Using the Internet: Introduction

Contents

What is the Internet?

Internet has:

• email
  
• World Wide Web
  
• Listservs
  
• Newsgroups
  
• telnet sites
  
• FTP sites
  

What is Netscape Navigator?

Navigator's Screen Contents: Menus, Toolbars, Buttons, Scrollbars...

• File menu has choices which allow you to:
  1. New: Get a new Navigator window
  2. Open a dialog box for a web address
  3. Save as: Save to a floppy disk
  4. Send a page as an email
  5. Print a page
• Edit menu has choices which allow you to:
  1. Cut, Copy, Paste, and Select All
• View menu allows you to
  1. hide the Navigation toolbar and Location toolbar
  2. look at the HTML code which made the page you have in your window
• Go menu
  1. Shows a list of the sites you have recently looked at
  2. allows you to select a previous site to go back to a page you viewed earlier
• Bookmark menu
  1. allows you to save a page as a "bookmark"
  2. allows you to select a bookmarked page to go directly to without typing in the address again
• Communicator menu allows you to choose other parts of Communicator, like the Mail or Composer software.

• use the Back button or the Forward button to move between pages you have already selected
• use the Reload button to reload the page from that server
  A fun example is the Population Clock at: http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/popclock,
  look at the population number and then click on reload to see the growth in population
• use the Home button to return to whatever page is set as the opening page for your copy of Navigator. Usually this is Netscape's homepage. At Cabrillo College Library the library homepage is the "home" for Navigator
• the Search button takes you to Netscape's collection of search tools
• the Print button allows you to print to the selected printer for your computer
• the Stop button allows you to change your mind about waiting for a large file to finish loading
• Location toolbar at the top of the screen tells you the address of the page you are currently looking at
  • whenever your cursor turns into a hand the address of the potential web page is shown at the bottom of your screen

  Large Window in the middle of the screen displays the current page

  Progress window at the bottom of the screen shows

  1. the progress Navigator is making while it loads a page and,
  2. the address of the next link you might choose

To Move Through A Document using scrollbars

• Click the mouse in the arrows at the ends of the scrollbars on the right (or bottom) side of the document to move through the document. You may hold the mouse button down on the square inside the scroll bar and drag it to move the document as well.
• The space bar key will also take you down through the document, and the backspace key will bring you back up.
• PageUp and PageDown keys and the arrow keys also let you move up and down a document.

Bringing pages to your screen

Linking

Interesting pages have links (built in connections) to other pages. You start on one page. When your cursor turns into a hand as it passes over a highlighted word or picture, you can click your mouse on it. You can click on the colored and / or underlined words to explore the next page

Opening an Internet Address:

1. Pull down the File Menu, select "Open page"
2. Type in an Internet address (Uniform Resource Locator = URL)
   

or,

1. Highlight the current address in the location box at the top of the page Just click in the box)
2. Type in an Internet address

To Save a Page to your Disk

1. From the File menu, select Save As
2. A dialog box will appear. It will contain a box labeled drives Click on the arrow next to that box and select the drive your disk is in
3. Click on the arrow next to the box labeled Save as file type
4. Select Plain text
5. Click the cursor in the File Name box and type a name for your file.
6. Click on OK

You can then open the downloaded file in a wordprocessor and print it out, either at home or in the Open Access Lab Room 1097.

Note: You can only save files to the A drive. Any files saved to the hard drive of the workstations in the library will be deleted.

Functions Not Available at the Library Workstations

1. Mail or Send Document (e-mailing) using the browser.
2. Bookmarks (bookmarks may be created and saved to disk, but will not remain on the workstations in the library)

What is on the Cabrillo College library homepage?

Library Catalog

to find what books and videos Cabrillo owns.

Fulltext Articles

for fulltext Magazines, Newspapers or Encyclopedias. You can read the entire magazine, newspaper or encyclopedia article from any workstation on campus.To use these sources from home you must have a valid Cabrillo Library Card.

Internet links

Lists of web sites arranged in categories.

Search the Internet

for a selection of tools for searching the Internet. Here you will find:

• Easiest to use:Subject lists, on almost any topic (most popular is Yahoo)
  
• Hardest to use: Search Engines, Covers the entire web, Keyword searches result in a mixed bag of excellent resource finds as well as random nonsense.

About Our Library

for a picture of what the library is and what it does:
Staff list, Hours, Reference Services, New Books received, Instruction Program, Reserve materials policies and procedures, Educational Master Plans, etc.

Ask a Librarian

Acceptable Use Policy

for a copy of the Acceptable Use guidelines in place at the College Library.

Definitions and topics

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions Questions that are asked repeatedly to a particular listserv, discussion group or organization. To avoid having to answer the same questions over and over, discusion groups, newsgroups and web publishers present this information in a standard format of: The Questions and the Answers.

HTML HyperText Markup Language.

A formatting language used to write World Wide Web documents so Web clients can display them. HTML provides a way of marking up or creating a document with tags so that it can be a part of a collection of hypertext linked documents.The Web pages you see are actually created by your Web browser's interpretation of the HTML codes found in any individual homepage. To see the codes for a homepage pull down the View menu and select Document Source. Close the document source window by clicking in the tiny box at the upper left corner to return to the Netscape window.

Warning: Be careful not to click in the tiny box in the upper right when you are using Netscape as this closes the Netscape window and you are left with only the menu bar across the top.

HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)

HTTP is the protocol which is used to move multimedia files on the World Wide Web. HTTP allows you to ask for and receive a file, usually written in HTML or Hyper Text Markup Language. Your browser then displays that file for you on your own desktop. .

Internet

The worldwide network of linked computer networks. These networks are connected to each other by a variety of Internet Protocols (special rules used by computers to talk to each other and for exchanging information.)

Listservs

The Internet contains thousands of special interest email discussion groups, each individually controlled by a program known as a listserver (commonly referred to as a listserv or a list). Discussions can be moderated by a list owner, but this is not always the case. Most lists can be provided to the user either in a digest form or on a post-by-post basis. Any member of the list may take part in a conversation or begin a new topic. You can find listserv groups by searching in the Interest Group Finder.

Netiquete

Remember: On the Internet you are communicating with real people, not machines.

• Some service providers have rules against sending commercial-type messages. Find out your service provider's policies.
• Use the same courtesy as you would extend someone you are having a phone conversation with.
• Flaming occurs when you send a message that provokes an angry, and often nasty, response. When others join in, a full-fledged flamefest ensues.
• Use the same rules regarding good grammar, punctuation and word choice as you would for any written communication.
• Don't type your message in all capital letters ­ they're hard to read. This is known as SHOUTING and may provoke flaming.
• Some Email systems occasionally become plagued with electronic versions of chain letters. Don't participate in them.
• Use the subject line to give recipients an idea of the message's contents.
• Don't use vulgar language or make sexist comments.

Newsgroups

USENET is a vast network of discussion groups that are accessible through an Internet connection's news function (often the Unix command 'rn' or 'news,' or an automatic news browser in a program such as Chameleon, Eudora, or even Netscape). There are literally thousands of USENET groups, with subjects ranging from Star Trek to Shakespeare. For those interested in education, several dozen USENET groups are available. Most groups, involve active discussions between teachers, students, parents, researchers, etc. - in other words, anyone who has an interest in education. Groups must be subscribed to in order to be read (subscribing varies from system to system), and readers are not required to participate in discussion. The past email from newsgroups is "archived" and searchable on the web. AltaVista is a search engine which includes newsgroup postings.

Portal

The Portal is the name which the popular press has attached to the home pages of Subject Lists like www.Yahoo.com and Search Engines like www.AltaVista.com. The theory is that you use the page as your portal or doorway to all web resources. These homepages for starting places on the web have become crowded with annoying advertisements. They have also enhanced substantially the choices available.

Protocol

You will see URLs which use a variety of protocols (the set of rules which will govern an individual exchange of files between computers over the Internet.) , such as:

• http:// hyper text transfer protocol identifies a World Wide Web multimedia file
• news:// Identifies an item from a Usenet news group.
  
• ftp:// Identifies a file that can be downloaded from an File Transfer Protocol server.
  
• mailto:// Opens a dialog box for sending mail
  
• telnet:// Identifies a site which you can sign on to for an interactive session, most often with a library's online catalog. Use of telnet is declining

Search Engines

Software databases with a dialog box set up for you to enter your own searches. These databases usually have millions of references to web sites and newsgroup postings. To use these "search engines" is not easy or straightforward.

All search engines have similar organization, but there are differences in the results produced by your searching. No single search engine really indexes all of the web.

Smiley's

A sequence of keyboard characters used to punctuate a message or posting by expressing the writer's emotional state.
emoticon: Another term for a smiley.

            :-)  a smile       :-(  sadness      ;-)  a wink            :'(  crying        :-@  screeming    :-&  toungue tied            >:-( mad           :-D  laughing     :-/  skeptical            %-)  cross eyed    :-o  wow!

Subject Lists

Collections of web sites organized by topic areas. An easy way to start looking at web sites. The most popular is Yahoo.

URLs

Uniform Resource Locators are a standard way of giving the location of a file or site on the internet.

A URL is an internet address.

Here is the URL for this internet handout:
http://libwww.cabrillo.edu/about/internet-handout.html

Here is the URL for the library homepage: http://libwww.cabrillo.edu

Here is the URL for the Walt. Disney corporation: http://www.disney.com

URLs provide 4 main types of information:

protocol	hostname : domain name where to go	path	filename what to get
http:	//www.nps.gov	interp/	pksmart.htm
The protocol tells your computer what kind of file you are looking for. The protocol is always followed by a colon.	From left to right we can analyze the source of the address: - Where the address is located, eg. the server name. The server name is preceded by two slashes. The server in our sample URL is named www. - nps.gov identifies the site and the top domain level of .gov Other common domain names: .edu (an educational institution) .com (a commercial organization) .org (a non-profit organization) and .gov (a government agency) .mil (the military) New for 2001: .info .biz .pro .name .museum .aero .coop	The next name tells what the path is on the server to get to the file you want.	The filename for this page is pksmart.htm the extension .htm indicates that it is a text file in HyperText Markup Language

Lets go to that page: "National Parkservice: Park Smart" at: http://www.nps.gov/interp/pksmart.htm The most common reason for a URL to fail is a typing error. Proofread your own typing carefully.

World Wide Web:

By far the most popular and simplest method of accessing information over the Internet is The Web (or, WWW) It offers easy access to graphics and text, as well as audio and video samples. Using a browsing program like Netscape, a user connects with a Web home page. From a home page, the user may click on highlighted text or graphics to download a page or to log on to other information systems.

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Help for beginners on the Internet:

• EasyType An Online typing tutor with wonderful graphics and clever games as well as straightforward typing lessons. at: http://www.easytype.com
• New User Tutorial An online tutorial for using a mouse at: http://northville.lib.mi.us/tech/tutor/welcome.htm
• Mousercise: Lessons in moving and clicking a mouse at: http://www.ckls.org/~crippel/computerlab/tutorials/mouse/page1.html
• Developing Web Vision helpful tips for understanding web pages at: http://www.ckls.org/~crippel/computerlab/tutorials/web/vision/page1.html
• Read more definitions for the language of the Web in the Webmonkey guides: Glossary of Terms at http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/guides/glossary/index.html
• Expedition Internet: What is a browser From AARP, this site has discussions in non-technical English of Internet topics.

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Return to the Library Home Page Revised August 11, 2000

Johanna Bowen jobowen@cabrillo.edu