Web Browser Tutorial
In and earlier section we looked in very general terms at what the Internet is, and a little bit about how it works. The World Wide Web was mentioned as the way most people are now accessing much of the information to be found on the Internet. In this section we will look in more detail at the program used to get at all that information, i.e. the Web Browser.
The Web Browser is the ‘thing’ that lets you retrieve and view information on the World Wide Web-you need a wordprocessing program to write text, a drawing program to create graphics-likewise you need a special piece of software to access the information on the Web. The software you need is called a Web Browser. There are a number to choose from but the two most widely used at the moment are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
For no particular reason, other than that it is arguably one of the most powerful web browser used on the Internet (well it used to be..JB) we will look, in this section, at how to use Netscape Navigator1 . You might want to download it from their web site if you don’t already have it.
Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator has all the usual features you would find in most browsers i.e. the ability to store the addresses of your favourite pages (called bookmarks), save pages to disk, turn graphics on or off, and much more. Netscape and indeed other browser develop so fast, there is always an expanding list of new and increasingly fancy facilities.
It’s main function is to let you browse the web—which it does very well. But, like many web browsers, it is, ‘to coin a phrase’, an all-round-handy-Internet-tool. It can be used to access FTP and Gopher sites, send and read e-mail or read and post articles to USEnet news.
Using Netscape
When you launch Netscape it displays a default page; called your Home page. When starting the program for the first time this will probably be Netscapes’ page or the page of the organisation who supplies you with an internet connection.
You can change this default page to one of your favourites or one you have made up yourself- simply by changing the preferences in the Configuration menu (see box below).
Launch Netscape Now and have a good look around the buttons and menu’s. The next few pages gives an overview of some aspects of the the Netscape window and toolbar.
A word to the wise
A new version of Netscape seems to come out every couple of weeks. This is great in one sense because it means the browser gets better and faster (we hope it does anyway). It’s not so good however if it means that the instructions in this tutorial no longer seem to bear any resemblance to the particular version of the browser you are currently using.
I don’t think that will quite be the case, but it means you will may have to use a bit of initiative when interpreting certain instructions. If the menu command or the button I refer to in the text does not match up with what you see in front of you, don’t panic and don’t assume that your version just doesn’t allow you to do this particular thing (I’ve made that mistake myself in the past). Assume rather that the menu command or button is just been re-organised to a more ‘handy’ location, and if you look around you will soon find it.
Choose your own Home PageEach time you start up Netscape the page which is displayed in your browser is called your home page. This is also the page which you gets loaded when you choose the Home button from the toolbar ( or Home from the Go menu). It is possible to change this home page, perhaps one you have put together yourself or one which you use often. To change it first choose General from the Options menu (for Internet Explorer users Options is under the View menu). Then choose Appearance and click on the radio button labeled Home Page Location. Type in the URL of your chosen home page. You can make your home page a file from your hard disk. To do this first open the relevant page using Open from the File menu. The URL of this file can be copied from the location field and then pasted into the Home Page Location. |
Keeping track of pages you have visited
As explained in earlier sections you click on highlighted words, (which could be coloured or underlined) to navigate from one page to the next. As you navigate through the pages Netscape keeps a note of the where you have previously been. This is quite handy because it saves you the time you would spend clicking away at the back button. The Go menu or History from the Window menu is where you will find the list of previously visited pages - the history list as it is called.
To put it another way, the History list displays the sites that you have visited during the current session. To go back to a previously visited page you could click the Back button on the tool bar (or the forward button if you have used the back button) or choose a site from the Go menu. These links are only retained for a single session—so as soon as you shut down the browser they are gone—i.e. they’re history.
If you don’t have your Browser running launch it now. From your Home page click on an underlined link in your browser window - assuming you are connected to the Internet the selected page will load. Now use the Back button to go back to your first page.
Having used the Back button check the Go menu - it should list both your original page and the one you are now on. Click on the Forward button to go back to the your opening page (The forward button, is only active after you have used the Back button).
Choose another link from your Home page and load it into your browser. Your Go menu should now contain all three pages you have visited. Use the Go menu to reload a previously visited page.
Choose History from the Window menu and note that the pages visited also appear here. The history dialog box allows you to create a bookmark (you will find out what a bookmark is shortly) of any sites you have visited during the session, as well as reloading any previously visited page.
The above few simple commands are all you need to know to surf the web till your hearts content. What we have done so far is to use hyperlinks to jump from one document to another and back - and this simple technique alone opens up a whole new world of information and resources.
Web page addresses
Every one of the millions of pages on the web has its own address called a Universal Resource Locator or URL for short. You may have noticed that each time you loaded a new page the information in the location field changed (equally you may not have noticed ). The location field shows the the URL of the page of the currently loaded page.
Us the Back and Forward buttons to skip between pages and take a note of changes in the Location field.
Entering a URL manually
As well as clicking a hyperlink to display a page you can also enter its address manually. This is useful if you have came across a web site in a magazine which interests you. To enter a URL for a page choose Open on the toolbar, or Open Location from the File menu; type in the URL and press the Return key. You can also edit the URL in the location box and press Return.
Enter the following URL manually and load the page:
http://www.glasgowwestend.co.uk (Pat's Guide to the West End of Glasgow)
What’s a Bookmark?
When you come across a page which you would like to go back to at a later date, (but would like to avoid the pain of having to key the URL in again) Netscape (and indeed other browsers) lets you create a list of your favourite sites which are accessed from the menu bar. To add to your list of bookmarks choose Add Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu—the current web page will be added to the bottom of the list. You can now jump straight to a web site by choosing it from the bookmarks menu.
Load the following page and bookmark it:
http://www.photo.net/ (Philip Greenspuns Photography Web site.)
Having bookmarked the page check that it has been added to the end of your Bookmarks menu.
Bookmarks are saved permanently and can be edited, organised into folders or deleted by choosing the Bookmarks option from the Windows menu.
Stop!
If a page is slow to load or if you decide you no longer want to view a particular page you can stop it loading by pressing the Stop button from the toolbar or by choosing Stop loading from the Go menu. You get some idea of how fast a page is being transferred to your computer by looking at the status bar indicator which can be found at the bottom of the browser window.
If you are familiar with printing pages on a word processor, you will have no problem printing pages from your Web Browser. To print the currently displayed page choose Print from the File menu, or press the Print button from the tool bar. A print dialogue box will open where you can set the number of copies you require. Click OK when you are satisfied and the page will be sent to the printer(assuming of course there is printer attached and it is set up properly).
Saving files locally
Saving a page of information to disk is, ‘by the same token’ similar to saving a word processing document. In Netscape the option to Save the document can be found under the File menu . You can choose to save the page as a text document or as HTML(i.e the way the page is stored on the web server you downloaded it from). If there is no option to save as a text file, you can do this by selecting all the text on the web page and copying it into a wordprocessor—and then saving it.
If you save the file as an HTML document this will allow you to view it in your browser as a local web page. This is quite handy because it mean you can view web pages without having to run up phone charges. However you will lose any graphics or pictures that where on the page. To get the graphics you would have to save these separately and then edit the HTML so that Netscape knows where to retrieve them from the local disk. A rudimentary understanding of HTML may be required for this process.
Viewing files locally
Load the following web page into your browser window:
http://www.fool.co.uk (The Motley Fool Web site)
Save this page as a Source (i.e.HTML) file - taking note of the directory on your hard/floppy disk you are saving it into.
Now choose Open File from the File menu. Choose the file you have saved and open it. The web page should now be displayed in your browser.
There are a couple of things which you will notice are different about this file; first the address in the location field is different, it will be proceeded with file:// instead of http:// which tells us the file is saved locally, and secondly all the graphics have disappeared. The text of the page has been saved but not the graphics. To have the graphics these would have to be saved separately.
The advantage of saving a file locally is that you no longer have to be connected to the internet to view and read it - and that’s good for saving on phone costs.
Opening two or more Windows at once
Here’s a good tip for saving time while browsing the web. While you are waiting for a page to load on the your browser choose New Web Browser from the File menu. This will open up another window and let you go on with your surfing in this new window. Switch between Windows using the Window menu.
You can go on opening windows without proportionally slowing down the amount of time it takes to download any particular page - although I am sure there must be some trade-off. My experience has been that I keep loading new windows until I get to the point where the browser crashes my computer. That’s when I know I have opened too many!
Using the On-Line help
Netscapes help system can only be used once you are on-line. To access it (if you are using an Apple Mac) have a look on the ‘Question Mark’ menu—or the equivalent if you are using Netscape on a Windows machine.
It is probably worthwhile at some point to have a good browse around the Netscape help files to pick up tips or solve any questions that have been troubling you.
FramesMost of the pages you will come across as you browse the web take the form of a single unit taking up the entire area of the browser window. Increasingly however you will come across content being presented in the form of multiple frames. Each of these frames is in effect a page in itself and together they create a kind of patchwork arrangement in the browser window.
The School of Scottish Studies is a good example of a site that uses Frames:
http://www.pearl.arts.ed.ac.uk/
Frames tend to be used to assist navigation on a web site; one frame for example contains a menu of choices, clicking choice loads information into an adjacent frame.
Menu items change to allow you to work with frames in the same way you could with single pages. Save and Print for example change to Save Frame and Print Frame and only operate on the selected frame.
I must admit I am not a big fan of frames myself. For one they can be pretty useless if you don’t have a reasonably sized screen—the frames can be too small to see the information in them. And for another they can create barrier to access for people who use screen readers; screen readers don’t cope with frames too well, if at all.
Time for a break?
That’s most of the important stuff covered when it comes to using a Web Browser.
Don’t worry if there seems to be too much to take in in one go. Just learn as you go along and use the above for reference purposes.
The rest of this section looks at ways to save money by cutting down some of your ‘on-line’ time.
Tips for saving call costsThe ultimate way to cut cost is of course to use someone elses’ internet account. (I haven’t read that suggestion on other ‘how to save costs’ lists). Its may not be as daft or indeed unethical as it sounds. Public access to the internet is, I think and hope, going to grow quite rapidly over the next few years. This should go some way to even up the developing gulf between the new information rich and poor.(as well a being a valuable addition to our cost saving list).
Many of the following suggestions where culled from the excellent ‘Internet magazine’, and others are from personal experience.
Turn the graphics off
The text of the page can be loaded first before any graphics, saving a bit of time if you are not so interested in the pictures. You turn graphics off by deselecting Auto load images from the Options menu.
Write all your mail off-line
Most mail programs allow you to compose your messages while not connected to the Internet. If yours doesn’t, get another one.
Connect to local sites when possible
Downloading from far away sites can be much slower than local ones. America for example gets pretty slow about 12 noon which is when the locals wake up and rush for their computers. Check out if there is a local mirror site with the same information.
Compress files before sending them
On Windows you can use Winzip, and on the Mac Stuffit seems to be the most popular.
Get your phone line checked
If your phone line has been causing a problem it might be worth contacting BT to get it checked.
Store information locally
Some packages allow you to store a sites graphics and some text locally, so that you only go on-line to download the new bits. Tierra3 is one such package
Get a hold of bandwidth optimisation software
:Peak Net.jet for example- downloads linked pages while you read the front page.
Browse Off-line- frequently visited sites:
Whebwacker seems to be the current favourite package for downloading a web site to for local browsing.
Upgrade your modem:
log on to your modem manufactures web site and grab any free upgrades.
Manage your Cache:
If its too full it will slow down your browsing- clear it out every now and again-if you have a slow hard disk keep the cache relatively small. On the Mac you can set up a Ram Disk and use that as your cache - this speeds up reloading of previously visited pages.
Check your serial port:
Older PCs with 8520 serial connections will cause a bottle neck even with a 28,800 modem. The serial port is the bit you plug your modem wire into at the back of the computer.
Check your comms settings:
Make sure the communication software is set to the right speed: 115kbps for 28,800modem.