An Intranet is a privately-owned version of the Internet. Big corporations and other organizations create Intranets to do things like distributing information to corporate employees and customers.

Access is restricted. Even if an Intranet is connected to the Internet (so that the company's employees can access the web), it's closed to the outside world. (You can see out, but not in.) Since an Intranet is secure from the outside world, there is less danger from hackers, viruses, and rogue applets in Java or Javascript.

If you have an Intranet, you may have options that most web designers lack.

The reason is that the company that owns a particular Intranet can dictate the hardware, software, and connectivity everywhere in the network. The company that owns an Intranet has total control over the entire web environment -- from the web server, right down to the browser that will be used on the PCs. This control allows a company to enforce a uniformity that can have many benefits.

Unlike the traditional web site designer who must contend with a bewildering array of software, hardware, and many other factors from a universe of possible visitors, the designer of an Intranet web site can target a small and precise range, well-defined in advance. This will greatly simplify the design and testing of the web site.

For instance, you can use browser-specific features because you know which browser your visitors will be using.

Another benefit of Intranets is the freedom to use leading-edge technologies such as Java, ActiveX, "push," and a wide variety of plug-ins that add functionality to the browser. The tightly-controlled environment of an Intranet eliminates many of the problems that would be encountered in deploying these technologies in the widely diverse environment of the Internet.

In addition, there may actually be a real need for web-based applications that rely on these new technologies. They can bring Intranet-based applications closer in functionality to those found in a traditional LAN-based client/server environment.