Web page

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Each Wikipedia article is a distinct web page. The URL is visible in the browser's address bar at the top. Platypus article on Vector 2022.png
Each Wikipedia article is a distinct web page. The URL is visible in the browser's address bar at the top.

A web page (or webpage) is a document on the Web that is accessed in a web browser. [1] A website typically consists of many web pages linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is thus a metaphor of paper pages bound together into a book.

Contents

Each web page is identified by a distinct Uniform Resource Locator (URL). When the user inputs a URL into their web browser, the browser retrieves the necessary content from a web server and then transforms it into an interactive visual representation on the user's screen. [2]

If the user clicks or taps a link, the browser repeats this process to load the new URL, which could be part of the current website or a different one. The browser has features, such as the address bar, that indicate which page is displayed.

Elements

The home page of NASA from 2008 Dead Zone Campaign (2658313491).png
The home page of NASA from 2008

A web page is a structured document. The core element is a text file written in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This specifies the content of the page, [3] including images and video.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) specify the presentation of the page. [3] CSS rules can be in separate text files or embedded within the HTML file.

The vast majority [4] of pages have JavaScript programs, enabling a wide range of behavior. [3] The newer WebAssembly language can also be used as a supplement. [5]

The most sophisticated web pages, known as web apps, combine these elements in a complex manner.

Deployment

From the perspective of server-side website deployment, there are two types of web pages: static and dynamic. Static pages are retrieved from the web server's file system without any modification, [6] while dynamic pages must be created by the server on the fly, typically reading from a database to fill out a template, before being sent to the user's browser. [7] An example of a dynamic page is a search engine results page.

See also

Related Research Articles

Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is a term which was used by some browser vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and client-side scripts that enabled the creation of interactive and animated documents. The application of DHTML was introduced by Microsoft with the release of Internet Explorer 4 in 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTML</span> HyperText Markup Language

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Wide Web</span> Linked hypertext system on the Internet

The World Wide Web is an information system that enables content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists. It allows documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet according to specific rules of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Website</span> Set of related web pages served from a single domain

A website is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education, commerce, entertainment, or social media. Hyperlinking between web pages guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page. The most-visited sites are Google, YouTube, and Facebook.

Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design ; authoring, including standardised code and proprietary software; user experience design ; and search engine optimization. Often many individuals will work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all. The term "web design" is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end design of a website including writing markup. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and be up to date with web accessibility guidelines.

An HTML element is a type of HTML document component, one of several types of HTML nodes. The first used version of HTML was written by Tim Berners-Lee in 1993 and there have since been many versions of HTML. The current de facto standard is governed by the industry group WHATWG and is known as the HTML Living Standard.

Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet or an intranet. Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications, electronic businesses, and social network services. A more comprehensive list of tasks to which Web development commonly refers, may include Web engineering, Web design, Web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, Web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development.

In the context of a web browser, a frame is a part of a web page or browser window which displays content independent of its container, with the ability to load content independently. The HTML or media elements in a frame may come from a web site distinct from the site providing the enclosing content. This practice, known as framing, is today often regarded as a violation of same-origin policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dynamic web page</span> Type of web page

A dynamic web page is a web page constructed at runtime, as opposed to a static web page, delivered as it is stored. A server-side dynamic web page is a web page whose construction is controlled by an application server processing server-side scripts. In server-side scripting, parameters determine how the assembly of every new web page proceeds, and including the setting up of more client-side processing. A client-side dynamic web page processes the web page using JavaScript running in the browser as it loads. JavaScript can interact with the page via Document Object Model (DOM), to query page state and modify it. Even though a web page can be dynamic on the client-side, it can still be hosted on a static hosting service such as GitHub Pages or Amazon S3 as long as there is not any server-side code included.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Progressive enhancement</span> Web design strategy putting emphasis web content first

Progressive enhancement is a strategy in web design that puts emphasis on web content first, allowing everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, while users with additional browser features or faster Internet access receive the enhanced version instead. This strategy speeds up loading and facilitates crawling by web search engines, as text on a page is loaded immediately through the HTML source code rather than having to wait for JavaScript to initiate and load the content subsequently, meaning content ready for consumption "out of the box" is served immediately, and not behind additional layers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web template system</span> System in web publishing

A web template system in web publishing allows web designers and developers work with web templates to automatically generate custom web pages, such as the results from a search. This reuses static web page elements while defining dynamic elements based on web request parameters. Web templates support static content, providing basic structure and appearance. Developers can implement templates from content management systems, web application frameworks, and HTML editors.

A static web page, sometimes called a flat page or a stationary page, is a web page that is delivered to a web browser exactly as stored, in contrast to dynamic web pages which are generated by a web application.

A single-page application (SPA) is a web application or website that interacts with the user by dynamically rewriting the current web page with new data from the web server, instead of the default method of a web browser loading entire new pages. The goal is faster transitions that make the website feel more like a native app.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CSS</span> Style sheet language

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for specifying the presentation and styling of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML. CSS is a cornerstone technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and JavaScript.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CSS HTML Validator</span>

CSS HTML Validator is an HTML editor and CSS editor for Windows that helps web developers create syntactically correct and accessible HTML/HTML5, XHTML, and CSS documents by locating errors, potential problems like browser compatibility issues, and common mistakes. It is also able to check links, check spelling, suggest improvements, alert developers to deprecated, obsolete, or proprietary tags, attributes, and CSS properties, and find issues that can affect search engine optimization.

Content Security Policy (CSP) is a computer security standard introduced to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS), clickjacking and other code injection attacks resulting from execution of malicious content in the trusted web page context. It is a Candidate Recommendation of the W3C working group on Web Application Security, widely supported by modern web browsers. CSP provides a standard method for website owners to declare approved origins of content that browsers should be allowed to load on that website—covered types are JavaScript, CSS, HTML frames, web workers, fonts, images, embeddable objects such as Java applets, ActiveX, audio and video files, and other HTML5 features.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yesod (web framework)</span>

Yesod is a web framework based on the programming language Haskell for productive development of type-safe, representational state transfer (REST) model based, high performance web applications, developed by Michael Snoyman, et al. It is free and open-source software released under an MIT License.

Front-end web development is the development of the graphical user interface of a website through the use of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so users can view and interact with that website.

ASP.NET Web Forms is a web application framework and one of several programming models supported by the Microsoft ASP.NET technology. Web Forms applications can be written in any programming language which supports the Common Language Runtime, such as C# or Visual Basic. The main building blocks of Web Forms pages are server controls, which are reusable components responsible for rendering HTML markup and responding to events. A technique called view state is used to persist the state of server controls between normally stateless HTTP requests.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to web design and web development, two very related fields:

References

  1. "Web page – definition of web page by The Free Dictionary". Archived from the original on 23 April 2021. Retrieved 23 April 2021.
  2. "Behind the scenes of modern web browsers". Tali Garsiel. Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 Flanagan, David (18 April 2011). JavaScript: the definitive guide. Beijing; Farnham: O'Reilly. p. 1. ISBN   978-1-4493-9385-4. OCLC   686709345. JavaScript is part of the triad of technologies that all Web developers must learn: HTML to specify the content of web pages, CSS to specify the presentation of web pages, and JavaScript to specify the behavior of web pages.
  4. "Usage Statistics of JavaScript as Client-side Programming Language on Websites". W3Techs. Retrieved 27 February 2024.
  5. "The State of WebAssembly 2023". Scott Logic. 18 October 2023. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  6. Melendez, Steven (10 August 2018). "The Difference Between Dynamic & Static Web Pages". Chron. Archived from the original on 20 March 2019. Retrieved 20 March 2019. Static by definition means something that does not change. The first pages on the World Wide Web were largely static and unchanged, delivering the same information about a particular topic to anyone who visited. In some cases, sites may evolve slightly over time but are still largely static, meaning that they only change when manually changed by their creators, not on a regular and automated basis.
  7. "Definition of: dynamic Web page". PC Magazine . Archived from the original on 17 January 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2019. A Web page that provides custom content for the user based on the results of a search or some other request.