Historic counties of England and World Wide Web: Difference between pages

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:''For the world's first web browser, see [[WorldWideWeb]].

The '''traditional counties of [[England]]''' are historic subdivisions of the country into around 40 regions. They are also known as the '''historic counties''', or legally as the '''ancient or geographic counties'''.

[[Image:WorldWideWebAroundWikipedia.png|thumb|300px|Graphic representation of the World Wide Web around Wikipedia]]

The traditional counties were used for administrative purposes for hundreds of years, and over time became established as a [[geography|geographic]] [[reference frame]]. The establishment of the usually accepted set of counties began in the [[12th century]] (though many assumed their modern form long before then), although it did not become finalised until the [[16th century]].

The '''World Wide Web''' ("'''WWW'''", "'''W3'''", or simply "'''Web'''") is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called [[Uniform Resource Identifier]]s (URIs). The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the [[Internet]], but the Web is actually a service that operates ''over'' the Internet.

After local government reform in the late [[19th century]], the traditional counties are no longer in general use for official geographic purposes (in favour of [[ceremonial counties of England|ceremonial counties]] or [[administrative counties of England|administrative counties]]), but the system in use is partially based on them, and the [[Postal counties of the United Kingdom|postal counties]] often followed them. [[County cricket]] continues to use historical counties. (''See'' [[Counties of England]] for an overview of how the different types of county compare.)

==Basic terms==

Various groups exist to promote their continued use, and people engaged in [[genealogy]], [[family history]], and [[local history]] tend to follow the names used at the time being researched.

[[Hypertext]] is viewed using a program called a [[web browser]] which retrieves pieces of information, called "documents" or "[[web page]]s", from [[web server]]s and displays them, typically on a [[computer display|computer monitor]]. One can then follow [[hyperlink]]s on each page to other documents or even send information back to the server to interact with it. The act of following hyperlinks is often called ''"surfing"'' or ''"[[browsing]]"'' the Web. Web pages are often arranged in collections of related material called "[[website]]s."

The phrase "surfing the Internet" was first popularized in print by [[Jean Armour Polly]], a librarian, in an article called Surfing the INTERNET, published in the Wilson Library Bulletin in June, 1992. Although Polly developed the phrase independently, slightly earlier uses of similar terms have been found on the Usenet from 1991 and 1992, and some recollections claim it was also used verbally in the hacker community for a couple years before that. Polly is famous as "[[NetMom]]" in the world of Internet.

For more information on the distinction between the World Wide Web and the [[Internet]] itself — as in everyday use the two are sometimes confused — see [[Dark internet]] where this is discussed in more detail.

==The counties==

Although the [[English (language)|English]] word ''worldwide'' is normally written as one word (without a space or hyphen), the proper name ''World Wide Web'' and abbreviation ''WWW'' are now well-established even in formal English. The earliest references to the Web called it the ''WorldWideWeb'' (an example of computer programmers' fondness for [[intercaps]]) or the ''World-Wide Web'' (with a hyphen, this version of the name is the closest to normal English usage).

{|

|valign="top"|

<small>

<ol>

<li>[[Bedfordshire]]

<li>[[Berkshire]]

<li>[[Buckinghamshire]]

<li>[[Cambridgeshire]]

<li>[[Cheshire]] *

<li>[[Cornwall]]

<li>[[Cumberland, England|Cumberland]]

<li>[[Derbyshire]]

<li>[[Devon]]

<li>[[Dorset]]

<li>[[County Durham]] *

<li>[[Essex]]

<li>[[Gloucestershire]]

<li>[[Hampshire]] &dagger;

<li>[[Herefordshire]]

<li>[[Hertfordshire]]

<li>[[Huntingdonshire]]

<li>[[Kent]]

<li>[[Lancashire]] *

<li>[[Leicestershire]]

</ol>

</small>

|valign="top"|

<small>

<ol start=21>

<li>[[Lincolnshire]]

<li>[[Middlesex]]

<li>[[Norfolk]]

<li>[[Northamptonshire]]

<li>[[Northumberland]]

<li>[[Nottinghamshire]]

<li>[[Oxfordshire]]

<li>[[Rutland]]

<li>[[Shropshire]]

<li>[[Somerset]]

<li>[[Staffordshire]]

<li>[[Suffolk]]

<li>[[Surrey]]

<li>[[Sussex]]

<li>[[Warwickshire]]

<li>[[Westmorland]]

<li>[[Wiltshire]]

<li>[[Worcestershire]]

<li>[[Yorkshire]]

</ol>

</small>

|[[Image:England_traditional_counties.png|350px|A map of the traditional counties of England]]

|-

|colspan=3|* [[county palatine]]

|-

|colspan=3|&dagger; formally known as [[Southamptonshire]] until [[1959]]

|}

Interestingly, "WWW" is one of the few acronyms that takes longer to say than what it is "short" for.

The map omits all [[exclave]]s (detached parts) apart from the [[Furness]] part of [[Lancashire]] south of [[Cumberland, England|Cumberland]] and [[Westmorland]].

==How the web works ==

[[Monmouthshire]] was previously usually considered to be a county of England, but is now generally accepted to be part of [[Traditional counties of Wales|Wales]].

When you want to access a [[web page]], or other "resource", on the World Wide Web, you normally begin either by typing the [[URL]] of the page into your browser, or by following a [[hypertext]] link to that page or resource. The first step, behind the scenes, is for the server-name part of the URL to be resolved into an [[IP address]] by the global, distributed [[Internet]] database known as the [[Domain name system]] or DNS.

Counties named after towns were often legally known as the "County of" followed by the name of the town &mdash; so, for example, [[Yorkshire]] would be referred to as "County of York". The modern usage is to use the suffix "-shire" only for counties named after towns, and for those which would otherwise have only one syllable. In the past, usages such as "Devonshire", "Dorsetshire" and "Somersetshire" were frequent. (There is still a [[Duke of Devonshire]], who is not properly called the Duke of Devon.) Kent was a former kingdom of the [[Jutes]], so "Kentshire" was never used. The name of [[County Durham]] is anomalous. The expected form would be "Durhamshire", but it is never used. This is ascribed to that county's history as a [[county palatine]] ruled by the [[Bishop of Durham]].

The next step is for an [[HTTP]] request to be sent to the web server working at that IP address for the page required. In the case of a typical web page, the [[HTML]] text, graphics and any other files that form a part of the page will be requested and returned to the client in quick succession.

Customary abbreviations exist for many of the counties. In most cases these consist of simple truncation, usually with an "s" at the end, such as "Berks." for [[Berkshire]] and "Bucks." for [[Buckinghamshire]]. Some abbreviations are not obvious, such as "Salop" for [[Shropshire]], "Oxon" for [[Oxfordshire]] or "Hants" and "Northants" for [[Hampshire]] and [[Northamptonshire]], respectively.

The web browser's job is then to [[rendering (computer graphics)|render]] the page as described by the [[HTML]], [[Cascading Style Sheets|CSS]] and other files received, incorporating the images, links and other resources as necessary. This produces the on-screen 'page' that you see.

==Origin==

Most web pages will, themselves, contain [[hyperlink]]s to other relevant and informative pages and perhaps to downloads, source documents, definitions and other web resources.

[[Image:EnglandDomesdayCounties.png|thumb|This map shows the [[Domesday Book]] counties in [[1086]].]]

Such a collection of useful, related resources, interconnected via hypertext links, is what has been dubbed a 'web' of information. Making it available on the Internet produced what [[Tim Berners-Lee]] first called the '''World Wide Web''' in the early 1990s [http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ] [http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Kids].

The traditional counties accreted over hundreds of years, and have differing ages and origins. In southern [[England]], they were subdivisions of the Kingdom of [[Wessex]], and in many areas represented annexed, previously independent, kingdoms &mdash; such as [[Kent]] (from the [[Kingdom of Kent]]). Only one county on the south coast of England has the suffix "-shire". [[Hampshire]] is named after the former town of "Hampton", which is now the [[city]] of [[Southampton]].

==Origins==

When Wessex conquered [[Mercia]] in the [[9th century|9th]] and [[10th century|10th centuries]], it subdivided the area into various shires, which tended to take the name of the main town (the [[county town]]) of the county, along with "-shire". Examples of these include [[Northamptonshire]] and [[Warwickshire]]. In many cases these have since been worn down &mdash; for example, [[Cheshire]] was originally "Chestershire".

''See also: [[History of the Internet#World Wide Web|History of the Internet]]''

[[Image:First Web Server.jpg|thumb|right|200px|This NeXTcube used by Berners-Lee at CERN became the first Web server.]]

Much of Northumbria was also shired, the best known of these counties being [[Hallamshire]] and [[Cravenshire]]. The Normans did not use these divisions, and so they are not generally included as traditional counties. After the [[Norman Conquest]] in [[1066]] and "[[The Harrying of the North]]", much of the north of the country was left depopulated; at the time of the [[Domesday Book]] northern England was covered by [[Cheshire]] and [[Yorkshire]]. The north-east, land that would later become [[County Durham]] and [[Northumberland]], was left unrecorded.

The underlying ideas of the Web can be traced as far back as [[1980]], when [[Tim Berners-Lee]] and [[Robert Cailliau]] built [[ENQUIRE]] (short for ''[[Enquire Within Upon Everything]]'', a book Berners-Lee recalled from his youth). While it was rather different from the Web we use today, it contained many of the same core ideas (and even some of the ideas of Berners-Lee's next project after the WWW, the [[Semantic Web]]).

[[Cumberland, England|Cumberland]], [[Westmorland]], [[Lancashire]], [[County Durham]] and [[Northumberland]] were established in the [[12th century]]. Lancashire itself can be firmly dated to [[1182]]. Part of the ___domain of the Bishops of Durham, [[Hexhamshire]] was split off and was considered an independent county until [[1572]].

In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote "Information Management: A Proposal", which referenced ENQUIRE and described a more elaborate information management system. [http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html] He published a more formal proposal for the actual World Wide Web on [[November 12]], [[1990]] [http://www.w3.org/Proposal]. Implementation began on [[November 13]], [[1990]] when Berners-Lee wrote the first Web page [http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html] on a [[NeXT]] workstation.

The border with Wales was not set until the [[Acts of Union 1536-1543|Act of Union 1536]] &mdash; this remains the modern border. In the Domesday Book the border counties had included parts of what would later become Wales &mdash; [[Monmouth]], for example, being included in [[Herefordshire]]. The traditional [[county town]] of [[Shropshire]], [[Ludlow]], was actually included in [[Herefordshire]] in Domesday.

During the Christmas holiday of that year, Berners-Lee built all the tools necessary for a working Web [http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb]: the [[WorldWideWeb|first Web browser]] (which was a Web editor as well) and the first Web server.

Because of their different origins, the counties have wildly varying sizes. The huge [[Yorkshire]] was a successor to the Viking [[Kingdom of York]], and at the time of the [[Domesday Book]] in [[1086]] was considered to include northern [[Lancashire]], [[Cumberland, England|Cumberland]], and [[Westmorland]]. [[Lincolnshire]] was the successor to the [[Kingdom of Lindsey]], and took on the territories of [[Kesteven]] and [[Holland, Lincolnshire|Holland]] when [[Stamford, Lincolnshire|Stamford]] became the only [[Danelaw]] borough to fail to become a [[county town]]. A "Stamfordshire" was probably precluded by the existence of [[Rutland]] immediately to the west and north of Stamford &mdash; leaving it at the very edge of its associated territory. Rutland was an anomalous territory or [[Soke]], associated with [[Nottinghamshire]], that eventually became considered the smallest county.

On [[August 6]], [[1991]], he posted a [http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6487%40cernvax.cern.ch short summary of the World Wide Web project] on the <tt>alt.hypertext</tt> [[newsgroup]]. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.

==Traditional subdivisions==

The crucial underlying concept of [[hypertext]] originated with older projects from the 1960s, such as [[Ted Nelson]]'s [[Project Xanadu]] and [[Douglas Engelbart]]'s [[NLS|oN-Line System]] (NLS). Both Nelson and Engelbart were in turn inspired by [[Vannevar Bush]]'s [[microfilm]]-based "[[memex]]," which was described in the 1945 essay "[[As We May Think]]".

[[Image:Yorkshire_Ridings.png|thumb|200px|[[Yorkshire]] has three major subdivisions known as the [[riding]]s of [[Yorkshire]]:

<br><ol>

<li>[[North Riding of Yorkshire|North Riding]]

<li>[[West Riding of Yorkshire|West Riding]]

<li>[[East Riding of Yorkshire|East Riding]]

</ol>]]

Berners-Lee's brilliant breakthrough was to marry hypertext to the Internet. In his book ''Weaving The Web,'' he explains that he had repeatedly suggested that a marriage between the two technologies was possible to members of ''both'' technical communities, but when no one took up his invitation, he finally tackled the project himself. In the process, he developed a system of globally unique identifiers for resources on the Web and elsewhere: the [[Uniform Resource Identifier]].

Some of the traditional counties have major subdivisions. Of these, the most important are the three [[riding]]s of [[Yorkshire]] &mdash; the [[East Riding of Yorkshire|East Riding]], [[West Riding of Yorkshire|West Riding]] and [[North Riding of Yorkshire|North Riding]]. Since Yorkshire is so big, its Ridings became established as geographic terms quite apart from their original role as administrative divisions. The second largest county, [[Lincolnshire]], is still administratively divided into three historic "Parts" (intermediate in size between county and [[wapentake]]) &mdash; of [[Lindsey]], [[Holland, Lincolnshire|Holland]] and [[Kesteven]]. Other divisions include those of [[Kent]] into [[East Kent]] and [[West Kent]], and of [[Sussex]] into [[East Sussex]] and [[West Sussex]].

The World Wide Web had a number of differences from other hypertext systems that were then available.

Several counties had [[liberties]] or [[Soke]]s within them that were administered separately. [[Cambridgeshire]] had the [[Isle of Ely]], and [[Northamptonshire]] had the [[Soke of Peterborough]]. Such divisions were used by such entities as the [[Quarter Sessions]] courts and were inherited by the later [[county council]] areas.

*The WWW required only unidirectional links rather than bidirectional ones. This made it possible for someone to link to another resource without action by the owner of that resource. It also significantly reduced the difficulty of implementing Web servers and browsers (in comparison to earlier systems), but in turn presented the chronic problem of broken links.

Smaller subdivisions also exist. Most English counties were traditionally subdivided into [[hundred (division)|hundred]]s, while Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire into wapentakes and Durham, Cumberland and Westmoreland into [[ward (politics)|wards]]. Kent and Sussex also had an intermediate level between their major subdivisions and their hundreds, known as [[lathe (division)|lathe]]s in Kent and [[rape (division)|rape]]s in Sussex. Hundreds or their equivalents are divided into [[tithing]]s and [[parish]]es (the only class of these divisions still used administratively), which in turn were divided into [[township (England)|township]]s and [[manor]]s.

*Unlike certain applications such as [[HyperCard]] or [[Gopher_protocol|Gopher]], the World Wide Web was non-proprietary, making it possible to develop servers and clients independently and to add extensions without licensing restrictions.

==Authenticity and anomalies==

[[Image:DudleyTraditionalDetail.jpg|frame|This (rather inaccurate) [[1814]] map shows [[Dudley]] in a detached part of [[Worcestershire]]. Note the detached portion of [[Shropshire]] just to the south-east as well.]]

On [[April 30]], [[1993]], CERN [http://intranet.cern.ch/Chronological/Announcements/CERNAnnouncements/2003/04-30TenYearsWWW/Welcome.html announced] that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone, with no fees due.

There are at least two sets of county boundaries that have been put forward as the true and genuine traditional borders. The dispute is whether to accept an Act of Parliament in [[1844]] which purported to modify the counties by abolishing the many [[enclave]]s of counties within others, or whether to reject this as mere administrative convenience.

==Web standards==

The Act itself says the detached parts shall "be considered" to be part of the county they locally lie in, not that they "shall be". However, this is a matter of disagreement within the traditional counties movement itself, with the [[Association of British Counties]] acknowledging the changes in its Gazetteer, and saying that the matter is "debatable".

At its core, the Web is made up of three standards:

* the ''Uniform Resource Identifier'' ([[Uniform Resource Identifier|URI]]), which is a universal system for referencing resources on the Web, such as Web pages;

* the ''HyperText Transfer Protocol'' ([[HTTP]]), which specifies how the browser and server communicate with each other; and

* the ''HyperText Markup Language'' ([[HTML]]), used to define the structure and content of [[hypertext]] documents.

Berners-Lee now heads the [[World Wide Web Consortium]] (W3C), which develops and maintains these and other standards that enable computers on the Web to effectively store and communicate different forms of information.

The traditional counties have (even if the 1844 changes be accepted) many anomalies, and many small [[exclave]]s, where a parcel of land would be politically part of one county despite not being physically connected to the rest of the county. The most significant exclaves affected by the 1844 Act were the [[County Durham]] exclaves of [[Islandshire]], [[Bedlingtonshire]] and [[Norhamshire]], which were incorporated into [[Northumberland]] for administrative purposes &mdash; most of the others were smaller, including even a detached part of the [[Wales|Welsh]] county of [[Monmouthshire]] in [[Herefordshire]], called [[Welsh Bicknor]]. This was created as late as [[1651]].

Exclaves which the 1844 Act did not touch include the part of [[Derbyshire]] around [[Donisthorpe]], locally in [[Leicestershire]]; and most of the larger exclaves of [[Worcestershire]], including the town of [[Dudley]], which is locally situated in [[Staffordshire]]. Additionally the [[Furness]] portion of [[Lancashire]] remains separated from the rest of Lancashire by a narrow strip of [[Westmorland]] &mdash; though accessible by the [[Morecambe Bay]] [[tidal flats]].

Several towns are historically divided between counties, including [[Newmarket]], [[Royston]], Stamford, [[Tamworth]] and [[Todmorden]] &mdash; in some cases with the county boundary running right up the middle of the high street. In Todmorden, the boundary between [[Lancashire]] and [[Yorkshire]] is said to run through the middle of the [[town hall]].

==Java and JavaScript==

==Usage==

Another significant advance in the technology was [[Sun Microsystems|Sun Microsystems']] [[Java programming language]]. It initially enabled Web servers to embed small programs (called [[applet]]s) directly into the information being served, and these applets would run on the end-user's computer, allowing faster and richer user interaction. Eventually, it came to be more widely used as a tool for generating complex [[server-side]] content as it is requested.

[[JavaScript]], however, is a [[Scripting programming language|scripting language]] that was developed for Web pages. The standardized version is [[ECMAScript]]. While its name is similar to Java, it was developed by [[Netscape Communications Corporation|Netscape]] and not Sun Microsystems, and it has almost nothing to do with Java. In conjunction with the [[Document Object Model]], JavaScript has become a much more powerful language than its creators originally envisioned. Sometimes its usage is expressed under the term [[Dynamic HTML]] (DHTML), to emphasize a shift away from ''static'' HTML pages.

During the 20th century, numerous local government reforms made the usage of county names somewhat confused.

==Sociological implications==

When the first [[county council]]s were set up in [[1888]], they covered newly created entities known as [[administrative counties of England|administrative counties]], and defined in terms of the "ancient and geographic" counties. Direct references in statute to the ancient and geographic counties gradually were removed over the next few decades. The administrative counties differed in many ways &mdash; such as the existence of the [[County of London]], and the division of larger counties into several areas (such as [[Suffolk]] into [[East Suffolk]] and [[West Suffolk]]), along with a great many minor boundary changes which accreted over the years.

The Web, as it stands today, has allowed global interpersonal exchange on a scale unprecedented in human history. People separated by vast distances, or even large amounts of time, can use the web to exchange-- or even mutually develop-- their most intimate and extensive thoughts, or alternately their most casual attitudes and spirits. Emotional experiences, political ideas, cultural customs, musical idioms, business advice, artwork, photographs, literature, can all be shared and deseminted digitally with less individual investment than ever before in human history. Although the existence and use of the Web relies upon material technology, which comes with its own disadvantages, its information does not use physical resources in the way that [[libraries]] or the [[printing press]] have. Therefore, propogation of information via the Web (via the [[internet]],in turn) is not constrained by movement of physical volumes, or by manual or material copying of information. And by virtue of being [[digital]], the information of the Web can be searched more easily and efficiently than any library or physical volume, and vastly more quickly than a person could retrieve information about the world by way of physical travel or by way of [[mail]], [[telephone]], [[telegraph]], or any other communicative medium.

The Web is the most far-reaching and extensive medium of personal exchange to appear on [[Earth]]. It has probably allowed many of its users to interact with many more groups of people, dispersed around the planet in time and space, than is possible when limited by physical contact or even when limited by every other existing medium of communication combined.

The [[ceremonial counties of England|ceremonial counties]] used for [[Lord-Lieutenant|Lord-Lieutenancy]] were changed from a set directly based on the ancient and geographic ones (with exceptions such as the City and Counties of [[Bristol]] and [[London]]) to an approximation of them based on the administrative counties and the [[county borough]]s. These counties are the ones usually shown on maps of the early to mid [[20th century]], and largely displaced the traditional counties in such uses.

Because the Web is global in scale, some have suggested that it will nurture mutual understanding on a global scale. By definition or by necessity, the Web has such a massive potential for social exchange, it has the potential to nurture empathy and symbiosis, but it also has the potential to incite [[belligerance]] on a global scale, or even to empower [[demagogues]] and repressive regimes in ways that were historically impossible to achieve.

In [[1974]] a major local government reform took place, through the [[Local Government Act 1972|1972 Local Government Act]]. This abolished administrative counties and created replacements for them called in the statute simply "metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties". Several administrative counties, such as [[Cumberland, England|Cumberland]], [[Herefordshire]], [[Huntingdonshire]] (actually in [[1965]]), [[Middlesex]] (1965) [[Rutland]], [[Westmorland]] and [[Worcestershire]] vanished from the administrative map, whilst new entities such as [[County of Avon|Avon]], [[County of Cleveland|Cleveland]], [[Cumbria]] and [[Humberside]] appeared.

==Publishing web pages==

The 1972 Act left the legal status of the traditional counties somewhat ambiguous. It repealed and superseded the parts of the [[1888]] Act that referred to the traditional counties, and defined 'counties' in reference to existing 'administrative counties'. However it did not formally abolish the 'ancient and geographic' counties.

The Web is available to individuals outside [[mass media]]. In order to "publish" a web page, one does not have to go through a [[publisher]] or other media institution, and potential readers could be found in all corners of the globe.

Furthermore, it is questionable whether Parliament ''could'' abolish many of them, given that many were not created by Parliamentary bill or Royal edicts, and, as such, could be argued to have an "untouchable" [[Common Law]] existence.

Unlike [[book]]s and documents, hypertext does not have a linear order from beginning to end. It is not broken down into the hierarchy of chapters, sections, subsections, etc.

On this basis, supporters of the traditional counties assert that they continue to exist. Indeed, the [[government of the United Kingdom|Government]] has made statements to this effect, and said at the time that traditional county boundaries and loyalties were not supposed to be affected by the 1974 changes.

Many different kinds of information are now available on the Web, and for those who wish to know other societies, their cultures and peoples, it has become easier. When travelling in a foreign country or a remote town, one might be able to find some information about the place on the web, especially if the place is in one of the developed countries. Local newspapers, government publications, and other materials are easier to access, and therefore the variety of information obtainable with the same effort may be said to have increased, for the users of the Internet.

Despite repeated statements by the Government that loyalties were not intended to be affected, many people have accepted (in many places grudgingly) the changes. The [[Ordnance Survey]] has always recorded only administrative boundaries and so also adopted the changes. In the [[private sector]], adoption has been mixed. For example, [[county cricket]] is still based on the traditional counties. However, this can be due to a reluctance to reorganise existing systems rather than a refusal to acknowledge the new boundaries.

Although some websites are available in multiple languages, many are in the local language only. Also, not all software supports all special characters, and [[RTL]] languages. These factors would challenge the notion that the World Wide Web will bring a unity to the world.

The vice counties, another set of entities based on the historic counties, but with modification such as the subdivision of larger areas, are always used for biological recording to this day. This makes it easier to make comparisons in the biodiversity of different parts of England over time.

The increased opportunity to publish materials is certainly observable in the countless personal pages, as well as pages by families, small shops, etc., facilitated by the emergence of free [[web hosting]] services.

The [[Royal Mail|Post Office]] largely altered its [[Postal counties of the United Kingdom|postal counties]] in accordance with the reform &mdash; with the two major exceptions of [[Greater London]] and [[Greater Manchester]]. Perhaps as a result of this, along with the cumbersomeness of the names and the resentment of encroaching urbanisation, the traditional counties appear not to have fallen out of use for locating the boroughs of Greater Manchester; along with areas of Greater London that are not part of the [[London postal district]]. It is quite common for people to speak of [[Uxbridge]], [[Middlesex]] or [[Bromley]], [[Kent]], but much less so to speak of [[Brixton]], [[Surrey]] or [[West Ham]], [[Essex]]. Where [[metropolitan counties of England|metropolitan counties]] were given more generic names, such as [[Merseyside]] or [[Tyne and Wear]], the new counties appear to have been adopted. However, since [[2000]] the Royal Mail have removed its postal counties from the authoritative Postal Address File database, creating a separate database which now also lists the traditional, administrative and former postal counties for every address in the UK.

==Statistics==

There was particular distress in parts of [[Yorkshire]] that were administratively incorporated into [[Cumbria]], [[Lancashire]], [[Greater Manchester]], [[Humberside]], [[Cleveland, England|Cleveland]] and [[County Durham]]. Some of these areas have been since returned for ceremonial purposes.

According to a 2001 study [http://www.brightplanet.com/technology/deepweb.asp], there were more than 550 billion documents on the Web, mostly in the "[[Deep web|invisible web]]". A 2002 survey of 2,024 million web pages [http://www.netz-tipp.de/languages.html] determined that by far the most Web content was in English: 56.4%; next were pages in German (7.7%), French (5.6%) and Japanese (4.9%). There seem to be an increase in Chinese sites since however. A more recent study [http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~asignori/web-size/] which used web searches in 75 different languages to sample the web determined that there were over 11.5 billion web pages in the publically-indexable web as of January 2005.

==Speed issues==

==Counties and urban areas==

Frustration over [[congestion]] issues in the [[Internet]] infrastructure and the high [[latency]] that results in slow browsing has lead to an alternative name for the Web: the ''World Wide Wait''. Speeding up the Internet is an ongoing discussion over the use of [[peering]] and [[Quality_of_service|QoS]] technologies. Other solutions to reduce the World Wide Wait can be found on [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/NL-PerfNote.html W3C].

==Academic conferences==

[[Image:Warwickshiremap 700.jpg|thumb|The historic county of [[Warwickshire]] covers a slightly larger area than its namesake administrative county (in green).]]

The major academic event covering the WWW is the World Wide Web series of conferences, promoted by [http://www.iw3c2.org IW3C2]. There is a [http://www.iw3c2.org/Conferences/Welcome.html list] with links to all conferences in the series.

==Pronunciation of "www"==

Apart from historic divisions such as Newmarket, Stamford and [[Tamworth]], there are a great number of towns which have expanded (in some cases across a river) into a neighbouring county. These include such towns and cities as [[Banbury]], [[Birmingham]], [[Bristol]], [[Burton-upon-Trent]], [[Great Yarmouth]], [[Leighton Buzzard]], [[London]], [[Manchester]], [[Market Harborough]], [[Peterborough]], [[Reading, Berkshire|Reading]], [[Redditch]], [[St Neots]], [[Swadlincote]], [[Tadley]] and [[Wisbech]].

Most [[English language|English]]-speaking people pronounce the 9-[[syllable]] letter sequence ''www'' used in some ___domain names for websites as "double U, double U, double U" despite shorter options like "triple double U" being available.

Some languages do not have the letter ''w'' in their alphabet (for example, [[Italian language|Italian]]), which leads some people to pronounce ''www'' as "vou, vou, vou." In some languages (such as [[Czech language|Czech]] and [[Finnish language|Finnish]]) the ''w'' is substituted by a ''v'', so Czechs pronounce ''www'' as "veh, veh, veh" rather than the correct but much longer pronunciation "dvojité veh, dvojité veh, dvojité veh;" the same applies to Finnish, where the correct pronounciation would be "kaksoisvee, kaksoisvee, kaksoisvee." Several other languages (e.g. [[German language|German]], [[Dutch language|Dutch]] etc.) simply pronounce the [[W|letter W]] as a single syllable, so this problem doesn't occur.

Although [[Oxford]] is on the [[River Thames]], historically the border between [[Oxfordshire]] and [[Berkshire]], the traditional border there makes a detour to include Oxford west of the river within Oxfordshire.

Depending on how the ___domain and [[web server]] are set up, a ''www'' website can often be accessed without entering the "www.", as long as the ".com" or other appropriate [[top-level ___domain]] is appended. Even this is not always necessary as some browsers will automatically try adding "www." and ".com" to typed URIs if a web page isn't found without them.

The built-up areas of conurbations tend to cross traditional county boundaries freely. Examples here include [[Bournemouth]]/[[Poole]]/[[Christchurch, England|Christchurch]] ([[Dorset]] and [[Hampshire]] &ndash; although the [[1974]] annexing of Bournemouth and Christchurch into the [[administrative county]] of Dorset is perhaps the most widely accepted boundary change), [[Greater Manchester|Manchester metropolitan area]] ([[Cheshire]] and [[Lancashire]]), [[Merseyside]] ([[Cheshire]] and [[Lancashire]]), [[Teesside]] ([[Yorkshire]] and [[County Durham]]), [[Tyneside]] ([[County Durham]] and [[Northumberland]]) and [[West Midlands (county)|West Midlands]] ([[Staffordshire]], [[Warwickshire]] and [[Worcestershire]]).

In English pronunciation, saying the full words "World Wide Web" takes one-third as many syllables as saying the [[Acronym and initialism|initialism]] "www". According to Berners-Lee, others mentioned this fact as a reason to choose a different name, but he persisted.

[[Greater London]] itself straddles five traditional counties &mdash; [[Essex]], [[Hertfordshire]], [[Kent]], [[Middlesex]], [[Surrey]] &mdash; and the London urban area sprawls into [[Buckinghamshire]] and [[Berkshire]].

==See also==

==The traditional counties movement==

* [[History of the Internet]]

The traditional counties movement consists of a national organisation, the [[Association of British Counties]], along with various regional affiliates. The broad objectives of the movement include

* [[Semantic Web]]

* [[Media studies]]

* [[Smartphone]]

* [[List of websites]]

* [[Search engine]]

* [[Web directory]]

* [[Hypertext]]

* [[First image on the Web]]

* [[Streaming media]]

* [[Cyberzine]]

* [[Web 2.0]], term often applied to perceived ongoing transition of the WWW from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications

==References==

*to replace the ceremonial counties with the traditional counties

*{{Citepaper_publisher_version | Author=Fielding, R.; Gettys, J.; Mogul, J.; Frystyk, H.; Masinter, L.; Leach, P.; Berners-Lee, T. | Title=Hypertext Transfer Protocol - HTTP/1.1 | Publisher=Information Sciences Institute | PublishYear=June 1999 | Version=Request For Comments 2616 | URL=ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2616.txt}}

*to re-establish the pre-1974 terminology of "administrative counties" in the law, rather than the post-1974 terminology of "counties"

*{{Citepaper_publisher_version | Author=Berners-Lee, Tim; Bray, Tim; Connolly, Dan; Cotton, Paul; Fielding, Roy; Jeckle, Mario; Lilley, Chris; Mendelsohn, Noah; Orchard, David; Walsh, Norman; Williams, Stuart | Title=Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One | Publisher=W3C | PublishYear=December 15, 2004 | Version=Version 20041215 | URL=http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/}}

*to get the [[Ordnance Survey]] and other map suppliers to determine and mark the traditional county boundaries

*{{Web reference_full | Author=Polo, Luciano | Title=World Wide Web Technology Architecture: A Conceptual Analysis | Publisher= | PublishYear=2003 | Work=New Devices | URL=http://newdevices.com/publicaciones/www/ | Date=July 31 | Year=2005}}

*to, in some places, restore traditional counties as administrative counties

==External links==

Successive governments have generally been quite happy to issue statements saying that the traditional counties still exist, but have been reluctant to pursue these changes. Political parties to have included support for traditional counties in their manifestos include the [[English Democrats Party]] and the [[United Kingdom Independence Party]] &mdash; neither of which has ever had any [[member of parliament|MPs]] elected.

*[http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/ Open Directory - Computers: Internet: Web Design and Development]

*[http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html World Wide Web], the first known web page.

*[http://www.mit.edu/people/mkgray/net/ Internet Statistics: Growth and Usage of the Web and the Internet]

*[http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Overview.html Design Issues for The World Wide Web]

*[http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1099-webmaster-glossary/ Alternative WWW and webmaster glossary] (humor)

===Standards===

In the [[1990s]] the movement enjoyed its greatest success when [[Rutland]] became independent of [[Leicestershire]] and [[Hereford and Worcester]] split to become a [[unitary authority]] and shire county respectively &mdash; as part of a [[1990s UK local government reform|general local government reform]] which led to the establishment of many other unitaries. However, the campaign for [[Huntingdonshire]], currently administered as a district of [[Cambridgeshire]], to gain similar status, has so far failed. Additionally, the administrative counties of [[County of Avon|Avon]], [[Cleveland, England|Cleveland]] and [[Humberside]] were abolished, and the traditional borders restored for ceremonial purposes.

The following is a cursory list of the documents that define the World Wide Web's three core standards:

Recent activities undertaken have included lobbying the [[Boundary Committee for England|Boundary Committee]] regarding the [[Subdivisions of England#Proposed_changes|proposed local government reform]] in the north of England. Suggestions put forward have included basing the names or the borders of the new authorities on traditional counties. Both of these suggestions have been rejected, though the Committee noted a strong level of support in some areas.

==See also==

*[[Subdivisions of England]]

*[[Home Counties]]

*[[Traditional counties of Wales]]

*[[Traditional counties of Scotland]]

*[[Counties of Ireland|Traditional counties of Ireland]]

==External links==

*[http://www.britishcounties.info Website with information on the Counties]

*[http://www.abcounties.co.uk/ Association of British Counties]

*[http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/ Family history links to traditional counties of England]

*'''Uniform Resource Locator (URL)'''

**RFC 1738, URL Specification

*'''Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)'''

**[http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt Internet Draft, HTML version 1]

**RFC 1866, HTML version 2.0

**[http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32 HTML 3.2 Reference Specification]

**[http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/ HTML 4.01 Specification]

**[http://www.w3.org/TR/html/ Extensible HTML (XHTML) Specification]

*'''HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)'''

<!-- No HTTP/1.0 standardized? -->

**RFC 2068, HTTP version 1.1

**RFC 2616, HTTP version 1.1 (updated)

{{Cyberspace}}

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