Cary Antill's Draft: Web Development - 3 Simple Web Pages

Case 1: A Simple Web Page

Picture a simple web page, with an image, links to 2 other pages in the site (navigation), and links to 3 external pages. The site is located on a web server contracted thru a web hosting service, and the pages are viewed on the web browsers of the site's target audience:

Web Page: html, formatted text, image, links, navigation.h
Browser: makes request, renders page according to display capabilities (Accessibility) acts on link events - requests different page.
Server: web server, which like the browser is a special software application, in this case it allows the server computer to respond to web(http) requests. It feeds pages that are stored on the server.

Case 2: Send Me a Widget

Now, let's look at a page that contains a form that allows users to order up a widget:

Web Page: html, with a form containing a server processing direction, entry fields, and a submit button.
Browser: allows users to enter information, and when submit button is pressed, sends the entry info. along with processing direction back to the server.
Server: web server receives response from browser, feeds the entry info to a program (e.g. PHP, ASP, perl), feeds back response page that is generated by program.

Case 3: Can You Animate That?

Now, let's look at a page that contains a flash animation:

Web page: html, with an instruction to play an embedded flash file .
Browser: if flash plug-in is installed and registered with the browser, loads plug-in, requests flash file from the server, and plays back the animation.
Server: feeds web page and flash file to browser upon request.

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Page last updated 1/14/2006.