Definition of Web Page in Network Encyclopedia.
What is Web Page?
Web Page is a file of text information formatted using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and possibly including scripts and active content, that is sent by a Web server in response to a Web browser’s request.
Web pages are generally of two types:
- Static Web pages: Stored as files on the server in the same form that they are delivered to the client. These files usually have the extension .htm or .html.
- Dynamic Web pages: Pages with included scripts, ActiveX components, Java applets, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), open database connectivity (ODBC) technologies, Dynamic HTML, or any other type of active content. They can also be Web pages that don’t actually exist on the server until the client requests them, whereupon they are generated by the server using Active Server Pages (ASP) or some other server-side technology.
Elements of a Web Page
A web page, as an information set, can contain numerous types of information, which is able to be seen, heard or interacted with by the end user:
Perceived (rendered) information:
- Textual information: with diverse render variations.
- Non-textual information:
- Static images may be raster graphics, typically JPEG, GIF, or PNG; or vector formats such as SVG or Flash.
- Animated images typically Animated GIF and SVG, but also Flash, Shockwave, or Java applet.
- Audio, typically MP3, Ogg or various proprietary formats.
- Video, WMV (Windows), RM (RealMedia), FLV (Flash Video), MPG, MOV (QuickTime)
- Interactive information: see interactive media.
- For “on page” interaction:
- Interactive text: see DHTML.
- Interactive illustrations: ranging from “click to play” images to games, typically using script orchestration, Flash, Java applets, SVG, or Shockwave.
- Buttons: forms providing an alternative interface, typically for use with script orchestration and DHTML.
- For “between pages” interaction:
- Hyperlinks: standard “change page” reactivity.
- Forms: providing more interaction with the server and server-side databases.
- For “on page” interaction:
Internal (hidden) information:
- Comments
- Linked Files through Hyperlink (Like DOC, XLS, PDF, etc.)
- Metadata with semantic meta-information, Charset information, Document Type Definition (DTD), etc.
- Diagrammatic and style information: information about rendered items (like image size attributes) and visual specifications, as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
- Scripts, usually JavaScript, complement interactivity, and functionality.
Note: on server-side the web page may also have “Processing Instruction Information Items”.
The web page can contain dynamically adapted information elements, dependent upon the rendering browser or end-user location (through the use of IP address tracking and/or “cookie” information).
From a more general/wide point of view, some information (grouped) elements, like a navigation bar, are uniform for all website pages, like a standard. This kind of “website standard information” are supplied by technologies like web template systems.