A computer is a device that can be instructed to carry out an arbitrary set of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. The ability of computers to follow a sequence of operations, called a program, make computers very applicable to a wide range of tasks. Such computers are used as control systems for a very wide variety of industrial and consumer devices. This includes simple special purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls, factory devices such as industrial robots and computer assisted design, but also in general purpose devices like personal computers and mobile devices such as smartphones. The Internet is run on computers and it connects millions of other computers.

Since ancient times, simple manual devices like the abacus aided people in doing calculations. Early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms. More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early 20th century. The first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II. The speed, power, and versatility of computers has increased continuously and dramatically since then.

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States federal government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks. The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks. The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marks the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network. Although the Internet was widely used by academia since the 1980s, the commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life.

PageMaker was one of the first desktop publishing programs, introduced in 1985 by Aldus, initially for the Apple Macintosh and, in 1987, for PCs running Windows 1.0. As an application relying on a graphical user interface, PageMaker helped to popularize the Macintosh platform and the Windows environment. PageMaker relies on Adobe Systems' PostScript page description language. In 1994, Adobe Systems acquired Aldus and PageMaker.

Aldus Pagemaker 1.0 was released in July 1985 for the Macintosh and in December 1986 for the IBM PC. Aldus Pagemaker 1.2 for Macintosh was released in 1986 and added support for PostScript fonts built into LaserWriter Plus or downloaded to the memory of other output devices. PageMaker was awarded an SPA Excellence in Software Award for Best New Use of a Computer in 1986. In October 1986, a version of Pagemaker was made available for Hewlett-Packard's HP Vectra computers. In 1987, Pagemaker was available on Digital Equipment's VAXstation computers. Aldus Pagemaker 2 was released in 1987. Until May 1987, the initial Windows release was bundled with a full version of Windows 1.0.3; after that date, a "Windows-runtime" with no task-switching capabilities was included. Thus, users who did not have Windows could run the application from MS-DOS.

CorelDraw (styled CorelDRAW) is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation. It is also the name of Corel's Graphics Suite, which bundles CorelDraw with bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related programs (see below). The latest version is designated X8 (equivalent to version 18), and was released in March 2016. CorelDraw is designed to edit two-dimensional images such as logos and posters.

In 1987, Corel hired software engineers Michel Bouillon and Pat Beirne to develop a vector-based illustration program to bundle with their desktop publishing systems. That program, CorelDraw, was initially released in 1989. CorelDraw 1.x and 2.x ran under Windows 2.x and 3.0. CorelDraw 3.0 came into its own with Microsoft's release of Windows 3.1. The inclusion of TrueType in Windows 3.1 transformed CorelDraw into a serious illustration program capable of using system-installed outline fonts without requiring third-party software such as Adobe Type Manager; paired with a photo-editing program (Corel Photo-Paint), a font manager and several other pieces of software, it was also part of the first all-in-one graphics suite.

Photoshop was created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, it has become the de facto industry standard in raster graphics editing, such that the word "photoshop" has become a verb as in "to Photoshop an image," "photoshopping" and "photoshop contest", though Adobe discourages such use.[7] It can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing and several color models including RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot color and duotone. Photoshop has vast support for graphic file formats but also uses its own PSD and PSB file formats which support all the aforementioned features. In addition to raster graphics, it has limited abilities to edit or render text, vector graphics (especially through clipping path), 3D graphics and video. Photoshop's featureset can be expanded by Photoshop plug-ins, programs developed and distributed independently of Photoshop that can run inside it and offer new or enhanced features.

Photoshop's naming scheme was initially based on version numbers. However, in October 2002, following the introduction of Creative Suite branding, each new version of Photoshop was designated with "CS" plus a number; e.g., the eighth major version of Photoshop was Photoshop CS and the ninth major version was Photoshop CS2. Photoshop CS3 through CS6 were also distributed in two different editions: Standard and Extended. In June 2013, with the introduction of Creative Cloud branding, Photoshop's licensing scheme was changed to that of software as a service rental model and the "CS" suffixes were replaced with "CC". Historically, Photoshop was bundled with additional software such as Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central and Adobe Camera RAW.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for creating web pages and web applications. With Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript it forms a triad of cornerstone technologies for the World Wide Web. Web browsers receive HTML documents from a webserver or from local storage and render them into multimedia web pages. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically and originally included cues for the appearance of the document.

HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages. With HTML constructs, images and other objects, such as interactive forms, may be embedded into the rendered page. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. HTML elements are delineated by tags, written using angle brackets. Tags such as (img) and (input) introduce content into the page directly. Others such as (p) surround and provide information about document text and may include other tags as sub-elements. Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to interpret the content of the page.

HTML can embed programs written in a scripting language such as JavaScript which affect the behavior and content of web pages. Inclusion of CSS defines the look and layout of content. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), maintainer of both the HTML and the CSS standards, has encouraged the use of CSS over explicit presentational HTML since 1997.

Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is an umbrella term for a collection of technologies used together to create interactive and animated web sites by using a combination of a static markup language (such as HTML), a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript), a presentation definition language (such as CSS), and the Document Object Model (DOM). The application of DHTML was introduced by Microsoft with the release of Internet Explorer 4 in 1997.

DHTML allows scripting languages to change variables in a web page's definition language, which in turn affects the look and function of otherwise "static" HTML page content, after the page has been fully loaded and during the viewing process. Thus the dynamic characteristic of DHTML is the way it functions while a page is viewed, not in its ability to generate a unique page with each page load.

By contrast, a dynamic web page is a broader concept, covering any web page generated differently for each user, load occurrence, or specific variable values. This includes pages created by client-side scripting, and ones created by server-side scripting (such as PHP, Perl, JSP or ASP.NET) where the web server generates content before sending it to the client.

Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool developed by Adobe Systems. Dreamweaver was created by Macromedia in 1997, and was maintained by them until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005.

Following Adobe's acquisition of the Macromedia product suite, releases of Dreamweaver subsequent to version 8.0 have been more compliant with W3C standards. Recent versions have improved support for Web technologies such as CSS, JavaScript, and various server-side scripting languages and frameworks including ASP (ASP JavaScript, ASP VBScript, ASP.NET C#, ASP.NET VB), ColdFusion, Scriptlet, and PHP.

Adobe Dreamweaver CC is a web design and development application that combines a visual design surface known as Live View and a code editor with standard features such as syntax highlighting, code completion, and code collapsing as well as more sophisticated features such as real-time syntax checking and code introspection for generating code hints to assist the user in writing code. Combined with an array of site management tools, Dreamweaver lets its users design, code and manage websites as well as mobile content. Dreamweaver is positioned as a versatile web design and development tool that enables visualization of web content while coding.

Adobe Flash (formerly called Shockwave Flash, often just called Flash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich Internet applications, desktop applications, mobile applications and mobile games. Flash displays text, vector graphics and raster graphics to provide animations, video games and applications. It allows streaming of audio and video, and can capture mouse, keyboard, microphone and camera input.

Artists may produce Flash graphics and animations using Adobe Animate. Software developers may produce applications and video games using Adobe Flash Builder, FlashDevelop, Flash Catalyst, or any text editor when used with the Apache Flex SDK.

End-users can view Flash content via Flash Player (for web browsers), AIR (for desktop or mobile apps) or third-party players such as Scaleform (for video games). Adobe Flash Player (supported on Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux) enables end-users to view Flash content using web browsers. Adobe Flash Lite enabled viewing Flash content on older smartphones, but has been discontinued and superseded by Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime).

Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; interface design; authoring, including standardised code and proprietary software; user experience design; and search engine optimization. Often many individuals will work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all. The term web design is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end (client side) design of a website including writing mark up. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and if their role involves creating mark up then they are also expected to be up to date with web accessibility guidelines.