The World-Wide Web Initiative

The World-Wide Web (W3) is a way of viewing all the online information available on the Internet as a seamless, browsable continuum. Using hypertext jumps and searches, the user navigates through an information world partly hand-authored, partly computer-generated from existing databases and information systems. The web today incorporates all information from more basic information systems such as Gopher as WAIS, as well as sophisticated multimedia and hypertext information from many organizations. As a user interface tool, W3 clients provides a comprehensive point-and-click network access tools, while W3 servers provide an efficient, friendly method of providing data to real users. This paper answers some commonly asked questions about W3, such as those comparing it with other systems, and about recent developments and future directions global hypermedia will take.