Educators, businesses, and hobbyists now use the Web to distribute multimedia information to a world-wide audience. It is available in both a plain text version and a WWW hypertext version . T he World Wide Web is the ultimate toy for those addicted to changing what they are looking at rather than viewing what they are looking at. It is the next step in addiction for those who have grown bored with using their TV's remote control to constantly change channels. V iewing a Web document with a Windows graphical client such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Netscape's Navigator is something of a cross between reading a magazine and watching television.
Textual information is displayed with typographic fonts and color graphics.
The static display of information is often supplemented by animated graphics and background music. Sound and video clips can be activated by clicking an icon embedded in the document. Clicking on a highlighted word or phrase in the document may cause the reader to skip to another part of the displayed document, or it may cause yet another document to be retrieved. The Web leads the reader to skip from one document to another, retrieving information from servers scattered around the world. E-MAIL E lectronic mail probably is still the most widely used Internet function.