A newbie is a network newcomer. You may be new to the world on online computing, but you are not a dummy, or a complete idiot either. It doesn't mean you don't have something to contribute. We don't use the word "newbie" in a negative way at all -- everyone was a newbie once. BTW, knowbies are welcome to browse these pages as well ;-)
Welcome to the World Wide Web. This is the Newbie Home Page.
The Web is comprised of millions of pages like this one, each containing text and pictures. These web pages contain an incredibly, indescribably diverse variety of material. Individual web pages range from informative to humorous, from comercial to technical, from useful to tasteless, from radical to self-centered, from creative to official, from philosophical to random, from academic to obscene, and from artsy to political.
Web pages are stored on different computers across the Internet called web servers. What hooks these pages and web servers together is an informal network of links. The remarkable thing about the Web is that it has no center, no top, no bottom, almost no organization whatsoever. There is no master editor, and no one needs permission to create a web page. Each web server is its own independant computer running on the internet. The only thing that holds the web together are the links from one page to the next. It may sound improbable or even incomprehensible in theory, but the fact is: it works. You need to experience it to fully understand it.
This page is published in conjunction with The Newbie's Guide to The Microsoft Network, by Michael Lehman, the authoritative guide to Microsoft's proprietary online service. This page is sponsored by the book's publisher, Albion Books, which also publishes the book, Netiquette, by Virginia Shea--the definitive guide to network etiquette.