Module 1 Questions & Answers

1) What role did Tim Berners-Lee play in the development of the Internet?

He invented the 'World Wide Web' to make it easy to communicate over the Net. This included the global hypertext system.



2) In this unit, you will be working with the XHTML scripting language. What scripting languages did Tim Berners-Lee discuss (back in 2000)? Do you feel his comments are still relevant today? What evidence can you find to support your view?

Tim Berners-Lee discussed XML and RDF (Resource Description Framework). He envisioned using RDF to combine data from multiple sources as part of his grand plan for the Semantic web.

I feel that his comments are still relevant today, as Bob DuCharme writes -

"For a long time now, RDF has shown great promise as a flexible format for storing, aggregating, and using metadata. Maybe for too long—its most well-known syntax, RDF/XML, is messy enough to have scared many people away from RDF. The W3C is developing a new, simpler syntax called RDFa (originally called "RDF/a") that is easy enough to create and to use in applications that it may win back a lot of the people who were first scared off by the verbosity, striping, container complications, and other complexity issues that made RDF/XML look so ugly."¹


3) Tim Berners-Lee discusses the world's very first Web page. Visit the site and write your observations on the following: In what ways do you feel Web design has changed over the years, not just in the visual design, but in the hyperlinks? Why do you think his page is so simple? What scripting language did it use? View the source of this page and tell us how many different tags you can find in the code. (see http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html)

Web design has changed visually through uses of plug-ins, interactive media, faster Internet connections allowing for greater use of images, WYSIWYG editors allowing for almost anyone to design a page without knowing any HTML/XHTML therefore possibly having greater input for graphic designers with no scripting knowledge to still get a website online.

Hyperlinks are now more dynamic, they can be part of a Client-Side image map, represented by a click able image, styled with css (for example you could use the declaration text-decoration:none; to make a link appear with no underline.)

Tim Berners-Lee's first web page was scripted using online hypertext.

I counted 10 different tags.



4) What is the W3C? Why do they care about standards?

The W3C or World Wide Web consortium, is an international consortium which works to develop web standards ²

The W3C cares about standards on the Web because for the Internet to move forward, it is important that there is a set of standards so that everything works together.



5) If Tim Berners-Lee could roll the clock back and re-design URLs, how would we type in the address for Curtin University's Admissions Office (now at http://students.curtin.edu.au/administration/admissions/) ? Why would he do this?

I think that it would be typed as ( http:edu.au/students.curtin/administration/admissions/ )
He would like to re-design URL's because he feels the structure is clumsy, and a client should be able to figure out that students.curtin.edu.au was the server to contact. Also the short-hand //students.curtin.edu.au/administration/admissions/ is very rarely used.


6) According to Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the first GUI (Graphical User Interface) browser? Name 5 different Web browsers. Which do you think are the most popular ones today?

He invented it himself, and it was called 'WorldWideWeb'.

5 different web browsers - Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Safari, Amaya.

According to W3C's page on browser statistics ³ , , the most popular browsers as of January 2007 were Internet Explorer 6 (42.3%) followed by Firefox (31%) and Internet Explorer 7 (13.3%).

On my own personal blog the browser statistics are as follows, Internet Explorer 7 (43%), Firefox 2 (30%), Firefox 1 (14%) and Internet Explorer 6 (12%).


7) Name the three first World Wide Web link colours, in order of appearance.

Black
Blue
Green

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List of References.

1. Bob DuCharme, O'Reilly xml.com, Introducing RDFa, 14 February 2007, < http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/02/14/introducing-rdfa.html > (Accessed 3 March 2007)

2. Ian Jacobs, Head of W3C Communications, About the World Wide Web consortium (W3C), 13 February 2007,<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/ > (Accessed 1 March 2007) .

3. W3 Schools, Browser Statistics, January 2007 < http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp > (Accessed 1 March 2007).