You can find almost anything you want on the more than 28.1 billion indexed web pages available around the world.16 In one month alone, one writer reported, he went on the web “to find, among other things, hotel reservations in California, a rose that will grow in the shade, information about volunteer fire departments, a used copy of an obscure novel, two ZIP codes, the com- plete text of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the news that someone I went to high school with took early retirement. I also heard, out of the blue, from two people I haven’t seen in years.”17 Among the droplets of what amounts to a Niagara Falls of information: Weather maps and forecasts. Guitar chords.
Recipe archives. Sports schedules. Daily newspapers in all languages. Nielsen television ratings. The Alcoholism Research Data Base. U.S. government phone numbers. The Central Intelligence Agency world map. The daily White House press releases. And on and on. But it takes a browser and various kinds of search tools to find and make any kind of sense of this enormous amount of data.
FIVE BASIC ELEMENTS OF THE BROWSER If you buy a new computer, it will come with a browser already installed. Most browsers have a similar look and feel and similar navigational tools. Note that the web browser screen has five basic elements: menu bar, toolbar, URL bar, workspace, and status bar. To execute menu-bar and toolbar commands, you use the mouse to move the pointer over the word, known as a menu selection, and click the left button of the mouse. This will result in a pull-down menu of other commands for other options. (
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See Panel 2.11 .)After you’ve been using a mouse for a while, you may find moving the pointer around somewhat time consuming. As a shortcut, if you click on the right mouse button, you can reach many of the commands on the toolbar ( Back, Forward, and so on) via a pop-up menu.
STARTING OUT FROM HOME: THE HOME PAGE The first page you see when you start up your browser is the home page or start page. (You can also start up from just a blank page, if you don’t want to wait for the time it takes to connect with a home page.) You can choose any page on the web as your start page, but a good start page offers links to sites you want to visit fre- quently. Often you may find that the internet access provider with which you arrange your internet connection will provide its own start page. How- ever, you’ll no doubt be able to customize it to make it your own personal home page.
panel 2.11
Common tools and functions of a browser
Do You Need to Know HTML to Build a Website?
Most general web users do not need to know HTML. If you want to convert a word- processed document to HTML so that someone can post it on a website, applications such as Microsoft Word will convert it for you (for example, using the options Save as, Web page).
Also, many website builders offer their services on the web;
you can hire them to build a website for you. Many ISPs supply help with building web- sites and offer website stor- age on their servers to their subscribers.
If you want to learn more about HTML formatting, try these websites:
www.htmlcodetutorial.com/
www.make-a-web-site.com/
www.w3schools.com/html/
default.asp
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PERSONALIZING YOUR HOME PAGE Want to see the weather forecast for your college and/or hometown areas when you first log on? Or the day’s news (gen- eral, sports, financial, health, and so on)? Or the websites you visit most fre- quently? Or a reminder page (as for deadlines or people’s birthdays)? You can probably personalize your home page following the directions provided with the first start page you encounter. A customized start page is also provided by Yahoo!, Google, and similar services.
GETTING AROUND: BACK, FORWARD, HOME, & SEARCH FEATURES Driving in a foreign city (or even Boston or San Francisco) can be an interesting experi- ence in which street names change, turns lead into unknown neighborhoods, and signs aren’t always evident, so that soon you have no idea where you are.
That’s what the internet is like, although on a far more massive scale. Fortu- nately, unlike being lost in Rome, here your browser toolbar provides navi- gational aids. (
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See Panel 2.12. ) Back takes you back to the previous page.Forward lets you look again at a page you returned from. If you really get lost, you can start over by clicking on Home, which returns you to your home page.
Search lists various other search tools, as we will describe. Other navigational aids are history lists and favorites or bookmarks.
Back: Moves you to a previous page or site
Forward: Lets you visit a page you have just returned from Stop: Halts any ongoing transfer of page information Refresh: If page become stalled or garbled while loading, this will retrieve it again
Home: Returns you to your personal start page
Favorites/Bookmarks: Lists of sites you have saved so you can remember them and go to them quickly
History: Names and descriptions of sites most recently visited Print: Prints the web page you are on
Menu bar
panel 2.12
More information on common browser functions
panel 2.13
History list
If you want to return to a previously viewed site in Internet Explorer or Fire- fox, click on History.
The Internet & the World Wide Web 71 HISTORY LISTS If you are browsing through many web pages, it can be dif-
ficult to keep track of the locations of the pages you’ve already visited. The history list allows you to quickly return to the pages you have recently visited.
(
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See Panel 2.13. )FAVORITES OR BOOKMARKS One great helper for finding your way is the Favorites or Bookmarks feature, which lets you store the URLs of web pages you frequently visit so that you don’t have to remember and retype your favor- ite addresses. (
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See Panel 2.14. ) Say you’re visiting a site that you really like and that you know you’d like to come back to. You click on Favorites (in Inter- net Explorer) or Bookmarks (in Firefox), which displays the URL on your screen, and then click on Add or Bookmark This Page, which automatically stores the address. Later you can locate the site name on your Favorites menu and click on it, and the site will reappear. (When you want to delete it, you can use the right mouse button and select the Delete command.)INTERACTIVITY: HYPERLINKS, RADIO BUTTONS, & SEARCH BOXES For any given web page that you happen to find yourself on, there may be one of three possible ways to interact with it—or sometimes even all three on the same page. (
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SeePanel 2.15. )
1. By using your mouse to click on the hyperlinks, which will transfer you to another web page (p. 68).
2. By using your mouse to click on a radio button and then clicking on a Submit command or pressing the Enter key. Radio buttons are little circles located in front of various options; selecting an option with the mouse places a dot in the corresponding circle.
3. By typing text in a search box, a fill-in text box, and then hitting the Enter key or clicking on a Go or Continue command, which will transfer you to another web page.
SCROLLING & FRAMES To the bottom and side of your screen display you will note scroll arrows, small up/down and left/
right arrows. Clicking on scroll arrows with your mouse pointer moves the screen so that you can see the rest of
panel 2.14
Favorites
If you are at a website you may want to visit again, click on Favorites (in Internet Explorer) or Bookmark (in Firefox) and choose Add to Favorites or Bookmark This Page.
Later, to revisit the site, go to the Favorites menu, and the site’s URL will reappear.
Radio buttons
Act like station selector buttons on a car radio
Search (text) boxes
Require you to type in information
panel 2.15
Radio buttons and text box
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the web page, a movement known as scrolling . You can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard for scrolling.
Some web pages are divided into different rectangles known as frames, each with its own scroll arrows. A frame is an independently controllable section of a web page. A web page designer can divide a page into separate frames, each with different features or options.
LOOKING AT TWO PAGES SIMULTANEOUSLY If you want to look at more than one web page at the same time, you can position them side by side on your dis- play screen. Select New from your File menu to open more than one browser window.