So how does the Web really work, anyway?

I’m always fascinated to learn how things work, especially stuff we completely take for granted, like for instance how electricity gets from a power plant to your house. So in the hopes that there are others like me out there, I’m going to describe the inner workings of something most of us take for granted: the World-Wide Web.

Naturally this is going to take more than one post, since I’ll try to start from fairly non-technical concepts, and use analogies. Those of you who already know most of this may find the explanations not quite accurate, because I’ll leave out a lot of the nitpicky details, especially at first. I don’t have an outline in mind, so I can’t say exactly how this is going to go, but here’s a basic idea of what I’ll try to cover:

  • Internet 101
  • What is a protocol?
  • Before the Web was born
  • HTTP vs. HTML
  • Why are there different browsers?
  • What’s a URL and how do I read it?
  • What is actually happening when I click that link?
  • How does the page get to me?
  • What if there’s a problem?
  • How forms work
  • Secure connections (HTTPS)
  • E-commerce and shopping carts
  • Web video
  • More security concerns
  • What’s “Web 2.0”?

Hmmm, OK, just off the top of my head I came up with a lot more than I thought I would. And there’s a lot more where that came from! So we’ll see how far I get, and how many entries it takes.

9 thoughts on “So how does the Web really work, anyway?

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