The World Wide Web is undoubtedly the development of the decade in the media world. Since its beginnings in 1990, the WWW has evolved from a rather simple model of resource names (URL), a transfer protocol (HTTP), and a language for the description of interconnected information pages (HTML), to a far more complex infrastructure. This book gives a thorough technical description of all relevant WWW developments up to the time of writing, including the latest versions of the transfer protocol (HTTP/1.1) and description language (HTML 4.0), the foundations of the description language (SGML and its upcoming variant XML), style sheets (CSS1), server issues (SSL, CGI, and Apache as an example of a Web server), and some issues that will be of increasing importance in future (MathML, VRML, PNG).

This book provides readers with comprehensive details on how the WWW works, complete with definitions and standards. It discusses the latest versions of the transfer protocol (HTTP 1.1), the description language (HTML 4.0), the foundations of the description language (SGML and XML), style sheets (CSS1), web servers, and security (SSL and CGI). Issues of importance for the future development of the WWW are discussed, including virtual reality (VRML), portable network graphics (PNG), and MathML.

Foreword.- Preface.- Overview.- List of Figures.- List of Tables.- Introduction.- Fundamentals.- Universal Resource Identifier (URI).- Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).- Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).- Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).- Extensible Markup Language (XML).- Scripting and Programming.- HTTP Servers.- Miscellaneous.- Related Technology.- Appendices: HTTP/1.1 Definitions.- HTML 4.0 Definitions.- XML 1.0 Definitions.- References.- Glossary.- Index.