Classroom using the web

The Wild WWW - Browsing the Web

Classroom

[ introduction ] [ the basics! ]
[ downloading ] [ hints and tips]

[ introduction ] [ the basics! ]
[ downloading ] [ hints and tips]

[ introduction ] [ the basics! ]
[ downloading ] [ hints and tips]

[ introduction ] [ the basics! ]
[ downloading ] [ hints and tips]

Wrestling with the Wild WWW! - Browsing the Web

f using the internet is 'surfing,' then the web browser is your surf board. These kinds of programs, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, allow you to view web pages from the Internet. But there are lots of handy extra things they can do, which will make your surfing easier and faster.

All the features discussed in this tutorial are available in most browsers, including Internet Explorer and Netscape. Internet Explorer is one of the most widely used browsers out there, primarily because it comes free with Windows! For Mac users, Netscape is the standard, but there is very little difference between the two browsers, although people tend to have a strong personal preference for one or the other. If you don't have either IE or Netscape, or if you have an older version and would like to upgrade, the latest versions of both these programs can usually be found on the free disks on the covers of computing magazines, or you can download what you need from the relevant websites: www.microsoft.com or www.netscape.com.

Browsing Basics

Browsing Basics At it simplest, the way to use the web through a browser is to click on the white box next to where it says address, type in the address of the site you want to go to and hit enter. But there is much more that you can do than that. Generally, the most important buttons are the large icons with little pictures near the top of the window, so we should look at these first.

The tool bars for both IE and Netscape have buttons for the following:

Back / Forward - allows you to move between pages you've already viewed since you started up the program. If you click the button once you will move one page back or forwards, if you click on the small triangles by the button you will get a drop down list of the last 10 places you have visited and then you can just click on one of those.

Stop - if you want to stop the current action click here.

Refresh (IE) Reload (Netscape) - if a page is taking a long time to load, or you get a message that a page is currently unavailable, try hitting refresh to reload the page. If you are looking at a site where things are updated every few minutes (eg a news site) then clicking on refresh will give you the latest update of the page.

Home - click on this to go to your "home". This is the first site which comes up when you open your browser. Depending on how your software has been configured it could be your ISP's home page, or the Microsoft or Netscape page. You can change this page to anything you like by going into the Tools Menu, clicking on Internet Options and changing the address of your home site.

Search - click on this to get to a search engine. Just like it says! The search engine you get may not be that great though, so if you need to you can look at some other search engines. Try www.yahoo.com, www.hotbot.com, www.ask.com, and www.lycos.com for starters, and remember to check out our tutorial on searching tips for some extra hints on finding what you want easily!

Favorites (IE) Bookmarks (Netscape) - When you come across a page which is of interest to you, you can 'bookmark' it by adding it to your favorites. This means that you will be able to access it in future by clicking on the name of the page in you favorites folder. This is especially handy for people with bad memories, or those web addresses which aren't easy to remember!

History (only available with IE) - if you didn't add a site you found to your favorites list and now want to find it again, then the history is where you will find it. Clicking on this folder opens a small window showing you all the sites you have visited, listed in date order. So you can click on the sites you visited yesterday, and find whatever it was you wanted to go back to.

Print - click on this to print the page you are currently looking at.

These are the features of Internet Explorer that you will use most, although this is by no means the only things that you can do.
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Downloading

Often, you will find something on a site which you wish to save onto your computer to use or look at later. To do this you need to do something called downloading.

Freeware or shareware (cheap or free software available to anyone who wants it), music files, add ons or plug-ins for your software are all downloadable from the net. Often you will get a link to click on which will automatically bring up a small box asking you where you want to save the item. Choose the folder you want to put it in and press save, and you will see the download begin (and often you will be told how long it will take). Usually when the download is finished the box automatically disappears. If it doesn't and the download is 100% complete, just close the box as normal.

If it is the page itself you want to download (for example, a report or news story that you wish to read later or keep) then you can go to File and click on Save As. Then choose the folder you wish your item to be saved into and press save. Depending on the size of the item it may take some time to download, so be patient (you can keep surfing whilst it is doing it). If you are going to download something large it is better to do it when telephone calls are cheaper (if you are using a modem). [ back to top of page ]

Hints and Tips

* If a page is taking a long time to load, check out the status bar. In Netscape the bar is grey coloured, and to the bottom left and in IE it's blue and on the bottom right. This bar will show you how much of the page has loaded. If the bar isn't moving, try hitting reload/refresh to try opening the page again.

* Spend some time sorting out the pages you have bookmarked as your favorites. You can make different folders to put them in and this will make it much easier to find what you are looking for once you have more than about 20 bookmarks.

* Links are the glue that sticks the web together. Many sites have them as blue underlined text, but this isn't always the case. Watch out for whether your cursor changes from a pointed arrow to a hand - this is always a give away that you have moved over a link.

Try it here with the link to the next tutorial, on newsgroups: Newsgroups