The Internet - 5

Browsers, Internet Domains

 And Search Engines

 .

With millions of messages and Internet pages traversing the Internet at any given moment, how does all that traffic know where it's supposed to end up?

Just as you have a unique telephone number, each computer on the Internet has a unique IP address. For example, one of the IP addresses for CyberCollege.com used to be 64.77.120.3.

First, for most of us, having to remember 64.77.120.3 is much more difficult than remembering CyberCollege.com. Second, the IP address for CyberCollege.com will change if the owner of this domain decides to switch web-hosting companies. If this happens  --  and it has several times in the history of this domain  --  these numbers will suddenly point to either the wrong domain (web site)  --  or to no site at all.

This would be like suddenly changing your phone number and not being able to tell anyone. For telephone numbers we have phone books; for the Internet we have domain name servers, or special computers that store the IP addresses for every domain name. Unlike your phone book, these domain name server (DNS) computer files are updated on a daily basis.

So that this critical information won't just reside in one place, most large companies, ISPs, and universities maintain their own DNS files to map (translate) host names into IP addresses.

Actually, there are many more steps involved in managing IP addresses, but this gives you the basic idea.

Since 1997, the number of registered Internet domains has grown more than 25-fold.

Some of these domains are "parked," meaning that the people have registered the domain name (primarily to lay claim to and hold the name) but they are not active.

Browsers

If you are reading this page you are at least somewhat familiar with browsers and how they work.

For many years Netscape had the leading browser. In fact, their browser can be traced back to the first efforts to create an interactive (GUI, "goo-ee" or graphical user interface) program for the World-Wide Web.

But then when Netscape was taken over by a large corporation, new and updated versions started to lag. This gave Microsoft, which had a comparatively weak Internet Explorer (IE) browser at the time, to not only the chance to catch up, but to overtake Netscape in both functions and popularity. 

But after a few years, history again repeated itself.  With its clear dominance in the Windows browser market, Microsoft apparently didn't see a need to invest in significant upgrades to their Internet Explorer program. Since the Internet Explorer browser was being used by the vast majority of users, it also became a target for malware.

Other browsers, most notably Mozilla's Firefox and Opera, then hit the scene with some significant advantages. When Firefox was subsequently recommended over the Internet Explorer browser by two major business publications, many people switched. The Google Chrome browser is the most recent browser to be added to the list.

In 2005 Netscape released a major upgrade, Netscape, 8.0, which claimed security advantages over all competing programs. However, in mid-2008 Netscape announced that they would no longer support or update their browser -- effectively ending its life. They then recommended Firefox.

For Mac computers there are the Safari, Firefox, and Camino browsers. A new version of Safari arrived in late 2007 as part of their Leopard operating system (OS). In 2009 a Safari version appeared for Windows machines. Since that time Safari has had regular updates.

All of the browsers have free versions, which considering the complexity of these programs, represents some of the best "freebees" in the computer trade.

According to recent figures, here's how the percentage of users for the three major browsers compared.

With each new version of browsers the features and complexity in web pages can take a step forward. The problem for web page developers is that each is based on slightly different standards.  Thus, pages often look different in different browsers.

Even though the browsers are free, many users lag behind in upgrading to the latest versions. If those of us who write web pages don't take that into consideration, what appears on many computer screens may be quite different than what we intend.

Web Page Code

If you click on the View and Page Source at the top of your browser you should seen a page full of strange computer code.  This is HTML, or hypertext markup language, which is the basic computer code used for writing web pages for the World Wide Web. 

We won't attempt to explain HTML code — that and other web page computer codes would constitute a course in itself  — but if you are interested here's a good resource for getting familiar with HTML.

Many web page editors, such as Expression® and Dreamweaver®, write the code automatically "behind the scenes" as you type.  Even so, in creating sophisticated web pages it's still a good idea to know what's going on "in the code" in order to solve the inevitable problems that develop.

Domain Names

Domain names such as Yahoo.com, PBS.org, or Harvard.edu are unique  --  they are licensed to an organization that, for a fee, has an exclusive right to use them for a period of time.  After that time the holder must renew them or they can be claimed by someone else.

Domain names generally consist of characters that can be in the form of either letters or numbers

There can be hyphens to connect words in the domain name, but there can't be any empty spaces. You can't use an underline character, or begin or end the name with a dash. Names aren't case sensitive, so SampleName.com is the same as samplename.com.

The domain name suffixes used in the United States are primarily "com," "org," "edu," "net," "gov," "tv, "mil," and a few lesser-used suffixes.

The "com" suffix is typically attached to commercial sites, the "org" suffix to nonprofit organizations, "edu" to educational institutions, "net" to Internet service providers, "gov" to government agencies, and "mil" to military installations. Having said that, it should be noted that there are many exceptions.

With the most recent Internet browsers you do not have to type in the full URL. In the case of the search engine google.com, for example, you can simply type in "Google" and hold down the control key (with Windows) and hit return, and the full address will automatically be filled in, as shown here.

Domain Name Suffixes

Since the original domain suffixes were initiated, millions of domain names have been registered, especially with the .com suffix. This has resulted in a shortage of possible new names.

To open the door to additional domain names, new suffixes have been added or proposed. Recently, the biz, .info, .name, .pro, .aero, .museum, and .coop suffixes were added. This chart lists the eight most popular domain suffixes.

Other counties typically use suffixes to identify their country. For example, "CA" indicates Canada, "DE" Germany, and "SE" Sweden. In 2001 there were more than 240 two-digit country codes ranging from "AE" (the United Arab Emirates) to "VN" (Vietnam).

Some countries allow users in other countries to register domains using their country's suffix (and derive revenue from this). An example is ".tv," now being used by some U.S. television stations.

In addition to being associated with a domain, many names, such as IBM™, Microsoft™, CyberCollege™, and InternetCampus™ are registered trademarks. This means that only the holder of the trademark can legally use them.

This obviously creates problems for people happen to have last names such as "Disney," or "McDonald," who would like to have a domain or a business centered on their own name. Many cases of trademark infringement involving such disputes are now in the courts.

Bookmarking Your Favorite Sites

Once you discover a URL (an Internet site) that you think you will want return to you can "bookmark" it or add it to your "favorites" list. Often, you can right click on the site and add it to your bookmarks; however, different browsers handle this differently.

Once you add a bookmark or save a URL in "favorites," you don't have to try to remember the URL. It's even possible to organize these under different categories  --  a procedure that comes in handy if you end up wanting to save a few dozen URLs.

Search Engines

With billions of pages of information on the Internet it would be impossible to locate anything without search engines. The ranking of top four search engines are shown on the left. Recently, Microsoft has launched a search engine called Bing.

Beyond these four there are hundreds of other much smaller search engines that fill out the remaining six percent of the total.

Since most people look for information on the Internet by using one of these search engines, there is great competition to be listed at one of these sites.  By being listed among the top 10 or so entries on a search (which is about as far down as most people search) businesses have a much greater chance of selling products and services.

Some search sites charge businesses for either being placed at or near the top of the listings, or having advertisements for their business appear when a user types in relevant key terms.

When a search is made on basic terms, searches can result in thousands  --  even hundreds of thousands  --  of Internet pages. Therefore, you may want to use some of the search engine's techniques (things to include and exclude, etc.) for narrowing down your searches to a manageable number. Most search engine sites have instructions for doing this with their particular program.

With this module we come to the end of the film and electronic media modules. In the next module we start the story of the major print media.