Chapter 4
Productivity Applications
Superstock/Superstock
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to complete the following:
Summarize the development of word processing, the importance of Microsoft® Word, and its alternatives. Analyze the key features of PowerPoint® and presentation software. Describe the importance of Microsoft® Excel and spreadsheets. Explain how databases work and alternatives to Microsoft® Access®. Evaluate the different types of multimedia applications. Describe mobile applications and their importance.
9/13/2021 Print
https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch04,ch05,ch05introduction,sec5.1,sec5.2,sec5.3,sec5.4,sec5.5,ch05summary,ch05learning&content=al 2/27
Chapter 5
The Web of Knowledge
iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to complete the following:
Explain the key Internet basics. Describe the various aspects of a network and the key networking terms. Summarize the browser wars and the most common browsers. Describe how to build a Web page in six easy steps. List the Web accessibility standards.
9/13/2021 Print
https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch04,ch05,ch05introduction,sec5.1,sec5.2,sec5.3,sec5.4,sec5.5,ch05summary,ch05learning&content=al 3/27
Introduction You are the Internet. While you might think the Internetofficially defined as a vast worldwide connection of computer networks that also link smaller networksis more about computers than people, this is not necessarily true. Without people, all of these computer connections would be sitting silently, with little meaning or purpose to their existence. The essential ingredient that makes the Internet revolutionary is that people enter into it each day, and they leave a footprint of knowledge and of themselves as they travel through the Web. Each time you purchase a new computer (a desktop computer, a laptop, a cell phone, and so on) and get connected, you create a new link to this worldwide Internet community and become the newest member of the global population. This becomes a window for you to see and communicate with every other online computer user on the planet, and it allows you to make your own contribution to the vast web of knowledge that is now growing at an exponential pace (Okin, 2005, p. 21). This chapter will introduce you to the Internet, discuss the programs you can use to navigate through it on your desktop and mobile devices, and describe how to create your own content. Welcome to the Web of knowledge.
9/13/2021 Print
https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bowles.0854.13.1?sections=ch04,ch05,ch05introduction,sec5.1,sec5.2,sec5.3,sec5.4,sec5.5,ch05summary,ch05learning&content=al 4/27
5.1 Internet Basics Computers during the 1960s had a curious problem. Although the mainframes were growing ever larger and more powerful, and computer languages were enabling programmers to perform more complex computations, there was a significant limitation. It was completely impossible for one computer to talk to another. A message could not be sent between two computers in the same room, let alone two computers in different countries. A computer was an isolated machine, alone and separated from the rest of the world, as were the users. This situation would soon change so dramatically that in the coming decades, nearly every computer in the entire world would become connected to every other computer. This section will discuss how this network became a reality.
ARPAnet
The Internet had its beginnings as the ARPAnet during the 1960s, when the Cold War threat was at its peak. ARPA, the United States Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, was focused on the nation’s computer security. The ARPA network was designed as a way to link computers at laboratories across the country for the purpose of sharing computing resources (Hafner & Lyon, 1996). Once exclusively the domain of scientists at elite universities such as UCLA, MIT, and Stanford, this computer network has now gone mainstream.
While there is some debate about the reasons for developing the ARPAnet, it was first and foremost an excellent idea w
