World Wide Web Guide

A guide for Jaws users, written by Chorlton Workshop for hsbp.

Introduction

The world wide web consists of an extremely large number of interconnected web pages. These pages are grouped into websites, which consist of closely related pages.

Each web page has a unique address, and this address is called either a web address or a URL ( uniform resource locator ).

To view web pages, you use a program called a web browser; common web browsers are Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox. There are also programs called web servers, which look after a particular set of web pages, and can send them to a web browser, when requested. The web address of a page contains the name of the web server which looks after ( serves ) that page. So from the web address, a web browser knows which web server to talk to, to get and display a particular web page.

Web addresses

Each web page has a unique web address. An example of an address is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog. It consists of three parts:

1. The protocol which is used by the web browser and web server for talking to each other. In this case the protocol is http, which stands for hypertext transfer protocol, and is the default protocol for web pages. Other protocols include the mailto protocol which is used for email addresses, and the file protocol which is used for files stored on your computer.
2. The web server name, which in this case is en.wikipedia.org. Note that server names often begin with www, but not always, as in this case.
3. The location ( or path ) of the web page on the web server, which in this case is wiki/Frog.

Notes for entering web addresses:

• Because http is the default protocol, the http:// part of the address can be omitted, as in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger
• The address of the home page of a website normally consists of the web server name, without any path, for example, en.wikipedia.org.

Websites

A website consists of one or more related pages, and there are links between these pages. The main page of the website is known as the home page, and the address of the website is the address of this home page. The address of a website normally consists of the name of the web server which looks after the site, and examples are www.bbc.co.uk, zoomers.blogspot.com, and en.wikipedia.org.

Web pages

Web pages are written in hypertext markup language (HTML). The basic building blocks of HTML are called elements, and these are some of the most important:

• Title. The title is shown in the title bar of the web browser.
• Headings. Headings divide the page up into sections, and provide the overall structure of the page. Each heading has a level, and level 1 is the highest level.
• Paragraphs.
• Lists. These are useful for grouping things together. You are currently reading a list of the elements that can occur on web pages.
• Links. A link consists of a group of words, or and image, and a web address which is stored behind the scenes. When you open a link, you are taken to the location specified by the web address.
• Form controls. These are similar to the controls in dialog boxes.
• Tables.

For more more information, there's a separate guide on HTML.

Web browsers

Web pages are read using a web browser. There are many browsers available, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. To use Internet Explorer with Jaws, then versions 5 or above are OK, though 6 or above are preferable. To use Mozilla Firefox, you need version 7 or above.