THE INTERNET:

A GUIDE TO

WORKING SMARTER

To make a connection to the Internet, users must have an Internet connection and a browser.

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS -ISPs
The Internet connection is obtained through an agreement with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Universities, state organizations, computer producers and private companies can be Internet service providers. Internet service can either be something for which you pay or may be available for free depending on your place of business or other affiliations. Listings of Internet providers can be found in the phone book, newspapers and on the Internet itself. Two source lists can be found at http://www.thelist.com and at http://www.all-free-isp.com/.

When choosing a provider, get feedback from people in your community regarding what service they use and how satisfied they are with the service. Cost and a timely connection during peak usage times are important features to look for. Also consider the amount of time you expect to be connected. Some agreements may be time-limited by month, with extra charges incurring when the limit is exceeded. It is also useful if your ISP maintains a help desk that is accessible by e-mail and by phone. Problems can often be resolved with some direction from a help desk. It is important to understand the conditions of the ISP service agreement.

Internet service providers will generally provide a disk or downloadable instructions to set up your computer for Internet access. For most effective service, it is best to have an agreement with a company that provides access through a local number to avoid long distance charges. Most ISP's have home pages where there are lists of their service access points by state, zip code or area code. Some providers have toll-free numbers as access points that are especially useful for people in small communities.

WEB BROWSERS
A Web browser is a piece of software that is installed on your computer. This software may be provided by the ISP or may be downloaded from the Internet.

Web browsers enable you to connect to the World Wide Web to view different websites. It allows hypertext access to documents (that is, to view graphics and text on the Web). Two very popular browsers on the market are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Some Internet service providers, like America Online (AOL), have their own Web interface that may be considered a browser.

Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer are available for free and may be downloaded from the World Wide Web using file transfer protocol (FTP). New versions of browsers are always being developed and released. Some Internet sites and databases work better with a specific browser or version of a browser. A website will sometimes specify a "minimum browser requirement." If you have the required or higher version, you should be able to view and use all the features of the site. If you have a lower version, you may not be able to see all the graphics or features of the website.

In many work situations, all the computers are set up to be exactly the same. For computers at your workplace, you will want to know who is responsible for maintaining the computer programs, what software you are allowed to change or download and other computer/Internet use policies.

WEB ADDRESSES OR URLs
Web addresses are known as URLs (Universal Resource Locators). A Web address is made up of two parts: a protocol and a domain name. The domain name can be further divided into parts that describe the domain. Let's look at an example.

http://www.yahoo.com
http:// is the protocol — the hypertext transfer protocol.
www is the first part of the domain name and stands for World Wide Web.
yahoo is the host name — the site that has the server on which the page resides.
com is the type of site. In this case, com means commercial, a for-profit entity.

This last three-letter code refers to the agency that sponsors the page. There is a standardized list of codes that have been selected and there are others that have been promoted for adoption. Among the most common A codes that you will run across are the following:

.edu educational site (most universities and colleges)
.gov government site
.com commercial site (for-profit businesses)
.org not-for-profit organizations
.net network hosts
.mil U.S. military sites

In some cases you will also see geographical codes in a Web address. An example is http://www.state.fl.us. Here, "fl" stands for Florida and "us" is for the United States. Sites in other countries often use these abbreviations as a part of their names. Examples include "au" for Australia and "ca" for Canada.

Additional information about the page will follow a "/" (forward slash) after the site or geographic designation. This information states where in the server the actual page is located and may designate the language that is used to write the page such as htm or html.

Note that there are never any blank spaces within a URL. When there appears to be a blank space, there is actually " _" (an underscore) that is hidden between two letters.

USING WEB BROWSERS
In this section, we will look primarily at Netscape. Many of the same features are available in Internet Explorer, but they may be labeled differently.

TOOLBARS
Toolbars are fairly standard in most software programs. They feature the most frequently used commands and tools. Generally, toolbars appear at the top of a program and consist of buttons, pull down menus and blanks in which to type a Web address. Portions of the browser may be customized to the individual user.

MENU BAR

The Menu Bar is a special toolbar that appears at the very top of the screen. It contains the menus File ..Edit .. and ends with Help. Selecting any of these words will result in a drop down box that will provide you with more selections.

From the selection File, you can choose to open pages, copy pages, send pages, print pages and close the page and exit the browser. Selecting Edit from the toolbar will allow you to search for words in a particular Web document or set your particular preferences for interacting with the Web. The preferences you can select include changing the appearance of the page with fonts and colors or changing the language in which you want pages displayed. Advanced features include setting cache size, enabling the use of proxies and enabling special scripts. With each window that opens, there is usually a Help button to be used for further explanation and description.

View allows you to change how a page looks on your computer screen. You can increase or decrease the size of the font. If a page is slow to load, you can direct the browser to Reload. On some pages new information may be added as you are reading; therefore, you may want to Refresh the page. This drop-down box is also where you can see the source code that the author used to markup and construct the page. Finally, you can view the page information to find the structure of the page, where it originated and when it was last updated, among other information.

Use the Go button to view a list of the pages that you have most recently visited. From this list you can select a page to which you would like to return. Pages are listed by their site name rather than a Web address or URL.

In Netscape Navigator, Communicator activates several other programs including e-mail, calendar, instant messaging and bookmarks. To learn more about these features you will want to read Help or visit the Netscape Webpage: http://www.netscape.com.

In either browser, a Help button appears in the toolbar on the far right. This feature is an online manual to aid you in using the program. Selecting Help generates a drop down menu from which you can select the type of help that you want.

OTHER TOOLBARS
There are several other toolbars that can be turned on and off depending upon how you want to customize your browser.

NAVIGATION TOOLBAR
(STANDARD BUTTONS IN MS INTERNET EXPLORER)

To move within the pages that you have searched, use the Back and Forward arrow keys. You will move one page at a time in the reverse or forward sequence that you have searched.

The Reload button is used to refresh your page. At times a page may not load properly. If the system halts or staggers, the Reload button will allow you to start over from the current page. In many browsers, a circular arrow is used to depict this feature.

Home is characterized as a house. Most browsers will load and start with a page that has been identified as your home page. When you do not designate one, the default is usually the browser's home page. Clicking on the Home button at any time while you are on the Internet will bring you back to that pre-designated screen/page. This screen/page may be set locally by a system administrator for networked machines or by an individual for a particular workstation.

Search is a link to the browser's search page. In Netscape the search page allows you to choose a search engine and provides a box for you to insert your topic as a keyword or phrase. Refer to SEARCHING THE INTERNET section for more detail on this topic.

Clicking on the Print button, which is characterized as a small printer, signals your printer to print the entire page/document that you are currently viewing. This can be one page or several pages depending on which document you are viewing. You will want to be aware of the size of the document before you hit the Print button so that you have enough paper available. The printed job appears just like the screen you were viewing. At times it may be more efficient to copy the contents of a screen into your word processor to reduce the physical size of the document.

Stop will enable you to cancel a page from loading into the browser. On occasion, a browser may continue to look for the website and a server may not be responding appropriately. You can Stop or cancel the request and then choose to go elsewhere or exit the browser.

Favorites is also located on the Internet Explorer standard toolbar. It is similar to Netscape's Bookmarks and will be explained below in the Location Toolbar section.

LOCATION TOOLBAR
(OR ADDRESS TOOLBAR IN IE)

This is where you can specify the site to which you want to connect. You must have the complete address, or URL, and write the complete URL in the box called Location. Sometimes servers may be down or you may have a problem with the address that you have written. In either case, the program will respond with an error message. Check the address to make sure you have typed it correctly. Some additional hints are:

• If searching with the Web address that begins with www and it does not work, try adding http:// before the www or
• Try searching for the site omitting the www.
  

Bookmarks are used to remember the sites that you have found and would like to revisit. Browsers usually come with a few bookmarks identified in categories. You can add sites, delete sites and edit those sites into the existing categories or choose your own. When you click on Bookmarks, select Edit Bookmarks. There is a Help button on the menu bar for the window that opens. You can use it to read more about bookmarking your favorite websites. If you bookmark a lot, you can have fairly long lists. While editing bookmarks can be done and is explained in the next section, you may want to establish categories related to your interests. The topics in our ONLINE RESOURCES section may be a useful starting point.

If you want to split a large bookmark file and have each smaller file usable as Netscape Bookmarks, then DO NOT edit the bookmark file with a word processor! Bookmark.htm is an html file that you "can" edit. This does not mean you SHOULD edit it! Bookmark.htm is not a PLAIN html file, and if you edit it, you can corrupt the folders and end up with blanks.

If you want to create different bookmark files, follow the procedure outlined below.

• Copy the whole bookmark.htm file to a different file.
• In Netscape, Go to Bookmarks and delete all the ones you don't want.
  
• Exit Netscape and save the new bookmark file in a different directory or on diskette. Make a copy of the original bookmark.htm file and replace it in the Netscape directory.
  
• Back in Netscape, go to Bookmarks. Delete the ones you don't want for the next set.

PERSONAL TOOLBAR

This is where you can customize the browser for your preferences. You can identify your home page and select other pages that you frequently use to display them as sites that link with a button. Bookmarks, mentioned above, is one way to customize. There is also a toolbar that you edit or add to within your bookmark file. On the Personal Toolbar, you can designate specific sites that you regularly use to be at your fingertips. The White Pages of the phone book, a Staff Intranet site, a business/news page are some of the items you may choose.