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You have probably heard that there is lots of good stuff on the Internet.
But, how do you find it? For a newcomer this is often a bewildering problem. This page is
designed to get you started.
First, we want to point out an important feature of your browser.
When you find something interesting, it is often difficult to find it again. Therefore, it is
important to record the address of anything you might want to see again. Both Netscape and
Internet Explorer make this very easy. Netscape calls this feature "Bookmarks" and
Internet Explorer calls it "Favorites". All you do is click the Bookmarks or Favorites
button on the toolbar and click the "Add..." option. This saves your place.
Later, when you want to return, click Bookmarks or Favorites again and select the place you want
from the list. When you have so many places listed that the list is too long, you can
reorganize the list into folders by topic.
There are four main ways to find stuff:
There are dozens of search engines designed to help you find stuff.
Eleven are listed on our "Search
Web" page. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.
You should experiment with each of them to learn what they do best.
All the engines offer a basic word search. To do a word search, simply enter one or
more words related to the topic you want to find and either press enter or click
the search button. The engine returns a list of links to pages containing one or more
occurrences of the words you entered. The links are ordered by relevance - that is, the more
times your words appeared, the higher in the list. The ordering is not an exact science
and many factors are used. It is not uncommon for the engine to find many thousands of pages
that contain your words. Usually ten to twenty links are presented at one time. There will be a
link to click to get the next group.
Most of the engines offer advanced techniques to reduce the number of "hits".
These techniques vary from engine to engine. Look for a link offering to
explain the how to use the advanced features.
Several of the engines offer special searches for email addresses, businesses,
or other categories. Yahoo has extensive lists of links by category. Several also
offer stock quotes.
Our favorite search engine is Inference Find.
This engine submits your search of several other search engines and
organizes the results into a tidy list.
Many web sites have links to other sites. The links may take you to related material or
simply something the author found interesting. Links are generally
recognizable by their color and by underlining. Although web authors can specify any color they
want for links, blue is the most common color. Links are nearly always underlined.
In both Netscape and Internet Explorer, the cursor changes from an arrow to a hand when it is
over a link. The status information at the bottom of the screen shows the address the
link points to. Most links will change color after follow them. That way you can tell whether
you have looked at a link before.
To follow a link, click it once with the left mouse button. Sites vary enormously in how quickly
they display. When you first click a link, the "Stop"
button on the toolbar is activated. This button allows you to cancel the link. Once the page is
fully displayed, the "Stop" button becomes inactive. You do not have to
use the "Stop" button, clicking another link stops the old one and starts a new one.
The status line near the bottom of the screen shows the progress. There are three
major stages: finding, connecting, and waiting for reply.
The Internet is constantly changing. New pages are added and old pages disappear.
Sometimes the servers that host the pages crash, sometimes they are too busy to
accept new requests. If you click a link and it fails during the finding step, it
either means the page is gone or that some malfunction has temporarily made it inaccessible. If
further attempts on other days still fail, the site is probably gone. If failure occurs during the
connect stage, it usually means the server is temporarily down. It might mean it
is very busy. The most likely point of delay is in waiting for reply. A busy or slow server can keep
you waiting a long time at this stage. Either be patient or try again later.
The Internet is discussed in numerous magazines and newspaper articles. Many of these articles mention web sites and give their URLs. The URL is the address you use
to access the web site. Your friends might recommend sites to you.
What do you do with a URL? You type it into the entry field near the top of the browser and
press Enter. The entry field is labeled "Address" in Internet
Explorer and either "Location" or "Netsite" in Netscape, depending of the
version. Internet Explorer has two options that will remove the entry field. If only
the menu ("File Edit View....") appears, click View and then Toolbar.
This will display the toolbar, including the entry field. If the entry field is still not there,
click the word "Address" at the left edge of the screen.
A complete URL looks like this:
http://www.steuber.com
It always works to type it all in. Depending on you the version of your browser, parts may
be omitted to save time. Usually the http:// can be left off. On Netscape Communicator
4.0, you can type just "steuber" (without the quotes) and it will work. You can
experiment with your browser on a URL you know works.
If someone sends you an email message with a full URL, you can just click it (or possibly double
click it) right in your mail reader. Depending on what mail program
you are using, it will display the web page.
If you are looking for the web site of a large company, a college, or other well know entity,
you may be able to just guess what their URL is. The authors of web
sites try to use a URL that is obvious. This is not always possible because no two are allowed
to be the same.
Most URLs end with .com, .edu, .gov or .org. These are for commercial companies, colleges,
US government, and non-profit or other organizations. Most URLs begin with
www. If you want IBM's web site, you might guess
www.ibm.com. Or you might guess www.temple.edu,
www.swarthmore.edu, or
www.widener.edu.
Or you might guess www.house.gov,
www.senate.gov or
www.whitehouse.gov.
Or you might guess www.transplant.org,
www.voters.org or
www.olympic.org. Try it and see what you get.
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