More shortcuts follow ...
| First things first - to move up and down through this document, use the scroll bars at the side of this screen. More shortcuts follow ... | | <-- These guys --> |
This short guide is intended to explain a few fundamental concepts and offer a few tips to help you find your own way around the Web. Our intention is to offer you enough of the basics for you to be able to get out there and get your feet wet, so to speak, without drowning in a sea of information overload.
Catch 22 - There is a wealth of information about the Web itself, and how to use it, covered more comprehensively than we have here, available from many other places, once you know how to find it! We are trying, with this tutorial, to give you the basic skills to fill that gap and be able to use the web and find what you want to.
| This tutorial is designed for Subscribers of Albury Local Internet, and assumes our Subscribers are using Netscape as their browser. This tutorial uses graphics to assist in explanations, so if you can't see the L Plate to the left of this paragraph, please ensure you have Options ... Auto Load Images ticked in the top Netscape menu bar. |
If you move your pointing device (mouse, stylus etc) around this page you will notice it will change from an arrow 
to a pointing hand 
as you move over the highlighted underlined text and some of the pictures on the screen. Wherever this change occurs, you have found a "hypertext link." If you "click" on any of these links, your browser will immediately jump to the location, or site specified in the HTML code for that link. That location could be within the same document, another document on the same server, or a document on a server on the other side of the world. If you look down the bottom of the screen, the status bar will display where that link should go, in a form of Internet shorthand:
All the "links" on this page so far go to a list of definitions at the end of this tutorial. If you would like to check out what some of these underlined words mean, click on them to go to the bottom of this document.
| To return here either use your scroll bar at the side of this screen, or the Back button at the top left of your screen. | 
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Following "hypertext" links can take you all over the world. For example, some links of our own WWW Interesting Links Page can take you to England. Other links off those UK pages could go to the USA, and so on. On the Internet, it doesn't cost any more to "go to" Europe, than it does to see our own users Home Pages.
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Before we go any further, a few tips to prevent you getting too lost ... the Back button we talked about earlier will step you back to previous pages one step at a time. |
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| The Forward button right next to it will take you forward one step at a time. | 
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| The "Go ... View History" drop down menu from the top menu bar will give you a list of the sites you have "visited" each session. If you can remember the page you want to go back to you can select it from this list by highlighting it and pressing enter, or by double-clicking it. The "History" list starts anew every time you run Netscape. | ||
| The easiest way to cancel loading a page that is taking too long, or was chosen by mistake, is to click on the red "Stop" icon under the top Netscape menu bar. | 
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If you find a site that really interests you, and you want to be able to go back there again, Bookmark it. Select "Bookmark ... Add Bookmark" of the top menu bar, and Netscape will place a permanent entry in your bookmark list.
The Bookmark list can however, become fairly messy surprisingly quickly. The AWPC Internet SIG have written a good tutorial on editing Bookmarks.
SUMMARY: At this point you should now be able to recognise a "Hypertext link", follow links, bookmark sites that really interest you, and be able to move back and forward to previous sites.
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If you REALLY get lost, click on the "Home" icon next to the Forward button. This will bring you back to our own Home page. | 
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Because the World Wide Web is so vast and changeable, a conventional index would be totally unmanageable. To address the problem of finding resources, a number of Search Engines have been devised. They perform the role of an "inter-active" index. To use a search engine you simply input a description of what you are looking for using the key words, and the search engine will return a list of locations (or URLs, all clickable links) that fit your search criteria. There are numerous Search Engines on the Web, and they all index differently. If you can't find what you are looking for with say Web Crawler, try Lycos, or Yahoo, or any of a number of alternatives.
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We have links to a number of Search Engines off our of WWW Interesting Links page. |
If you already have a location URL from for example a magazine or publicised over the media (TV, radio or newspaper), you can go straight there fairly simply. With Netscape you have 3 options to choose from:
| 1. | Choose File... Open Location ... from the top menu bar, type in the location URL, and select the Open button. | |
| 2. | Select the Open icon from the second menu bar, type in the location URL, and select the Open button. | 
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| 3. | Click on the location bar under the second icon menu bar, backspace or delete what's there, type in your selected location and press the enter key. | |
PLEASE NOTE: it is VERY important to enter the text EXACTLY as you have seen it printed. If you enter capitals where it should have been lower case, and vica-versa, you won't be able to find it. Computers are very fast idiots, and most internet servers are case sensitive. They won't correct your spelling mistakes. If you have heard a URL over the radio, unless they tell you otherwise, assume the entire location is in lower case, and try that first.
This all assumes the people publicising the URL got the spelling right in the first place!
Netscape has a status bar across the bottom that gives all sorts of useful messages, like Looking up host and Contacting host: (your URL).
Once you have contacted your destination, and Netscape starts loading the document, your location URL is displayed in the Location bar at the top under the box menu icons.
There are many reasons why you may not be able to reach a site.
Generally:
You will from time to time come across sites that have things that won't either work properly or run on your computer, for example, video clips and audio services.
Some applications require "plug-ins" to be installed and configured on your computer. Usually, a site using a particular feature will either link to or make available the "plug-in" program. Installing all these (and there are lots of 'em available) is beyond the scope of this introductory tutorial, but usually covered in the documentation that comes with the "plug-in", or at the site you got it from (or an associated link there). Follow the relevant instructions carefully. If you need help with the Netscape end of the helper application or "plug-in" check the Netscape Help.
A problem may be Browser specific, in which case there's not much you can do about it except
If you find an interesting document you want to keep for reference, or read later, you have a number of choices:
| 1. | Save the document using the File ... Save as option of the top menu bar.
TIP: If you want to preserve any hypertext link reference, use the save as htm (or html) option. You will however need to use a Web Browser to read the document, and the links probably won't work unless you're on-line. To save the document as easily readable text you can load into your word processor, or editor, use the save as txt (or text) option. Graphics won't save with the document in html or text modes. To save graphics from within Netscape, position the pointer over the graphic and press the right mouse button. Mac users or single button mouse users try positioning the pointer and holding the mouse button down. In either case a drop-down menu should appear and give you the option of saving the image (*See copyright reference below). | |
| 2. | Print the document using the File ... Print option off the top menu bar, or the Print Icon of the second menu bar.
Graphics will print within the document. | 
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Remember:
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If you experience problems printing out of Netscape, select a different printer driver from the Setup ... Specific Printer options on the printing box. The HP drivers seem to work best. If the page you wish to print has pale text on a dark background, it will probably print as pale or white text on a white background - result: blank piece of paper! Your options are to save the document as a text file and print it from your word processor, or go into the Options ... Preferences ... Fonts and Colours and override the page colours to set dark text and light background. Don't forget to reset to Let Document Override when you've finished, or you may get bizarre results with your general Web Browsing. |
A lot of Internet software is freely available on the Internet, at least for evaluation purposes. If, for example, you would like to update to the latest (beta) release of Netscape, you are free to go to the Netscape site and get it from there. | 
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It can be as simple as clicking on a link. Netscape may ask you what to do with the file if an appropriate "Helper Application" has not been set up. Unless you know what you are doing, select Save to disk, and choose the place on your hard disk (the path & directory) in which to save it. DON'T FORGET WHERE YOU'VE PUT IT! You can come along later and install the software. Be sure to read any instructions, and bookmark the site you got it from in case you need to refer to it for help with installation. If you are unable to get a file successfully using Netscape, you may need to use an FTP agent.
E-mail is electronic mail. It can be private or business correspondence sent via the Internet between individuals e-mail addresses.
Your account with us includes an e-mail address for yourself (yourname@albury.net.au). Our Server, where you have your account and through which you access the Internet, acts like a Post Officewhere mail is sent and received. Your account is like your own private Post Office Box. Mail you send is routed immediately to the address you specified in your mail, and mail you receive waits in your account until you call to collect it.You can send electronic mail to, and receive it from anyone who has an e-mail address.
E-mail programs can be stand-alone programs in their own right, like Eudora (PC) and Eudora Light (Mac), or incorporated into your Web Browser - Netscape's newly released V2.
Any Internet transmission can be intercepted. Some sites use various security measures to hamper would-be electronic thieves. All these security measures can be broken given the time and resources. The better measures available to US users only (at the moment) would take years to break. If security is a serious concern, make a personal phone call or use a fax instead. But remember, these can also be bugged and/or intercepted.
A lot of media hype has been given to some of the more questionable material available on the Internet. It is there, but it is unlikely children will stumble on these sites "accidentally". Children should either be regularly supervised once they have reached the insatiably curious age, or lay down your rules and trust your children not to break them (or at least not bend them too far!).
A number of measures are being considered to prevent any accidental access of unsuitable material by children, and may slow down some deliberate attempts!
If there is still a problem, re-configuring your dialler for a manual login with manual entry of your password will prevent unauthorised access (until they find out your password). Locking your modem away somewhere is available as a last resort.
The on-line Itemised Billing will let you keep track of when your account was used, and checks of the Bookmarks and the Go ... View History menu item in Netscape while it's running will give you some idea of where your children might have been. Making your children aware of this may act as a deterrent for some of the more adventurous.
... or what you should and shouldn't do.
There are guide-lines available governing what is/is not acceptable behaviour on the Internet. The term generally used is "Netiquette", and here we have briefly summarised the RFC:1855 on Netiquette Guide-lines.
FIRST DRAFT Disclaimer: This is not intended as a definitive reference, but as a guide only. It will periodically be updated as major changes occur that influence the content or intention of this document. Many other Internet related works have been and are being written around the world, some of which are linked from this tutorial, and are freely available on the net.
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Copyright ©1996 Albury Local Internet. May be printed as a whole for individual reference, but may not be reproduced in whole or in part without express written permission.
