INTERNET TUTORIAL

INTRODUCTION
What is the Internet? || What is the Web? || How to Connect
Surfing for the First Time || Troubleshooting || Other Features
Links || Glossary || The 'Net Around the World
INTERNET QUIZ

Surfing the Web for the First Time

In this section...

Getting Online

Once you have established your Internet account, you are now ready to "surf" the World Wide Web from your computer. To do so, perform the following steps (specific instructions will vary depending on your access provider and software):

  1. Start up your computer, and make sure that your modem is on and connected to a telephone line.
  2. Open your access software.
  3. Initiate the connection. Many access software packages will display the status of the connection process, which generally takes between 15 and 30 seconds.
  4. Once you have successfully connected, access and launch your Web browser.

If you have successfully accessed the Web, you will see in your browser window the home page, or the first page that your browser is set to access. Often the home page is a site belonging to the manufacturer of the Web browser you're using. On most browsers, you can change the home page to a site that you'd like to access each time you begin a Web session.

Depending on the speed of your modem and the size or complexity of the page you're accessing, the time necessary to completely load a page can range from a few seconds to several minutes.

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Finding Your Way Around

Now that you've gotten on the Web, you're probably wondering how to get to all those great resources that you've been hearing about. Fortunately, there are several strategies for moving about the Web:

Try it! Type the complete URL for the CenterSpan Web site below, then click on the "Go!" button:

This is the most basic method of accessing a Web site. However, you have to know exactly where you want to go, and then type in the address precisely in order to get there. The newer browsers can compensate for some typing (for instance, allowing you to omit the "http://" at the beginning of a URL), but some URLs are too complicated for a browser to second-guess.

If you simply want to explore and get to know the Web, any one of the following strategies are preferable:

Jump sites contain collections of special-interest sites that the author has included for certain reasons. Web indexes, however, usually contain much more eclectic assemblies of Web resources. If you're on the Web and are not sure where to go, head to the nearest Web index.

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Using a Web Index

To access and use a Web index, perform the following steps:

  1. While logged on to the Web, type http://www.yahoo.com/ in your browser's URL entry field.
  2. Press ENTER or RETURN on your keyboard.

This will take you to Yahoo!, one of the most popular Web indexes. Underneath the Yahoo! logo, you will see a blank search entry form, as well as hotlinks of site categories.

  1. Click on one of the category topics and follow the categories until you reach a site that matches your interests.

...OR...

  1. Click your mouse in the entry form. This will place a blinking cursor in the form.
  2. Type one or more words pertaining to information you'd like to locate on the Web.
  3. Click on the SEARCH button to the right of the entry form, or press RETURN or ENTER on your keypad.

    After a few seconds, Yahoo! will return with a list of hotlinks that match your search criteria. The more specific your criteria, the fewer and more specific hotlinks you will see.
  4. Scroll down the page and select the hotlink to a page that you'd like to explore [NOTE: Extensive search results will take up multiple pages].

If you would like to try searching with a Web index other than Yahoo!, select one of the index hotlinks listed at the bottom of each page of search results. When you select any one of these indexes, the keywords you entered for Yahoo! will remain in force, though the search results will be different simply because of the way that each Web index processes information.

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How Do Web Indexes Know What They Know?

It would seem that cataloguing everything on the Web would be a monumental and maddening task. Web indexes meet this challenge using two primary strategies.

One way of building an index is to let the site creators register their sites with the index, in order to generate publicity for their sites. The other is to use special software that automatically scans the Web for new sites and catalogues them; such software is often referred to as "crawler," "spider," or "bot" (short for "robot") software. Many indexes use a combination of the two methods, and some indexes catalog other portions of the Net in addition to the Web (an index called DejaNews, for example, catalogs messages in USENET newsgroups).

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Where Are the Web Indexes?

In your searches, you will probably want to use various Web indexes, as they vary in both their content and the way in which they process search queries.

The following are the addresses for a few of the more popular Web indexes:

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Using Your Browser Tools to Navigate the Web

Yet another method of navigating the Web involves using your browser's own controls. Most browsers "memorize" or cache Look it up! the pages that you've accessed during a Web session, and have BACK and FORWARD buttons that let you go back and forth among these pages. Browsers may also have a GO menu that lets you hop back and forth between memorized pages out of sequence.

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Continue to next section

Go to...
INTRODUCTION
What is the Internet? || What is the Web? || How to Connect
Surfing for the First Time || Troubleshooting || Other Features
Links || Glossary || The 'Net Around the World
INTERNET QUIZ

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