Tech Byts

Issue  #6    January 12, 1998

Software Byts

What's all this about ISP's , AOL, Prodigy, etc.?

First , the Internet is just a network of computers talking and sending messages to each other through phone lines (and things like a T1 line or Optic Fiber lines). The first companies to capitalize on this ability were ones like AOL, Prodigy & CompuServe. They made it easy for the novice (newbie in internet lingo) to get on line and utilize many different aspects such as the chats, research and email. They, of course, charged for these services usually on a per minute basis. Those of us more computer literate were able to tweak our computers to use free services like Sailor (through the library system). Most of the time what we shared was all in text - no pictures. The commercial companies also added graphics occasionally. We could get graphics but we had to download them onto our computer and look at them later offline.

Then came Netscape and Internet Explorer onto the scene. They made it possible for everyone to see pictures along with the text. They are known as HTML (HyperText Markup Language) browsers. They put the things you see into a special language which is understood by any computer that has that software on it. If you want to see what it looks like, go to our homepage, go to the menu item "View" then "Document Source" or "Source". It will show you that all web pages are just text files, the browser on your computer turns that text into the pictures, etc.

Hardware Byts Classroom Byts Lyte Byts

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