The Web consists of many millions of internet-connected computers, each with information on them that their owner has decided to share. These documents can be formed of anything from plain text to multimedia or even 3D objects. These computers, called servers, deliver this information over the Internet to client computers (such as your PC at home) using a protocol called HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). The HTTP protocol is very simple; essentially it just provides a mechanism that allows a client to request a document, and a server to send that document.

As the web has become more and more popular, its capabilities have increased to include such things as graphics, animations, scripts and even complete computer programs, all embedded into the pages of the documents. Essentially, the web is the easiest to use of all the internet toolkit—this is partly why it has become so popular. Various mechanisms allow the viewer to move around (navigate) the document easily. Clicking on a hyperlink moves you to another part of the document, or to another document altogether.