Web206: Topic 1.3: Cut, Paste and Copyright (and Information Overload)

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/dermartin/2955625983/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Information Overload

Information overload is a concern these days with so much information available on the Internet. Back in the days before the Internet when everything was printed - printing costs were high and demand and accessibility for certain material was low. Nowadays because EVERYTHING is available online and mainly for free, how do we filter out what we don't want? How much time do you spend deleting spam from your inbox? How many ads do you avoid while surfing the net? How much do you believe? Who are trusted, reliable and credible sources? Most things published online have NOT gone through an editor or a gate-keeper so people are able to air their grievances and express their opinions to anybody around the world.


Video: Clay Shirky's "It's not information overload, it's filter failure"

Video courtesy of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabqeJEOQyI

My notes from this video:

• Facebook has one of the BEST thought-out and executed privacy management tools of all the social networking sites. What the problem is though is that managing our privacy is an unnatural act - it isn't something that anybody is good at setting up and doing
• Privacy is a way of managing information flow
• We don't tend to worry about having a discussion with a friend in the street and somebody overhearing us. But we do worry about what is 'overhead' online, ie. status updates and relationship statuses on Facebook

We have had information overload in some form

or another since the 1500s.

What's changing now is the filters we used for most of that

500 year period are now breaking (Shirky, 2008).

Copyright

Everything we write is almost always based on something that someone else has written. Privacy is the infringement of copyright, while plagarism is the failure to give credit. If we are repeating something another person has said - we need to credit that person - EVEN IF they stole it from somebody else!

As a Web Designer we need to think about the images and content we create. Do we want others to be able to share our images? Re-use them? Modify them? Or make money from them? We need to either copyright our designs (visual or text) or apply a Creative Commons Licence. This needs to be enforced for future Internet users. Generations to come need to be aware of the dangers and penalties of copyright - whether we agree with the current copyright laws or not!

Lawrence Lessig (US lawyer and anti-copyright campaigner) is well known for his stand on copyright legislation and believes we need a reform because the current copyright laws are smothering creators. Creators are not able to express themselves without the fear of being penalised for plagarism. He believes creativity is not based on coming up with completely new ideas, but from modifying existing ideas. Everything old is new again.

Berry states "the paramount claim of Lessig's prognosis about the fate of culture is that we will be unable to create new culture when the resources of that culture are owned and controlled by a limited number of private corporations and individuals (Berry, 2005). He goes on to say the Creative Commons network might enable sharing of cultural goods and resources amongst possessive individuals and groups. But these goods are neither really shared in common, nor owned in common, nor accountable to the common itself. It is left to the whims of private individuals and groups to permit reuse.

Berry isn't a fan of Lessig and believes that Lessig's attempt to make it easier to understand which creative works can, or cannot, be used for modification has spawned a monster with a thousand heads and resulted in a more complex issue as the current copyright act (Berry, 2005).

As a web designer not only do we need to consider copyrighted images, but also code from other websites. Consider for instance the common practice of downloading html tags that define the layout of a website. Even if you don't include any of the content and only use the html and css coding to style a new webpage - is that copyright infringement? Are web designers obligated to give credit to the original author? What if that author stole it from another...and from another...and so on? The copyright issue in this situation is unclear (Snapper, 1999).

Plagiarism harms the author who receives no credit, but unless there is also copyright infringement, an author has few legal grounds for claiming economic loss for a plagiarised use of his work. There is no direct financial harm.

Snapper believes that the actual harm is not to the author, but to the reader. If sources are not credited - the reader can do no further research via the (un)credited sources.

An interesting point which Snapper raises is although academics write a great deal and profit from their writings with academic recognition, they rarely expect to make much money from copyright licenses.

And another...electronic publications lowers both the cost and the financial risk of publication, and therefore suggests that the electronic publication industry needs fewer copyright protections that the hard-copy publication industry (Snapper, 1999).

It is more likely that as the Web becomes a more important tool for research and distribution of information, we will see a slight shift in the importance that is attached to piracy and plagiarism. In order to protect the scholarly community against plagiarism in cyberspace, we may need to lessen the property protections of the copyright owner in cyberspace.

Snapper asks this in relation to Fair Use:

Scholars should be able to keep a copy of a source -

but this is considered plagiarism.

Therefore it would seem reasonable that copying

for the sake of archiving electronic information

be seen as 'fair use'.

An interesting question from Clay Shirky on the topic of information overload, but I think it suits the current copyright laws:

If we have the same problem for a long time -

maybe it's not a problem - it's a fact (Shirky, 2008)!

Sources of images

As a Web Designer I am always trying to source images to use which are permitted or licence free. This presentation was created by a fellow student, Katrina Comyns. She discusses remixing and re-using stock images and explains the difference between licenced, free and royalty free.

Un-complicating the complex world of remixing and reusing Stock Photography - A guide for graphic designers on Prezi

Here is a list of sources which offer free, royalty free, licence free, or paid images:

• Clip art from within Word etc. (this typically comes with the license to use the program)
• Free clip art sites (Google them but make sure they are free - many want a fee) OpenClipArt is a good one
• Royalty free art (This is art where you pay a once-off fee and can then use without paying royalties. 123RF is a good one.
• Stockphoto
• StockFreeImages 
• Shutterstock
• Freepik
• Getty images
• Wikimedia Commons
• Stock.XCHNG
• Creative Commons
• Flickr - search under 'Attribution license"

---

References:

Berry, D (2005) On the 'Creative Commons': a critique of the commons without commonalty. Retrieved from http://fsmsh.com/1155

Comyns, K (2012) Un-complicating the complex world of remixing and reusing Stock Photography - A guide for graphic designers. Retrieved from http://prezi.com/aowz1lv9k-pm/un-complicating-the-complex-world-of-remixing-and-reusing-stock-photography-a-guide-for-graphic-designers/

Shirky, C (2008) Web 2.0 Expo NY: Clay Shirky (shirky.com) It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabqeJEOQyI

Snapper, J (1999) On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy. Dept Humanities, Institute of Technology, Chicago.

NED11: Module 7

Notes from Unit Outline
Browser Wars
Although great steps have been taken to establish standards that will alleviate display problems, they still represent one of the biggest challenges for web designers today. Your typical HTML document is nothing but a set of instructions written in ASCII that tells your visitor's browser what other files to download and how to display then.

Here are some differences between computer systems:

The history of browsers

• Mosaic was the first browser and was very very slow because it waited for the entire page to load before showing anything
• Netscape was next and was a commercial version of Mosaic and was much faster
• Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 3.6 was the first browser from Microsoft and revolutionised free access to web browsers. Microsoft gave away the browser for free with their operating systems
• Mozilla Foundation established in 2003 and once Microsoft solidified their lead in the browser war, they stopped doing any serious development on IE after the year 2000. So Mozilla released browsers which automatically blocked pop-up ads and introduced other new features to create a faster and more enjoyable browsing experience
• IE 9 is now the most current Microsoft browser
• FireFox is currently THE most popular browser, however Chrome is gaining popularity every month.

This table shows the most popular browsers for 2010, 2011 and 2012:

User Centered Design: User Statistics
The web has been designed to use as many client resources as possible to speed up browsing. These resources include fonts, colours, screen resolutions and more. There are many sites with useful information about browsers for web designers:

Browser News: this one is of particular interest and gives website designers news about browsers and design, helps find browsers, offers design resources and reports Internet statistics:

• A good way to ensure that sites will work for as many users as possible is to (a) design sites to the HTML, CSS, DOM, and other standards, avoiding “bleeding edge” features of the standards, (b) to test sites with common browsers that implement the standards well, then (c) to test sites with other browsers and to tweak the code to make sites work well enough for antique browsers still in common use
• Older versions of Internet Explorer — chiefly IE 5 and 6 — cause the biggest problems. The problems can typically be overcome by adding minor CSS code changes, often within IE conditional comments to ensure that the changes are visible only to those versions which need them
• Many people use very old browsers, some of which have unfixed security defects, all of which are less capable than newer browsers
• Some browsers — notably Internet Explorer — are supported for very long periods of time, reducing the incentive for users to update. Browser makers often end support for older operating systems, which prevents users from upgrading to the safest, most capable browsers. For example, IE9 is not available for anything older than Windows Vista
• Many smartphones use Apple’s WebKit, which is KHTML-based.

(Information courtesy of http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat_trends.htm)

This is a table of personal computer web browsers by year of release of major version

Image courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#KHTML-based_browsers

Screen Resolution

• Resolution refers to dots per inch or pixels in multimedia. The higher the resolution, the smoother and more detailed an image appears
• Mac computers = 72 pixels per inch
• Windows computers = 96 pixels per inch
• 72 pixels per inch (dpi) are considered the standard for multimedia use
• In theory a 72dpi image will appear to be one inch wide on a Mac screen and slightly smaller on a Windows screen.

Tutorial Exercise

Go to http://www.ranks.nl/tools/screen_resolutions.html and test the Curtin website for the following screen sizes: 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768. What observations did you make? Will the page work effectively at each resolution? Why or why not? Which resolution seems to be best?

I tried this exercise on my default Mac Safari browser however I noticed no difference in screen size or resolution because Safari didn't open a new browser window - it only opened a new tab which took on the dimensions of currently opened tabs. I then tried the exercise in FireFox and noticed the following results:

• 640 x 480 showed a small window with the dimensions 14.6cm x 8.4cm. I could see the global navigation links and the site heading, however I needed to scroll down and right to see the remainder of the page. Resolution was fine.
• 800 x 600 showed a medium sized window with the dimensions 18.4cm x 11.1cm. I could see global navigation, some content, the header and the short cut menus, however I still needed to scroll down and right to see the rest of the page. Resolution was fine.
• 1024x768 was the largest window to open up with dimensions 23.4cm x 15cm. I could see much of the screen and only needed to scroll down, not right. Resolution was fine.

Summary: I noticed no difference in resolution - only the screen size differed (the amount of content readable). The pages worked effectively at all sizes, however 1024x768 took less scrolling so I would consider it more functional and time efficient.

Go to http://www.anybrowser.com/ and run the Curtin home page through the following browser tests to see if there are any problems: SiteViewer, HTML Validation and Engine View.

• Site Viewer - all text was aligned along the left margin with no line breaks. It looked very crowded, text heavy and had no images. Upon first glance it looked like a page full of links, however upon closer inspection there was text included. The text looked very similar to the links as the links did NOT stand out, were not blue or underlined and looked like the standard text. There was no visual hierarchy at all and the information was very unattractive

• HTML Validation - I received this message: 

Unknown option: x Unknown option: d
Weblint Gateway
http://www.curtin.edu.au
Extensions: netscape
Warning Level: Gateway Default (-d quote-attribute-value)
Wed Apr 25 06:32:11 2012
Weblint error report
weblint v2.06
Usage: weblint [filename or url]... (filename - reads STDIN)
--help This message
--context[=n] Show the offending line (and n surrounding lines)
Error types: (default: all on)
--[no]structure Structural issues, like unclosed tag pairs
--[no]helper Helper issues, like missing HEIGHT & WIDTH
--[no]fluff Fluff that can be removed, like bad tag attributes
--only Turns off all other error types, as in --only --fluff

• Engine View - This is what the Curtin site looks like to viewers: 

NED11: Module 3

Notes from Unit Outline
In the real world people can see where they are going because we are surrounded by navigational clues like signs, maps, sounds, smells, colours and climates. However on the Internet, it is very easy to get lost. You have a very little sense of where you are. Think about your Internet use yesterday. Is it easy to remember the sites you stumbled across? What navigational tools do you use to help you find your way?

It is important to make your website easy to learn - transparent and obvious to your users because you only have one chance to make a first impression! Navigation should be consistent across pages within your website. If you move your navigation from one page to the next, people will get lost. Don't remove the page they are on from the tabs, but dim it so they know where they are.

If you're building a site for a large corporation with many departments, try using multiple sub-sites. Check IBM for an example. Colour coded sections and roll-overs are a good way of providing feedback to users. Koodoz has very interesting navigational links. A 'back' button doesn't necessarily take the reader back a page - they may have arrived at that page from elsewhere. It is important to provide a 'home' button instead. If your navigation doesn't stand out from the rest of your content - it won't be very clear. It must be noticed and obvious! It is crucial that you understand your audience.

Tutorial Exercise: Style Sheet Basics
We were asked to install the Web Developer Tools extension for Mozilla FireFox. I did that and played around with the CSS enabling and disabling. It was interesting to see how a page's appearance changes when you alter the CSS style sheet.

What I've learnt about HTML, XHTML and CSS so far


HTML:

• In HTML hidden code should be written like <!--like this. This text cannot be seen by the browser, only by you and others who are reading the code-->
• Instead of hand-writing html - the program Dream Weaver by Creative Suite does it
• Tag + content + tag = element
• 6 different heading types are permitted: <h1>, <h2>...<h6>
• An href element contains a hyperlink to either an internal folder or external URL
• An img src element contains a link to an image
• The root folder is the top level folder of your website - the folder to which every page on your website links back to. The index is the 'home' page
• Relative paths link pages within the same website while URL's link to other websites
• Title attribute = when you hover your mouse over a link and a small flag pops up telling you something about that link
• To link to a specific spot on a webpage, use the id attribute and anchor points
• Most people view links BEFORE content
• Block elements are elements that stand on their own, like <h1>, <p> and <blockquotes> They add a line break below (sometimes above)
• Inline elements are those which flow on the same line like <q>, <a> and <em>
• <br> and <img> are empty elements - they don't need a closing tag
• Nesting refers to elements nested inside other elements
• As a coder you should use special characters instead of numbers, entities and symbols so all browsers display the text correctly. Numbers, entities and special characters can be found here
• Lists <li> can be ordered <ol> or unordered <ul> and don't need to begin at the number 1. To start a list at 100, for example, the html would be entered like this:

<ol>

<li value="100">Coffee</li>

<li>Tea</li>

</ol>

• jpegs are best used for complex graphics and graphics with colour (like photos)
• gifs are best for single or 2 colour images, like logos and are best for transparent backgrounds
• A document type tells the browser which version of html you're using
• Meta tags tell the browser the content type of the file and the kinds of characters used to encode it

XHTML:

• The 'X' in XHTML stands for extensible
• XML is extensible markup language
• Using XHTML means that screen readers are able to view browsers correctly, as are mobile devices and many different browsers
• More so than ever, it is important to convert all special characters to entities using this guide here
• Empty tags need to be closed now. So the regular old <br> tag now becomes < /br> with a space before the slash
• A paragraph cannot contain a list any longer
• <ol>, <ul> and <p> are block elements so cannot use one within the other, i.e. a list will now look like this:

<p>This is a list</p>
<ul>
<li>Item 1</li>
<li>Item 2</li>
</ul>

• <img src> must go inside a <p> now, must have an alt attribute and a closing tag, e.g.

<img src="images/segway2.jpg" alt="segway2" />

• An href tag needs to go inside a <p>, i.e.

<p>
<a href="../lounge.html">Back to the lounge< /a>
</p>

CSS:

• In CSS hidden code should be written like /*like this. This can only be seen by code readers. It does not show in the browser*/
• An example of read-baked CSS may look like:

<style type="text/css">

body {

background-color: #d2b48c;

margin-left: 20%;

border: 1px dotted gray;

padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px;

font-family: sans-serif;

}

</style>

• CSS code must go within the <head> in html
• To change a heading to gray sans serif, the code looks like this:

h1 {
font-family: sans-serif; color: gray;
}

• To change a paragraph background colour to red, the code looks like this:

p {
background-color: red;
}

• From the above examples it is clear that CSS looks different than html. Gone are the <tags> and {braces} replace them
• You can change all paragraphs to the red background using the code above like you can change all heading 1's into tray sans serif just by entering the code once. You don't' have to individually code ever paragraph or every heading 1
• You can have as many rules as you want for each element, e.g. you can tell a h1 to be maroon sans-serif 14pt font and underline all at the same time
• All CSS can be entered within the <head> of the html document, HOWEVER it is best practice to create your own CSS style sheet which is a separate document to the html code. That way when you have a multi-page website and need to change background colours, text colours, fonts etc, you can simply make one change...in the CSS document rather than have to change every page individually
• To tell a browser to find a style sheet, you enter this code within the head:

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="filename.css" />

NED11: Module 2

Notes from Unit Outline
When the internet was first established the four most common utilities were Email, Newsgroups (Usenet), Telnet (command line interface) and FTP (file transfer protocol).

The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and released in 1991. Here is the world's very first web page.

Gopher was introduced around the same time by Paul Lindner and Mark P McCahill at the University of Minnesota. It was the first internet hypertext system - and only text. Here is the last remaining Gopher entry point.

The WWW was initially used in the form of text-only interface due to modem speeds, however now with faster internet speeds, images and other data can transfer much faster.

Every computer has it's on IP address and every website has it's own URL (uniform resource locator). Here is quite a bit of information on the history and the purpose of URL's. Let's break down a URL to understand it better. Take a look at this URL:

http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/dept/design/index.html

http = protocol
www = server name
curtin = domain name
edu = type
au = country
curtin = directory
dept = sub directory
design = sub directory
index.html = file name.

To register a domain name in Australia - there are many sites to do this. This is one. This is the one I used to register mine. To register international domains you can use this one, but there are many. A simple Google search will show many many results. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers shows the 'type' extensions, why and when they were all created.

Web Design Basics:
To begin building a website using html code, you need a text editing program. As I use a Mac computer, I downloaded the free Text Wrangler. There are many available. Google 'text editing program' and there are many free and paid versions.

In addition to using a text editor, it is a good idea to test your coding in more than one browser. I use the default browser, Safari and also downloaded Mozilla FireFox for Mac. The beauty of FireFox is you can also download additional plug-ins which are great for designers. I particularly like the add-on called ColorZilla. When you come across a colour on a webpage that you like - click on the ColorZilla tool, click on the colour and the html colour number is saved to a clipboard. Then when you return to your text editor to change the colour of your font or background - you have the html colour number ready to insert.

Here is an image of some html coding in Text Wrangler:

Here is what the above html code looks like in Safari:

And here it is in FireFox:

If you look closely you will see a difference between how the Safari browser displays the html code to the FireFox browser. The html code is identical with the exact same font type and font size, however it DOES look different. For interest's sake - have a look at this blog in more than one browser. It should differ in appearance - maybe a slight colour variation or font type or size. The more browsers you can test your coding in - the better! This exercise is taken from our textbook 'Head First HTML and CSS' by Freeman and Freeman. I will be working my way through this text book during NED11.

So what exactly is HTML?
HTML documents are plain-text (also known as ASCII) files that can be created using any text editor (e.g., Emacs or vi on UNIX machines; BBEdit on a Macintosh; Notepad on a Windows machine). You can also use word-processing software if you remember to save your document as "text only with line breaks." (Information courtesy of http://www.put.com/HTMLPrimer.html).

Here is a very brief example of necessary html code required for a website:

<html>
    <head>
    <TITLE>A Simple HTML Example</TITLE>
    </head>
    <body>
    <H1>HTML is Easy To Learn</H1>
    <P>Welcome to the world of HTML. 
    This is the first paragraph. While short it is 
    still a paragraph!</P>
    <P>And this is the second paragraph.</P>
    </body>
    </html>

If you want to learn html, there are many tutorials online. I would suggest starting with the W3 Schools.  This is also another good beginner's guide.

Exercise 1: Web Design Basics

1. The above code contains tags which make up the basic structure of an html document
2. The <p> tag denotes the start of a paragraph
3. The difference between a <p> tag and a <br> tag is that a <p> tag puts a line break above and below the text - similar to starting a paragraph. Whereas the <br> tag only does one line break below the text
4. To create a bulleted list you use these tags: <ul> <li> and </ul>. The <ul> tag means unordered list and <li> means list
5. To create a numbered list you use these tags: <ol> <li> and </ol>. The <ol> tag means ordered list
6. When you open your browser and go to a website you will notice a title in the browser header (or the tab header if you use tabs). Look up! See the name of this blog in the browser title? This title is provided in the html coding in this way <title>Blogger: Internet Design Units</title>
7. To add an image to html coding the required element (or tag) is <imgsrc="nameofimage.jpg">
8. To add a link to html coding the required element is: <a href="URLhere">
9. To make an image a clickable link you need to put the <img> element inside the <a> element. You need the URL of the site you want the image to take you to when clicked on AND the location of the image file. The code is entered like so: <a href="sitetogotowhenclicked"><img src="locationofimage.jpg"></a>. Don't forget to close your a href element with </a>
10. The coding required to make a table 3 columns x 4 rows is:

<table>

<tr>

<td>row 1 column 1</td>

<td>row 1 column 2</td>

<td>row 1 column 3</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>row 2 column 1</td>

<td>row 2 column 2</td>

<td>row 2 column 3</td>

</tr>

<td>row 3 column 1</td>

<td>row 3 column 2</td>

<td>row 3 column 3</td>

</tr>

</table>

Definitions:

<table> begins the table and </table> ends the table.

<tr> is the beginning of a table row while </tr> ends the table row.

<td> is the table data cell. This is where the actual information is entered. </td> ends the table data cell.

Exercise 2: HTML Introduction

1. To provide invisible information in a html document, you type the element: <!--hidden text here-->
2. Spaces between words should be entered as %20 so they are displayed properly. It is also important to ensure you use <br> and <p> effectively so your text appears as the browser exactly as you typed it in the html document
3. You can provide additional information in your html document in the form of a small pop-up message when you hover your mouse over it. The tag is written like so: <img src="urlofimage.gif" alt="here is the pop-up message">
4. You can create a link that jumps to a different section of the same page by using the <a> element as a landing point. There are three steps to this. Firstly find the location on the page where you would like the landing point to be (like a heading) and wrap a short piece of text in an <a> element. Then choose a name for this section of text like "jump to here" and insert an id attribute into the point you want to jump FROM, like so: <a href="URLofpagewithlandingpoint.com#landingpoint"FROM HERE</a>. This lesson on w3schools shows an example
5. To show a table with empty cells you need to indicate the border width like so: <table border="1">. This creates a table with a border thickness of 1. The higher the number - the thicker the border
6. To turn an image into a hypertext link you need to embed the URL of the image within the <a href> element. You can add a border around the image by using the element <img border="3" src="image" alt="URL" width="32" height="32"/>. Once again, the higher the number - the thicker the border
7. To change the colour of hypertext links use this tag: <body link=#ff0000>. This will change all links to the colour red.
8. To change the background colour of text, you need to add this html: p style="background-color:#FFFF00">. The colour is determined using the HEX value. HEX means the number used to identified colours used on the internet. Here are the HEX values of all colours.

A very useful tag:

To add an 'email to' link to a webpage, use the following tags within the body of html:

    <p>

    This is an email link:

    <a href="mailto:someone@example.com?Subject=Hello%20again">

    Send Mail</a>

    </p>

NED11: Module 1

Notes from Unit Outline
The internet is 43 years old and was originally called ARPA - the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The original computers that comprised ARPA were housed at Stanford University, UCLA, UCSB and the University of Utah. It was revolutionary because it was decentralised. Even now the internet is not owned by anybody or corporation. It was originally designed for communication between universities, however nowadays commercial users make up most of the internet.

This site traces the route the internet takes when you access your browser. It's quite interesting to see how far it travels once a command has left your computer.

The internet also revolutionised the cost of global communication and made it cheaper to communicate with people overseas via Skype for example. Distance is now irrelevant.

Exercise 1: Internet Timeline and milestones
This photo shows the number of websites that have been created since 1990...

Image courtesy of: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/

Five milestones of the Internet Timeline most relevant to the world wide web, screen design and multimedia design issues:

1. 1990 - The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access; the first remotely operated machine is hooked up to the Internet
2. 1993 - Businesses and media begin taking notice of the Internet
3. 1994 - 1995 - Communities begin to be wired up directly to the Internet; A number of Net related companies go public, with Netscape leading the pack with the 3rd largest ever NASDAQ IPO share value
4. 2002 - 2003 - blogs become popular; The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sues 261 individuals for allegedly distributing copyright music files over peer-to-peer networks
5. 2006 - Emerging Technology of 'Cloud' computing

Information courtesy of: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/

Exercise 2: Tim Berners-Lee FAQ

1) Tim Berners-Lee's role in the development of the internet: He invented the World Wide Web. The WWW is only one feature of the internet.

2) He talked about HTML, SVG, RDF and XML back in 2000. 

3) The very first website was extremely basic with a white background, black text and blue links. There were no graphics or animations. I consider it a static website. It differs from websites of today because of it's bland appearance and lack of interaction with viewers. It has limited HTML code with basic tags consisting of <header>, <title>, <body> and a basic table.

4) The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium - the web police. They control coding regulations. They care about standards because it's important that all browsers are capable of reading common coding so webpages can display correctly.

5) As the // has become unnecessary in URL's the Curtin domain could be entered as http:students.curtin.edu.au/administration/admissions and the browser would assume the double slash is present. 

6) The most popular browsers nowadays are Internet Explorer 9, Safari, FireFox, Google Chrome and Opera. I believe they are so because they have the fastest load times. Internet users are getting more impatient and want webpages to load as fast as we blink! These browsers open the fastest.

7) The 3 colours which were first used on webpages were blue for links which change to red when hovered over and purple when visited. 

Interesting facts:

• In the 1960s, J.C.R. Licklider published his ideas about the future role of multi access interactive computing. He looked beyond the existing limitations of punched cards and paper tape to a time when computers would interact in real time with the human user. By performing numerous routine tasks on demand, computers could contribute to a person's ability to formulate new insights and decisions. He saw man-computer interaction as enhancing both the quality and efficiency of human problem solving. Information courtesy of http://apotheca.hpl.hp.com/ftp/pub/DEC/SRC/research-reports/abstracts/src-rr-061.html