It is very common to hear people describe navigating the web as ‘surfing.’ This verb seems to imply that the web is an ocean. An ocean analogy does convey the vastness of the web, but does not convey the structure (as liquids are amorphous). The web is more like a forest than an ocean. Why a forest? Because the web is full of trees:

• Websites are groups of files which are structured in a tree directory.
• Each time you move to a new page on a site, you move to a new leaf/branch on the tree.
• Each time you visit a new site, you have moved to a new tree.
• Every web page is rendered from the Document Object Model (DOM), which itself is a tree.

A person on the web is moving up, down and across trees, much like squirrels, Rambo, or Ewoks on Endor. So the next time someone asks if you are surfing the web, respond with “No, I am jumping through the web’s trees!”