World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is the leading information retrieval service of the internet. The web gives users access to a vast array of documents that are connected through hypertext or hypermedia links i.e. hyperlinks, electronic connections that link related pieces of information to allow a user easy access. Hypertext allows the user to select a word or phrase from text and thereby access other documents that contain additional information about that word or phrase. Hypermedia documents feature links to images, sound, animations, and movies. The web operates within the internet’s basic client-server format; servers are computer programs that store and transmit documents to other computers on the network. Clients, on the other hand, are programs that request documents from a server as the user asks for them. Browser software allows users to view the retrieved documents.