The World Wide Web explosion shows no signs of slowing down. It proved so intuitive and so much fun to use that people almost immediately began to see other uses for the Web browsing "metaphor."
One of the first and most obvious was to build Webs that didn't communicate over the Internet at all, but were confined within the computer systems of individual companies and institutions. A term was quickly coined to distinguish these internal Webs: intranets.
The major difference between an intranet and a Web site--besides the obvious fact that the former is constrained to an individual site, while the latter is worldwide--is the audience. On a Web site, the content is aimed at the public, while an intranet addresses the needs of an organization's own employees.
This means that intranets are more likely to contain company-specific--even confidential--data, such as sales reports, customer databases, training materials, and employee manuals.
Though these kinds of data have been available on internal corporate networks for years, the difference with intranets is in the presentation. HTML and associated technologies are used to create user interfaces which are as fun and easy to use as those on most World Wide Web sites. Data which might have previously been locked up in difficult-to-use corporate databases can be made easily accessible to even computer novices.
Even with only a year or two of real-world usage, the utility of corporate intranets has already been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. Netscape Communications Corporation, a publisher of Web-server and client software and one of the premier advocates of intranet development, says that a resounding majority of their intranet customers report substantial cost savings after installing corporate intranets. Some have claimed 1000% returns on their investments, according to Netscape. In the world of business, this is a phenomenal rate of return, and a claim which has grabbed the attention of the majority of Fortune 500 companies--as well as many that are much, much smaller.
In fact, interest in intranets is so great that HTML server and client publishers like Netscape and Microsoft predict that the majority of their HTML-related income over the next few years will be generated by intranet development, not the World Wide Web
SGML (Standard Generalized Mark-up Language) to HTML
HTML developed a few years ago as a subset of SGML (Standard Generalized Mark-up Language) which is a higher-level mark-up language that has long been a favorite of the Department of Defense. Like HTML, it describes formatting and hypertext links, and it defines different components of a document. HTML is definitely the simpler of the two, and although they are related, there are few browsers that support both.
Because HTML was conceived for transmission over the Internet (in the form of Web pages), it is much simpler than SGML, which is more of an application-oriented document format. While it's true that many programs can load, edit, create, and save files in the SGML format (just as many programs can create and save programs in the Microsoft Word format), SGML is not exactly ideal for transmission across the Internet to many different types of computers, users, and browser applications.
HTML is more suited to this task. Designed with these considerations in mind, HTML lets you, the designer, create pages that you are reasonably sure can be read by the entire population of the Web. Even users who are unable to view your graphics, for instance, can experience the bulk of what you're communicating if you design your HTML pages properly.
At the same time, HTML is a simple enough format (at least currently) that typical computer users can generate HTML documents without the benefit of a special application. Creating a WordPerfect-format document would be rather difficult by hand (including all of the required text size, fonts, page breaks, columns, margins, and other information), even if it weren't a "proprietary"-that is, nonpublic-document format.
HTML is a public standard, and simple enough that you can get through a book like this one and have a very strong ability to create HTML documents from scratch. This simplicity is part of a trade-off, as HTML-format documents don't offer nearly the precision of control or depth of formatting options that a WordPerfect- or Adobe PageMaker-formatted document would.
One of the first and most obvious was to build Webs that didn't communicate over the Internet at all, but were confined within the computer systems of individual companies and institutions. A term was quickly coined to distinguish these internal Webs: intranets.
The major difference between an intranet and a Web site--besides the obvious fact that the former is constrained to an individual site, while the latter is worldwide--is the audience. On a Web site, the content is aimed at the public, while an intranet addresses the needs of an organization's own employees.
This means that intranets are more likely to contain company-specific--even confidential--data, such as sales reports, customer databases, training materials, and employee manuals.
Though these kinds of data have been available on internal corporate networks for years, the difference with intranets is in the presentation. HTML and associated technologies are used to create user interfaces which are as fun and easy to use as those on most World Wide Web sites. Data which might have previously been locked up in difficult-to-use corporate databases can be made easily accessible to even computer novices.
Even with only a year or two of real-world usage, the utility of corporate intranets has already been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. Netscape Communications Corporation, a publisher of Web-server and client software and one of the premier advocates of intranet development, says that a resounding majority of their intranet customers report substantial cost savings after installing corporate intranets. Some have claimed 1000% returns on their investments, according to Netscape. In the world of business, this is a phenomenal rate of return, and a claim which has grabbed the attention of the majority of Fortune 500 companies--as well as many that are much, much smaller.
In fact, interest in intranets is so great that HTML server and client publishers like Netscape and Microsoft predict that the majority of their HTML-related income over the next few years will be generated by intranet development, not the World Wide Web
SGML (Standard Generalized Mark-up Language) to HTML
HTML developed a few years ago as a subset of SGML (Standard Generalized Mark-up Language) which is a higher-level mark-up language that has long been a favorite of the Department of Defense. Like HTML, it describes formatting and hypertext links, and it defines different components of a document. HTML is definitely the simpler of the two, and although they are related, there are few browsers that support both.
Because HTML was conceived for transmission over the Internet (in the form of Web pages), it is much simpler than SGML, which is more of an application-oriented document format. While it's true that many programs can load, edit, create, and save files in the SGML format (just as many programs can create and save programs in the Microsoft Word format), SGML is not exactly ideal for transmission across the Internet to many different types of computers, users, and browser applications.
HTML is more suited to this task. Designed with these considerations in mind, HTML lets you, the designer, create pages that you are reasonably sure can be read by the entire population of the Web. Even users who are unable to view your graphics, for instance, can experience the bulk of what you're communicating if you design your HTML pages properly.
At the same time, HTML is a simple enough format (at least currently) that typical computer users can generate HTML documents without the benefit of a special application. Creating a WordPerfect-format document would be rather difficult by hand (including all of the required text size, fonts, page breaks, columns, margins, and other information), even if it weren't a "proprietary"-that is, nonpublic-document format.
HTML is a public standard, and simple enough that you can get through a book like this one and have a very strong ability to create HTML documents from scratch. This simplicity is part of a trade-off, as HTML-format documents don't offer nearly the precision of control or depth of formatting options that a WordPerfect- or Adobe PageMaker-formatted document would.
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