Terms to Remember
The internet is a huge, worldwide, public network of computers that allows individuals on one computer network, to share information with users on another computer network, that can be thousands of miles away.
An intranet is a network of connected computers that uses the same protocols and provides many of the same services as the Internet, but which cannot be accessed by the public. For example, a business or school district may have an intranet that can only be accessed by its employees.
The World Wide Web is a global, hypermedia document that resides on and stretches across intranets and most of the Internet. There is a lot of information on the Internet, on individual networks that are scattered around the world. The Web links these networks.
As you read text on a webpage, you will notice that some of the words are underlined and may appear in a different color. If you click your mouse on the text that you noticed, magically a new page will appear on your computer screen. This new document will also contain words or phrases that are underlined and of a different color that you can click on, which will take you to yet another document. The words and phrases that can be clicked on allow the nonlinear presentation of text (hypertext), which lets you jump from page to page following various pathways. The clickable words and phrases are known as links. Hypermedia is the nonlinear presentation of not just text, but also of a variety of other media, including graphics and sound.
Netscape is a computer software program, known as a browser, designed for accessing and displaying documents from the World Wide Web. Developed by Marc Anderson, Netscape supports graphics, sound, and video, as well as text.
The term home page usually refers to the top-level document or index page at a particular website. It can also refer to the HTML document that automatically displays when you first open your web browser.
Web surfing, also known as browsing is the most popular of all Internet activities. When you see words or phrases on a web page that are underlined and in a different color (hypertext), just click on them and they take you to "other" places.
"Search Engines" are websites that connect to huge computers that have incredible amounts of information indexed for easy retrieval. Similar to the Duey Decimal system in the library, search engines don't necessarily contain the information, but have "indexed" the location of where to find the information. Search engines catalog the web, organizing information so that it is easier to find. Some search engines offer indices, so that you can search by category. Different search engines use different criteria in retrieving resources. Some base their selections on the occurrence of keywords in titles and headings; some search the first 200 words of the document, while others search the entire document.
URL stands for Universal Resource Locator. Every web page on the Internet must have a unique URL, just as everyone must have a unique telephone number. The URL is the address of a home page. If you know the URL of a home page, you can go directly there without having to use a search engine. The URL for a website always begins with http, followed by a colon, two slashes, and then the unique website address. At the end of the address, there may be another slash with a path and a file name. For example, the URL for the Alice Drive Middle School home page is: