Lab Manual - Week 1

  1. Explain the difference between "the Internet" and "the World-Wide Web".
  2. Find out which port according to the current IANA assignment is used for: In case you don't' know SSH and/or FTP, make sure you find out.
  3. What is the IP address of http://www.few.vu.nl? And of http://www.cs.vu.nl? How are these addresses related?
  4. Explain the role of the http://www.example.xxx domains. At which IP address(es) do these reside?
  5. Look up information about the new protocol for IP addresses (version 6). Describe the main features of this protocol and indicate what the reasons are to move from version 4 to version 6. (Expected length: half page)
  6. Find out who the registry operator for the .nl domain currently is.
  7. What are the three essential technologies that enable the World-Wide Web?
  8. Find out what a 303 status code in response to a HTTP/1.1 request stands for.
  9. Find out which MIME types of type text there are.
  10. Acquaint yourself with two different character encodings and describe the differences between the two.
  11. Compare two popular web clients, e.g. IE6/IE7 and Firefox. What are in your view significant differences?
  12. W3C is the organization that publishes Web standards such as HTML and CSS. Find out how this organization structured and how it is funded. (Expected length: 1 page)
  13. Summarize the main pieces of work that W3C is concerned with in the "Internationalization" activity. (Expected length: half page)
  14. The website http://www.archive.org stores old versions of the Web. Use this archive to describe briefly the history of Google or some other site you're interested in. (Expected length: half page)
  15. Look at the following two HTML paragraphs: 
      
  <p>This is an <strong>important</strong> point.</p>
  <p>This is another <b>important</b> point.</p>
    Explain why the HTML of the first paragraph should be preferred. Illustrate this with an example. Also, identify two other pairs of HTML constructs for which the same rationale holds.
  16. Describe the pros and cons of using frames in HTML.
  17. Identify one similarity and one difference between the HTML elements span and div.
  18. List potential benefits of using CSS. (Expected length: 15 lines)
  19. Create a Microsoft Word file with the text "Hello World!". Save the file as a Web page and inspect the HTML source (you can do this within Word). Describe briefly your findings.
  20. How would you expect a Web browser to render a emphasized word (i.e., included in an em element) in a paragraph with an italic font style? Check whether your browser behaves according to your expectation.

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