbreviation for "world wide web." While this may be true in written English, it's hardly true in spoken English. Maybe a better word than abbreviation can be used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.74.55.67 (talk) 22:08, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. In this instance (indeed, in most instances) the word abbreviation does not refer to the number of syllables when spoken aloud; it refers to abbreviating a series of words to initial letters. So www (in capitals or in lowercase) is indisputably an abbreviation of the noun-phrase world wide web. As an aside, it's a shame TBL didn't think about the convoluted multi-syllable spoken pronunciation when he hit on the name. But then no-one gets everything right ;) 87.115.111.76 (talk) 08:51, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by Net News? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.107.190.118 (talk) 04:20, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Robert Cailliau

I think Robert Cailliau is not getting the credit he deserves in this article. So far I have not seen any other article about the subject that does not portray the creation of the World Wide Web as a coordinated effort of the two. I wonder if some anglospheric bias is at work here. I strongly suggest to improve the article in this regard.

The Web - how to write?

Is it not wrong to write "web browser" without capitalisation of the first letter? The "Web browser" would be the right way I suppose, as the word Web stays for the one World Wide Web. Sae1962 (talk) 08:28, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

See the section above under "Web with a capital W" for an explanation of why "The Web" and "web browser" are different things. Personally I don't think it needs capitalising at all, since I wouldn't write "the Web" any more than I would write "the Telephone Network". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.89.82.248 (talk) 05:01, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Privacy article

I belive it is biased because it says things like "consumers save time and money." How would we change this part of the article. Should it be wikified?90.214.102.10 (talk) 21:13, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi 90.214.102.10. I wrote much of it (and I took out some 'who' tags that didn't make any sense because of citations). At least there is a privacy section. You're welcome to improve it if you can. -SusanLesch (talk) 03:38, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I added bits of protocol and markup to #Function section

I added simplified actual HTTP request, response, and basic HTML for Wikipedia's WWW page itself to the #Function section in rev 416122559. It's computer code that lengthens the section, but I think it's important to show the underlying software for what billions of us use every day isn't arcane rocket science, just mumbo-jumbo syntax around some basic concepts. So I hope the powers that be allow this substantial change to survive. It would be nice to be able to say that "One of the reasons for the ascendance of the World Wide Web over other hypertext systems is its relative simplicity and use of somewhat human-readable text for HTTP, HTML and URLs", but I don't have a citation for that claim. -- Skierpage (talk) 01:11, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Clear definition

Is there any official definition of WWW? The article isn't particularly clear about what WWW is. --Sigmundur (talk) 07:44, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The Web is the uniting of several elements that I delivered to the United States congress in 1987 or 88. I honestly have to check. The web is simply the creation of many ISPs with a routing system and a hypertext document system combined with a search engine Which was intended to be public, free and Fair (NOT FRAUDULENT or Payola) I coined hypertext or hyper media to mean Links that were text (or pictures) --not necessarily buttons. Everythign at that time was slide shows with buttons, or files from a server, or entries from a database or usenet which was simply an electronic post office. You did'nt retrieve documents you waited for them. They were all nice attampts. But none was the web.

I coined the term internet provider (or net provider) because there were was nothign to link to. The entire design was a single united whole. That's why I could'nt just run out and build it. It took a lot of people working togeather. And technologies that were not even available to the public. You could'nt download it off the web.

The creation of the web was a single concept that united all these unused possibilities into a connected whole which today is generally known as the internet. Not the Hinternet in the basement of the defence department. Or the extended file server of the NSF. The web was ME linkin ghtings nobody has ever heard of or had never needed or never invented. To my knowledge I have never been credited with my invention. And many have "built" the components I required. And profited endlessly.

The actual vision came from my first major computor a trs80 or a sinclare 80 I honestly forget whcih I had first. (around 1980 or 81 I had a programable basic calculator.) I realized that I needed more memory and content. It took abotu 7 yeaars to conceive the design and about a year of actually looking at what computors had to offer before releasing it into the world. I had bought a mac plus in 86. I told the design. And it took about three or four years for it to be built after that.

That's the way it was. The web was'nt actually designed after Hyper card but rather to overcome the problems of databases. Databases did not link togeather/ were not documents/ could not be easily edited/ did not usually display pictures / were not networked. The web was hypertext. It was all one idea. You needed internet providers to have a place to get stuff. You needed the browser (editor) which I did not have the tools to program just to have somthign to get efficiently. Even if you were downloading a picture or a music file you needed a place to click, a page explaining what it was. Without hytertext it's just a giant server. Without the web, the documents are not available at all. Withotu hypertext it was hard to use. It was all one idea. From one person. Me. And that idea changed everything.

I think they should come clean and give credit. Perhaps the others who propelled it forward want their anninimity. But honestly people never even understood that the web was conceived as a single whole. Not untill now. I am sure they will start paroting that too. I concenved of it. And they filed the grants. A lot of work has gone into preventing me from being credited.

Even the hyper text projects you soposedly hear about were all database "cards" and push button stuff. The "hyper document" was my design. Through a series of networked providers, with search engines and yes routed with apropriate programming.

For it to be the Web it needs all the elements. That was my part. All of it. I laud the ability to program the tools I asked for. TO assemble the technologies that were needed. The ability to write grants. All done by others after my request to congress. In the passing years I have been cheated so much in business that I am amazed when someone is not. And I nolonger consider it an accident. They obviously have a special in. They obviously just don't give a crap and want all the credit. There was no INTERNET. There was only an extended file system or a mail copying system.

My Web Changed that. With somthing for you to edit. Something for you to search on. Someplace for you to dial in. Not the web is somthing for them to hold back on. Somthing for them to make money. Somthing for them to cheat busineses with.

Latest innovations include

Tweets. Messages that are really short. Facebook Webpages that are hard to edit. Payola engines (like search engines but they destroy the economy) Wikipedia which is the ultimate revisionist network unless someone allows first hand accounts. Also wikipedia is a database of businesses. I can show you numerous bueinesses promoted on wikipedia with their websites prowly displayed so they make millions of dollars while I wonder if we have the money for anything. That is fraud. Telling peopel this is a database when it is a Unfair Business Index. Its just like the theft of the web from me. They love the idea but don;t want me to participate.

Now you have a giant internet problem, employment problem, economic problem, environment problem, population problem.. The internet --gives you one job so you can have three kids. Get it. I have been out here. In front of this stuff for 25 years. Puling the net along. Trying to get people to do the right things. When I saw the first browser. I had to clammor that it did'nt have a back button! 5 years later! I am tired and haven't been paid. I would apreciate the recognition.

Unless you were at the meeting and have a transcript please do not tell me I did not invent it.

People will probabily even theft this text. From you by deleating it. From me. All theft. Type vaporizer on google/wikipedia anywhere and THEY steal from YOU the right to see my business.

Tim Sheridan The Web AmericanSmokeless.Com TheUbie.Com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.236.32 (talk) 21:08, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

CNAME vs DNAME

As far as I know, the statement "The use of a subdomain name is useful for load balancing incoming web traffic by creating a CNAME record that points to a cluster of web servers. Since, currently, only a subdomain can be cname'ed the same result cannot be achieved by using the bare domain root." in the article is wrong. I thought it is not CNAMEing but DNAMEing that allows load balancing since a CNAME only remaps one sub-domain to another. It is a DNAME that allows remapping different sub-domains to different IPs - or am I misunderstanding something here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by String42 (talk • contribs) 15:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Francis Gurry patent idea

I don't know where to best include Francis Gurry's comments regarding patenting. World Wide Web#Standards? Web standards? A (new) criticism section? Does anyone have any good ideas/advice? Thanks. --Trevj (talk) 13:34, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Not sure those comments are notable---they weren't picked up by other major sites like CNET or the major news sites like CNN. If you look at the underlying source of that, it's an article on BoingBoing by Cory Doctorow, whose bias on IP issues is well-known. Also, notice the three-month gap between when the comments were made and when Doctorow first raised them. If this was a big deal it would have hit the headlines the next day. This is a really minor issue and I doubt it deserves any space in this already sprawling article.--Coolcaesar (talk) 15:39, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Regarding bias, that's noted and could be covered by putting a reference to the underlying source in any inclusion. Many notable writers are biased but that doesn't mean their comments should be excluded - in fact, inclusion of their comments is in accordance with WP:NPOV (assuming no undue weight is given). As for being picked up by "other major sites", TechEye is notable and is a reliable source, so that's fine. Even if an article is sprawling, that's not a good reason for omitting further information. The sprawling parts could be rewritten or spun out to their own articles. -- Trevj (talk) 04:14, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Accessible Authorship and This Article's Bias

1)The WWW was chock full of "easy to use" authorship tools, software, and services before the turn of the millennium. lets think for 2.3 seconds... Geocities hosting, Live Journal, and a literal avalanche of individual bulletin boards and bulletin board software come to mind. This is just a sampling of what was available in the 1990s. There were boatloads of other easy to use, cheap/free, general-public accessible authorship methods that ran the gamut of possibilities. Wikis and Web 2.0 are BRAND NEW in this regard. People tend to completely ignore what happened before they embraced the internet when broadband, fast/cheap hardware and software, and button-laden GUIs became pervasive. 2)While I understand that this article is about the WWW, as opposed to the internet in general or a different protocol/network, I think it is inaccurate and misleading to completely ignore the conceptual/intellectual and physical basis upon which the WWW was built: the public and private/government internet that evolved from the Arpanet and related networks. As I said, the WWW was conceived as serving a different purpose. But the conceptual underpinnings of the internet are imbedded in the already existing internet of the time. The hardware and software underpinnings, also, evolved from preexisting examples that were developed for the Arpanet and later public networks. The WWW was not invented from scratch. It was conceived as an evolution, transformation, and synthesis of preexisting ideas combined with the well established public and private internet of the time. Please add a reference to the history of the Arpanet, hyperlinks to BBS articles, and other related stuff from the period of time in the mid to late 1980s when the public internet was really at its inception. The bias, btw, is the bias that is so often taken in discussions of the invention of the internet: that the WWW was invented by the British, and that the WWW is somehow exclusive and bares no relationship in anyway to the Arpanet or public networks of the 1980s. (there is no mention in this article, that every conceivable underpinning of the WWW came from the preexisting inter-institutional and public networks that formed the primordial internet)68.6.76.31 (talk) 07:36, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I removed "Speed Issues"

The section titled "Speed Issues" was irrelevant and removed. The issues stated applied more specifically to the Internet and included the unheard of phrase: World Wide Wait. Also, the section included speed guidelines from a random book. - ComradeSlice^(talk) 01:32, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

World Wide Wait was a common pun in the early days of the WWW because retrieving web pages over modem indeed was awfully slow. It is even referenced. That you didn't know about it is not an argument for removal – it is also referenced. I reverted your edit. Nageh (talk) 02:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so you reverted my edit without mentioning my other points? How about how Internet speed issues have nothing to do with the World Wide Web? At least remove the portions of the sections that only apply to the Internet... A few points from a random book discussing Internet speed do not belong in this article. - ComradeSlice^(talk) 01:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Because you deleted everything within the section. It is very worthy mentioning that the WWW has been given that pejorative naming in the beginning. Also, it is worthy pointing out that improvements came both from increased connection speeds and from browser enhancements, persistent connections, etc. I agree that other information in that section is not appropriate, and an entire section on "Speed issues" may be a bit too much as well, but insert the relevant information somewhere. Nageh (talk) 11:08, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

WWW was invented in CERN, Geneve, Switzerland... or in France – neutral third opinion needed!

French people seem to enjoy the seeming fact that Berners-Lee's office, while part of the CERN complex near Geneve, is located just across the border on French soil. One anonymous editor (geolocating to French IP range 78.251.*.*) is constantly changing the text in the article, which states that the web was invented in Geneve, Switzerland, to that it was invented in France. I need a third person to either revert the last change and warn the IP with WP:3RR, or – if there'll be no feedback – I'll file a request for WP:3O or some other means for intervention. Thanks! Nageh (talk) 20:45, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

He changed it in the German Wikipedia, too, and we agreed to chose a formulation clearly stating the location of CERN (both Swiss and French territory, near Geneva) and clearly not stating the location of the invention. Well, the old text was wrong, CERN is not in Geneva, and it is located in France and Switzerland. --Chricho ∀ (talk) 21:00, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable compromise. I have adjusted the wording accordingly. Nageh (talk) 01:55, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the change. Actually, I don't really care, at the beginning I performed the change a bit because it is true, a bit for fun too! But actually, it is true that it hasn't really happened in Geneva... To write it happened in Geneva is quite approximative. Indeed the headquarter of the CERN is located in Geneva, I believe. And there are various sites, some of them are in France, others in Switzerland, and others on both France and Switzerland, nobody really cares, actually. The big deal will be to know where the Higgs boson will get discovered: in the French part of the accelerator — most of the LHC is located in France — or in the Swiss one ;-D Thanks for the change, anyway :-) 78.251.233.60 (talk) 11:01, 2 February 2012 (UTC)