1.The World Wide Web is a highly visual channel for Internet interaction. After email (which has become a sometime subset of the Web, e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.), it is the most common mode by which people access the Internet. Though originally a text-only mode of sharing files hypertextually across a global network, the development of the Mosaic browser in 1993 integrated images and a point and click graphical user interface (GUI) into the experience of the Web. From that point on, the Web as GUI has been the norm. As more technologies were integrated into hypertext markup language (HTML) specifications and browser capabilities, the Web evolved from a simple way to share files into a complex collection of interfaces allowing for a variety of communication opportunities.

2.HTML is based on standard generic markup language (SGML), and was primarily intended to be a system by which to codify the content of a Web document to represent its structure. HTML includes tags to designate the header, title, and body of the document, and to further distinguish between levels of headers, paragraphs, blockquotes, words to be emphasized, and regions of related material. As the Web became a more visual medium, graphic designers began using these content-based markup tags to evoke a browser's capabilities for display. As this evolved, designers lost track of the semantic point of markup and used it instead to position elements on the screen and affect their appearance. Unfortunately, browsers handle and display these tags differently, and though there are standards organizations, most current Web design is really misusing HTML (Champeon).

3.Other technologies have been integrated into HTML, including the ability to create form elements (text fields, buttons, check boxes) for collecting information from users. HTML alone cannot process this user input, and requires technologies residing on a server, like common gateway interface (CGI) scripts, Active Server Pages (ASP), and PHP (an oddly self-reflective and maleable acronym). Technologies like Javascript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) also allow for interactivity, but locally, using the browser on the user's computer to activate script or style commands. Together, these collective technologies enable the creation of website features like forums, listservs, threaded discussion lists, polls, and publishing tools.

4.The first GUIs on personal computers evolved from work done at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and continued to develop at Apple Computer into the Macintosh Operating System (OS). Microsoft later added first a graphical shell over its disk operating system (DOS) and then incorporated the GUI into its later Windows software (NT, 2000, XP, etc.). The earliest GUIs used a collection of office images as metaphors for interacting with the computer and managing files. These office images (the file folder, trashcan, etc.) have become nearly ubiquitous empty metaphors (Dilger), but they remain the standard setup for Windows XP, Mac OS X , the Linux Gnome interface, and other computer file systems. In contrast, the Web has no standard or ubiquitous graphical components as interface beyond the functional structure of the browser within the operating system. The visual representation of Web form elements is governed by the browser to some degree, but because Web documents can include multiple images and incorporate those images into the design of these interactive features, the number of possible GUIs on the Web is infinite. These interfaces often differ, simply due to the intent or ability of the coder. Discrepancies in interface designs interrupt a user's ability to use various interfaces.