Chapter 1
Introduction to JavaScript
The World Wide Web
You may recall that only a few years ago the Internet served mostly as a way to send
and retrieve electronic mail to and from other users on the net. As the computer industry
rapidly developed and advanced, hardware and software became more efficient and more
powerful. The modem speed increased, and prices dropped. The time when only text ruled the
Internet came to an end then. Several software companies released Web browsers
which enabled data transfer over the Internet. The World Wide Web, a unique
“branch” of the Internet, still serves as a means for exposing data to the net, so it
can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
Almost every company provides information to the public via a Web site. Some even use
the Web for promotion and online sales of their products and services. Many individuals
create Web pages for fun, telling visitors about their hobbies, favorite music, and so on.
Some companies, such as Geocities (http://www.geocities.com), have entered the business of
providing free space and services for Web page authoring and maintenance, in return for
posting commercial advertisements.
Competition on the Web
Site popularity is often measured by the number of hits the site receives. Many
Web pages show off their hit count to impress surfers. Just to get a feel of the magnitude
involved, Netscape claims that tens of millions of people visit its site daily. Although
Microsoft does not believe this number, there is consensus among Internet users that the
number of hits is a good measure for comparing two sites. A site posting 10,000 hits per
week is obviously ten times more popular than a 1,000-hits-per-week site.
The competition for surfers’ attention is tremendous. In order to start understanding
how fierce the competition is, imagine you are broadcasting on one of 600,000 channels
that can be seen on a TV set. Rather than simply channel surfing, the viewer must conduct
a proactive search to find something interesting to browse. What is the chance of a casual
surfer hitting your channel? Indeed, the chances are very slim and you have to understand
this, because only then will you appreciate the role of an attractive site and other
marketing techniques described in this chapter.
The World Wide Web (WWW) is constantly growing as new Web servers and pages are
connected. It is estimated that over 15,000 domain names (such as netscent.com) are
registered daily. Each domain name is eventually associated with a Web server or a virtual
server. Your Web site is truly useless if people do not visit it. There are several ways
to attract Web surfers to a site:
- Advertising. You can advertise your Web site on pages that belong to other companies or
individuals by placing some text or images on their page. The user loads the page and sees
a banner at the top of the page, so when he or she clicks the banner, the advertiser’s
site is loaded. Many large companies also tend to advertise via traditional methods such
as newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. Although this method is somewhat less
efficient, it works surprisingly well for well-established companies.
- Submission. Once you have a Web site, people should know that it exists. Most people and
small businesses do not have enough resources to advertise via banners that can cost up to
tens of thousands of dollars a month. The most common free promotion method is to submit
the URL and description of a Web page to search engines and directories. Those services
live by providing an easy way of retrieving desired Web pages. For example, a search
engine returns URLs of pages that are related to a specific topic that the user searched
for. AltaVista, Infoseek, Excite, and Lycos are just some examples of such search engines,
because there are hundreds available on the Web. Directories such as Yahoo! gather Web
pages by subject so the user can find pages related to a given subject.
- Attractive Site. The most important way to attract users to your site is by creating an
engaging site. Most Web surfers tend to stick to sites that they have visited before and
where they have found interesting, new material every visit. The most “effective” way
to deter people from revisiting your site is by allowing it to become stale.
