WWW (World Wide Web) is an Internet standard for distributed hypertext. This means that WWW documents can have links to other documents which can be anywhere on the Internet. (Common examples of non-distributed hypertext include Hypercard stacks and Windows Help screens.) For example, if a document mentions "Constitution," clicking on that word might bring up a copy of the Constitution. Clicking on the Second Amendment might bring up a discussion of that topic, which might include links to articles at a completely different site, and so on.
Here's a little bit more background on WWW. If it seems like a lot of info, just try it. WWW is much easier to use than to describe. WWW is a revolutionary technology which I encourage you in the strongest possible terms to get.
Programs for browsing World Wide Web such as CELLO and Mosaic are available for most platforms, including Windows, Mac, Xwindows, and many more. Mosaic and CELLO are very nice GUI (Graphical User Interface) programs which allow you to point and click to navigate most of the common Internet protocols (including those described above). The browser I'm currently using is a follow-on to Mosaic called Netscape, which is available from Netscape Communications at http://home.mcom.com/home/welcome.html or file://ftp.mcom.com/netscape
You generally need an IP (Internet Protocol) network connection to use WWW directly from your machine. However, you can also use a character-based program called "lynx" from your UNIX shell account to view WWW resources. With lynx, no images are displayed, but most of the info gets across. (Images are nice, but can also slow down WWW access a lot). With lynx, the IP connection is your service provider's which is likely much faster connection than your IP connection at home.
If you want the nice graphical WWW interface on your Windows machine, various Windows TCP/IP packages exist, including solid shareware ones like Trumpet, and good supported commercial packages from NetManage, Frontier and others. Most IP packages support serial protocols for connecting directly to the Internet over a modem when you're at home or on the road. For more info see The PC-Internet Connection Update Page at: http://www.zilker.net/users/internaut/update.html or Bernard Aboba's Windows TCP/IP FAQ at: file://ftp.netcom.com/pub/mailcom/IBMTCP/ibmtcp.zip
Note that the NetManage Chameleon Sampler is included in several introductory books, including The Internet Starter Kit, and The Internet Glossary which range from $20 to $30. (The Internet Starter Kit is available in Windows and Mac versions. The Windows version comes with the Chameleon Sampler; the Mac version probably uses a version of Apple's MacTCP.) This is a simple and inexpensive way to get a solid but deliberately limited Windows TCP/IP stack and applications. The Chameleon sampler is also available via ftp at: file://ftp.netmanage.com/pub/demos/sampler/sampler.exe Be sure to see the The PC-Internet Connection Update Page above.
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the name of the particular hypertext language specification used by WWW. You can get information on HTML through your WWW browser. HTML itself is plaintext, editable on any text editor. Macros for Word, emacs and other editors exist, as do standalone HTML editors.
Universal Resource Locators (URLs) are pointers to WWW resources. They can be ftp sites, http (WWW) sites, mail destinations, gopher sites, telnet sites, newsgroups, -- in short all the common Internet user interface methods -- available just by pointing & clicking....
Paul Lam (homeboy@hooked.net-nospam) reports on a nice utility for searching WWW at CMU: http://lycos3.cs.cmu.edu/lycos-form.html