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The Internet and the World Wide Web: Question 6

Syllabus 5.1

Structured 6 marks

A student builds a small website for their school's chess club, hosted at "chessclub-brightfield.org". The website is made up of several separate pages: a home page, a "Fixtures" page and a "Members" page. On the home page, the words "Fixtures" and "Members" each appear underlined and in a different colour from the surrounding text. Clicking on either word opens the matching page.

(a) State the general term for the whole collection of related pages that make up the chess club's site (the home page, the Fixtures page and the Members page together). [1]

(b) State the general term for a single document within this site, such as the home page on its own. [1]

(c) The web server sends the browser a file written in HTML when the home page is requested. State what the browser does with this HTML file so that the student sees a formatted page, rather than the HTML code itself. [1]

(d) State the general term for the underlined, coloured word "Fixtures", which the student can click to open another page. [1]

(e) Describe what happens between the student's browser and the web server, from the moment the student clicks on "Fixtures" to the new page appearing on screen. [2]

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Worked solution

Part (a): The whole site

A website is the general term for a complete collection of related pages published together under one address, such as the chess club’s home page, Fixtures page and Members page taken as a whole.

Part (b): A single document within the site

A web page is a single document within a website. The home page on its own, without the Fixtures or Members pages, is one web page belonging to the wider chess club website.

Part (c): What the browser does with the HTML file

A web server stores and sends out pages as files written in HTML, a markup language of instructions describing a page’s text, images and structure. On its own, this HTML code is not meant to be read directly by the student. The browser’s job is to interpret (render) this code: it reads the HTML instructions and uses them to build and display the finished, formatted page, with text, images and layout arranged as the code describes, rather than showing the raw HTML itself.

Part (d): The clickable word

Underlined, differently coloured text that opens another page when clicked, such as “Fixtures” here, is called a hyperlink. Hyperlinks are what let a student move between the separate pages of a website (or even to a different website) without typing a new address each time.

Clicking a hyperlink is not simply a visual switch to an already-stored page. Instead:

  1. The browser sends a new request to the chess club’s web server, this time asking for the Fixtures page rather than the home page.
  2. The web server responds by sending back the HTML file for the Fixtures page.
  3. The browser interprets (renders) this HTML and displays the result on screen, replacing the home page that had been shown until then.

Final answers

  • (a) Website.
  • (b) Web page.
  • (c) The browser interprets/renders the HTML into a formatted page of text, images and layout.
  • (d) Hyperlink.
  • (e) The browser sends a new request to the web server for the Fixtures page; the web server sends back its HTML, which the browser renders and displays in place of the home page.