Web Browsers and Web Servers
Because it is an Internet service, the World Wide Web is based on clients and servers. A World Wide Web client is called a Web browser or simply a browser, and a World Wide Web server is called a Web server or sometimes just a server. Web browsers and Web servers use a set of communications rules called Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
A Web browser is a program that navigates through the World Wide Web and displays pages. The Web browser requests a page from a server based on its Internet address. It retrieves the document from the server and displays the contents.
As HTML evolves, Web browsers are evolving with it, adding more advanced functionality. For example, Microsoft Internet Explorer displays ActiveX Controls and runs VBScript programs and Java applets.
All Web Browsers Do Not Display HTML in the Same Way
HTML tags and attributes are interpreted differently by different types of Web browsers. The appearances of the various page elements may differ from Web browser to Web browser. However, the structural relationship between elements will be the same — table cells will be inside their rows, and headings will appear larger than the paragraphs that follow them.
When editing in FrontPage, you can preview a page in a Web browser using the Preview in Browser command. When you choose this command, it opens the Preview in Browser dialog box which lists the Web browsers installed on your computer. Select a Web browser and FrontPage launches it with the current page displayed.
A server on the World Wide Web stores pages and sends them to a browser when requested. Web servers are not simply file servers, however. They also run programs, called Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs or CGI scripts, based on requests from Web browsers.
CGI scripts run on the server and usually return some HTML for the Web browser to display. For example, when a user fills in a form on a page to register for a service, the form is often processed by a CGI script that could:
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Enter the user’s name and other information into a database on the server
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Compose an HTML page that thanks the user by name for the information
Send the page back to the Web browser to be displayed
Do I need to create my own CGI scripts? No. Built-in FrontPage components provide rich functionality that would otherwise require complex CGI programming. Insert them on your page to add interactive features such as navigation bars, threaded discussion groups, full text searches, and form processing.
