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The Internet is not just about computers, it is really about people talking and sharing information.
What are the Internet and World Wide Web?
The Internet is simply a series of computer networks that are linked together around the world. Many computers are connected through telephone lines. Information stored on the Internet comes in the form of text, pictures, sound, video or animation.
The World Wide Web is a means of accessing, organising and moving through all the information on the Internet.
The World Wide Web consists of millions of documents – Web pages – stored on computer systems all around the world. Users can view Web pages by using Web browsing software on any variety of computer platform – PC, Apple Macintosh, Acorn, etc.
How big is the Internet?
Nobody knows exactly how many people are linked to the Internet and the number is changing every day. However estimates range from 40 to 70 million individuals worldwide.
What kind of information is on the Internet?
Everything you can think of can be found on the Internet, but it is not organised at all. The information available is vast and finding your way around can prove a daunting task. However, finding a given piece of information in a large research library isn’t very easy without the help of a librarian. Information on the Internet also changes and seems to appear more quickly than in a physical library, so you never know what has changed since you last visited.
What is the Internet used for?
 It is used as a source of research information.
It is used as a way of advertising and selling products.
It is used as a way that people can “meet” using chat rooms to contact
people with similar interests.
It is used to find up to date information.
It is used for playing online games with another Internet user.
Who controls the Internet?
No one controls the Internet – there is no central location or organisation. However, each individual network connected to the Internet does have its own administration.
URLs
Each site on the Internet is identified by a unique address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The string of characters often begins with ‘http://www.’ Which indicates that it has a presence on the World Wide Web (‘www’ does not necessarily appear on all site addresses). The other parts of the URL might be the name of the server on which the information resides, an indication as to the kind of organisation which is providing the resource, and also the country of origin. Following these, usually divided by dashes or slashes, are codes which refer to files held on the server computer.
You can usually get an idea of what a site contains by looking at the URL – its various parts will give clues as to the identity of the information provider, the kind of organisation it is and its country of origin.
Every country has it own distinct code which can be used in the address, eg Norway = no and United Kingdom = UK. If an address does not indicate a country code then it is more than likely, but not necessarily, in the USA.
At the moment, the type of ‘domain’ is indicated by the following code:
ac academic (UK)
com company or commercial organisation
co company or commercial organisation (UK)
edu educational institution (US universities have this
domain suffix)
gov government body or department
mil military site
net Internet gateway or administrative host
org non-profit organisation
It is likely that these will extend in number and range as recent changes to the domain registration system come into operation.
ISP
An Internet Service Provider or ISP is a company than connects you to the internet. Signing up with an ISP allows you to dial into its permanent net connection to get online. Some ISP’s charge a monthly fee for their services ie AOL, Compuserve whereas others are free ie Freeserve, BTClickFree. The ISP often also provides you with an email address and space to make your own web site.
Web Browsers
A Web Browser is a program which enables you to search through the information available on the Web. Although there are many browsers available, the two most widely used are Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. These programs are widely available (free) and one of them is usually provided with your ISP start-up package.
Our School uses Internet Explorer (version 5).
How do I use Internet Explorer?
The browser consists of a window in which a Web Page is displayed and a toolbar at the top.
These are the buttons on the Internet Explorer 5 toolbar that let you navigate from page to page around the Web.
The Back button takes you to the web page you were just looking at, one step back, as if you were flipping through the pages in a book.
The Forward button operates in the opposite manner of the Back button. If you have used the back button, you can then use this button to go forward. These two are useful when flipping back and forth between web pages.
The Stop button prevents the current page from loading. Use this one if you’re tired of waiting for a page to load in, and you want to stop the process.
The Refresh button reloads the current page. This is used if the page you are viewing has changed. Pressing the Refresh button will show you the most current version of the page.
The Home button takes you directly to a pre-set Homepage, in our case the School Intranet.
The Search button sends you to a predefined search engine.
The Favourites button allows you to access sites which you have previously found useful and stored their address here.
The History button produces a list of all the sites visited over the past few days or weeks – so if you found a really useful page two days ago but forgot to add it to
your Favourites list, you can easily find it again by looking here.
The Mail button will take you to your e-mail – if you have it set up.
The Print button prints the current page. Be careful when using this button – a page is a Web Page not a page of print. Often, you will not be aware of how long a page is unless you check before you print, and you might find yourself printing pages of information you do not want.
The Edit button allows you to edit the web page using FrontPage.
How do I get to a Web Page?
If you know the Web Page’s URL you can type it directly into the ‘Address’ box then press enter.
The browser will then retrieve and display that page for you.
What do I do with a useful URL when I find one?
You can write it down for future reference or you can store it in your ‘Favourites’. To do this click on the ‘Favourites’ on the menu bar and choose ‘Add to Favourites….’ When you want to access this site again simply click on the Favourites icon and you can just click on the previously saved site.
When you have saved quite a few sites in your Favourites you may need to save them in some sort of order. To do this you need to use Favourites, Organise Favourites and create meaningful folders to store them in.
How do I find URL’s for pages that might interest me?
You can use a Search Engine to search for sites which contain keywords which you are interested in. Unfortunately, search engines are not very good at filtering what they find and you may have to scroll through many trivial or off-the-mark links before finding one that is useful. To make searching quicker it is important that you use a suitable search engine and define accurately what you are searching for.
Using Links
Quite often web sites contain links to other sites or web pages. By clicking on these links you can go to these other sites.
You can go to the link by double clicking on text that is underlined or clicking on a picture or photograph.
Internet or Intranet?
The internet is available to anybody all over the world whereas an intranet is only available to computers connected to an internal/private network.
When you open the internet at Haydon you will automatically see the Intranet and need to click on the ‘Seach the Web’ link which will load the Yahoo Search Engine.
Or you could try looking at the Useful Web Sites area.
Search Engines
A search engine uses software that continuously trawls the web for new websites and catalogues them in indexes of pages which you can search using keywords. Search engines such as Altavista and Infoseek are constantly updated with new links to websites and pages.
The Internet has an incredible amount of information. Search engines can be used to find the information that you need. Search engines are quite straightforward to use, just type in the subject of your search and the engine will take you to all the information about that subject. The problem is that you often get information overload. You find too much information. To stop this from happening you must be more precise about the information you are looking for.
Beginners
Ask Jeeves
(www.askJeeves.com)
Ask Jeeves is a
search engine that allows you to ask a question in plain English, such as
‘Where can I buy tartan in London?’. Unfortunately many of its answers
are far too general to be helpful.
MSN Search
(search.msn.co.uk)
The search page from
the Microsoft Network site, this has most of the important features you
would expect and a simple, easy-to-use search engine. Ideal for beginners
though MSN can be tedious for experienced users.
Yahoo! (www.yahoo.co.uk)
Yahoo! Is a great
place for novices and has all the features needed. You can browse through
categories or search by keyword. Yahoo! Searches only sites in its
listings directory and can often return limited results.
Intermmediate
AltaVista
(www.altavista.com)
Claiming to index
more web pages than any other search site. AltaVista’s simple search
procedures can deliver thousands of hits with the advanced option
delivering a smaller set of more precise results. A solid search option.
Excite
(www.excite.co.uk)
Excite has some
excellent search features and also offers a wealth of localised
information on subjects such as sports and weather. Some rate it as one of
the most accurate search sites, though its design can be overwhelming.
Infoseek (www.infoseek.co.uk)
Infoseek is one of
the best search sites available. Easy to use, with a brilliant advanced
search page. Infoseek also offers all the services needed and is fast
Lycos
(www.lycos.co.uk)
Lycos has local
content for the UK and offers simple search functions though some users
complain that the results can be disappointing. Lycos has recently added
some new features such as e-mail, news and shopping.
Advanced
Google!
(www.google.com)
One of the most
popular websites among experienced users. Google can often deliver far
better results with its metasearch system.
HotBot (www.hotbot.com)
Often cited as the
best search engine, HotBot has an easy to use approach to constructing
complex search queries but a lurid design. Asking questions can take
longer than other sites but the results are more finely targeted.
Northern Light (www.northernlight.com)
It may not be a
household name but Northern Light often wins accolades because of its
massive database of sites and its thousands of full-text information
resources.
Search engines work using key words.
To find a web site on a particular topic you must first:
Be clear about the topic you are interested in.
Think of two or three key words on that topic
Type the key words into the search engine
Some times words have more than one meaning eg if you do a search using the key word “stars”, you will find sites about space as well as sites about TV stars.
The blue words that appear on the screen are links to other sites.
Once you have found the site you want
Perhaps the easiest thing you can do when you find the site that you want is to make notes. Read what it says on the screen. Write down the facts that are going to be useful to you.
You could copy the text from a web site and paste it into a word
processor.
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