This page you're reading right now is an example of a Web page. The name comes from the fact that page is stored on the Internet's World Wide Web, a collection of over six billion pages of text containing virtually all human knowledge (not to mention countless beliefs, opinions, attitudes, misconceptions, delusions, and who-knows-what-else). The program you're using to read this page right now, and that you will use to read all other pages, is called your Web browser.
Even though there's over six billion pages of information on the Web, they all share certain "tools" that you can use to make Web browsing easy. Learning to use those tools requires only a small set of basic skills, which you can learn in minutes. Of course, there's a few buzzwords you need to understand too (like Web page, Web browser, and Internet, for starters). This article aims to get you computer newbies (beginners) up-to-speed fast by presenting all the necessary skills, and most of the buzzwords, in a clear, simple, and brief manner.
When you dial a cell phone number, every cell phone in the world doesn't ring. Only the cell phone you called rings because the number you dialed is unique to that phone. Just as every cell phone has a unique number, every Web page has a unique address (also called a URL or Uniform Resource Locator). A URL isn't a number though. It's a groups of letters separated by dots (periods), as in these examples:
The http:// part is called the protocol. HTTP stands for hypertext transfer protocol, and it's the protocol that all Web pages use. The next part, which is usually www (for World Wide Web) is called the host name. It's just the name of a specific computer at the domain. The domain, in turn, is the rest of the name. For example, www.microsoft.com represents a computer named "www" at the Microsoft.com domain, and search.microsoft.com stands for the computer named "search" at that same domain.
The .com part is called the top level domain and indicates the type of organization that owns the domain. Most commercial business names use .com (for "commercial"). Though you'll come across others like .edu (for "education" as in www.ucla.edu), .gov (for "government" as in www.nasa.gov), .mil (for "military" as in www.army.mil), and .net for network services like www.comcast.net).
Those brief URLs take you to the home page for a given domain. The home page is sort of like the cover of a book. It's the first thing you see, but there are plenty more pages inside the book. Each page "inside" a domain as a longer name. For example, the URL for this specific page you're viewing right now is
http://www.coolnerds.com/Newbies/howbrowse/index.htm.
Admittedly, you don't really need to know all the details I just told you. All you really need to know is that every Web page has a unique URL, just as every cell phone has a unique phone number. But unlike phone numbers, which are just numbers, a URL has some "meaning" built into it, as in the case of www.nasa.gov, which stands for NASA's World Wide Web site (and NASA, in turn, is a government agency).
Tip: Often you can guess a company's URL just by putting the company name between www. and .com. Some examples: Dell computer is www.dell.com, Hewlett-Packard (HP) is www.hp.com, AOL is www.aol.com, Microsoft is www.microsoft.com, and eBay is www.ebay.com.
Now that you know that every Web page has its own unique URL (address), you're ready to learn how to navigate the Web.
Here in the coolnerds Web site I usually put a Back link at the bottom of each page, so you can easily get back to the page you were previously viewing. But not every page in the world will have a Back link on it. So don't waste your time hunting all over the place for a Back link. Any time you want to go back to the page you just left, you can click the Back button in your Web browser's toolbar. The exact location of that button varies from one Web browser to the next. Figure 1 below shows the location of the Back button (circled in red) in several sample Web browsers. (The toolbar for your Web browser is just above the text of this page).
Figure 1
Here's a little tip for that applies to all programs, not just your Web browser. Not all buttons in toolbars have labels (names) under them. Some buttons are just pictures. If you don't know what a button does, point to the button. You'll see the name of the button in a screen tip (also called a tooltip) near the mouse pointer, as in the example shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Feel free to point at some of the buttons in your Web browser's toolbar (just above this page) now, to see if they display screen tips.
Once you're online (connected to the Internet), and you're at a Web page (like this one), you can use hyperlinks (also called links and hotspots) to get from one page to another. A hyperlink to a page that you've never visited is usually shown as blue, underlined text, like this example:
To visit the Web page that the link refers to, just click on the link. (The sample link above won't take you anywhere. But you can click on it to see a little message on the screen).
Once you've visited a page, the link to that page will have a magenta color. The color coding is simply for your convenience -- so you can tell the difference between pages you've already visited, and pages you've never visited. But the link works the same no matter what color it is -- you click on it to view the page to which the link if referring to.
A picture can also be a hyperlink. You can't always tell, just by looking at a picture, if it's a link or not. But if you point to the picture, the mouse pointer will give you a clue. If the mouse pointer looks like an arrow or line, then the picture probably isn't a link, and clicking on the picture will have no effect. But if the mouse pointer changes to a little pointing hand when you point to the picture, as in the example on the right in Figure 3, then the picture is a hyperlink.
Figure 3
Figure 3 above isn't a hyperlink. So when you point to it or click on it, nothing happens.
However, Figure 4 below is a hyperlink. So when you point to it, your mouse pointer should turn to the pointing hand. When you click the picture shown in Figure 4, you won't be taken to a new Web page, but that's only because I rigged it that way so you won't lose you place here. But you will get some feedback on your screen telling you your Web browser "knows" you clicked on a hyperlink.
Figure 4
So that's about all you need to know about hyperlinks. To reiterate, when you see text the blue or magenta, and underlined, that's a hyperlink you can click on. If you point to a picture and the mouse pointer turns to a pointing hand, then that picture is a hyperlink that you can click on too. Now click the hyperlink below to return to the page before this one.
Here's a little trick that might come in handy from time to time. (I can't promise it will work in all Web browsers, but it's certainly worth a try should a useful situation arise). This trick is probably best for more experienced users who already know how to move and size program windows on their screens. But let me just run it by you real quick. If it sounds dumb, useless, or confusing to you, or gets you into trouble, don't worry about remembering it.
Suppose you want to look at some other Web page, but also keep the page you're viewing on the screen. Rather than than clicking the hyperlink, you can right-click it, and then choose Open in New Window, as illustrated in Figure 5. (Note that Figure 5 is a picture of what happens when you right-click a link. The items in the figure aren't actual links you can click on here).
Figure 5
The new Web page will open in its own, separate browser
window, while your current page stays open. You can move the new window
around on the screen by dragging its title bar. Just be aware that in the
new, separate page the Back button won't work normally. But you can close
that new, separate page at any time by clicking the Close button (
) in its upper right corner. Your original page will remain on the screen
unchanged.
Before we begin out foray into using your Web browser's Address bar, we need to define some terms. First of all, the Address bar is the place where you see (and can type) a Web site's URL. Figure 6 shows some examples of what the Address bar looks like in several different brands of Web browsers (each Address bar contains a URL starting with http://).
Figure 6
Some other buzzwords we need to define apply to things you'll see and use in all programs. Those terms are:
Figure 7
Selected: Text that's currently highlighted. Figure 8 shows a sample of regular text, and that same text how it looks when it's selected.
Figure 8
With those few buzzwords under your belt, let's talk about different ways you can use your Web browser' Address bar. First of all, while hyperlinks and the Back button are a great way to get around without typing anything, you're bound to pick up some URLs from other places. For example, you might learn of a URL from a TV show, billboard, or magazine article. To get to a site where you know the URL but have no link to click on, you have to type the URL into your Web browser's Address bar, then press Enter.
Before you can type in the Address bar, you have to click on the address bar to get the cursor into the Address bar. Normally, when you first click on the Address bar, the entire address that's already in the bar will be selected. When you see selected text, know that any new text you type will instantly replace the selected text.
So let's say you want to type a URL like www.ebay.com into your Web browser's Address bar. If you click once on the bar, all text will be selected. So if you then type www.ebay.com, that new URL will replace the old URL. So you can just press the Enter key, or click the Go button to the right of the Address bar (if you browser has such a button) and that's it. You're at the Web site at that address. Pretty easy, unless you can't type worth beans.
Tip: If the first letters of the Web site you want to visit are http://www then it's not necessary to type the http:// part. If you must type the http:// part, make sure you use forward slashes (//), not backslashes (\\).
If you're a one-fingered hunt-and-peck typists, then typing anything at all can be a bit of a challenge. If the URL your about to type is similar to the one that's already in the Address bar, you can save yourself some typing by selecting only the part you want to change, and then typing only the new text. For example, let's say you're currently viewing the page at http://www.ebay.com, and now you want to view the page at http://www.coolnerds.com, then you really only need to change "ebay" to "coolnerds" because the rest is the same in both URLs.
To change a port of a URL, you need to first get the cursor to where you want to make the change. So you need to click once in the Address bar to get the cursor into it. Then click somewhere inside the text you want to chance to unselect the selected text, and leave the blinking cursor in the current URL. Then, carefully put the tip of the mouse pointer just to the right of the last character you want to change, hold down the left mouse button, and drag slowly to the left until just the characters you want to change are selected. For example, in Figure 9 I selected just the word ebay.
Figure 9
Earlier I mentioned that whenever you type new text, that new text instantly replaces any selected text. The same holds true here, even where you've only selected a small chunk of text. So if you just type the word coolnerds the new URL will be http://www.coolnerds.com, as in Figure 10. So you can just press Enter to go to the coolnerds Web site.
Figure 10
Another thing you might notice while typing in the Address bar is that when you start typing the URL of a page you've visited in the past, similar URLs appear in a drop-down menu. The more you type, the shorter the list becomes, because only URLs whose first letters match what you've typed so far appear in the list. If you happen to notice that the URL you were about to type is already in the drop-down menu, as in Figure 11, you don't need to finish typing the URL. Instead, just click on the URL in the drop-menu that you want to visit.
Figure 11
Once you get the hang of using hyperlinks, the Back button, and your Web browser's Address bar, you should find it pretty easy to get around on the World Wide Web.
There is one more tricky technique you can use with your Web browser's Address bar. When faced with a plain-text URL in a message board (where clicking on the URL has no effect), you can copy-and-paste the URL to avoid retyping it.
Before you waste any time re-typing, or even copying and pasting URLs, make sure you understand how hyperlinks work. Most Web pages have hyperlinks to other Web pages. Hyperlinks (also called links) are colored, underlined text. The text doesn't have to be in the format www.something.com to be a link -- it can be any colored, underlined text, like the example below.
There's no need to copy-and-paste a hyperlink, because you can just click on it to visit the site. But there will be cases where you see a URL on your screen that isn't a hyperlink. For example, a plain-text message board or e-mail message may show a Web site's address like the example below. But since it's not a hyperlink, clicking on the address does nothing.
http://www.coolnerds.com/Newbies/howbrowse/goback.htm
Before you bother to re-type the address into your Web browser's menu bar, know that you can simply copy-and-paste it instead. Doing so is a fairly simple three-step process.
Let's look at each step in some detail.
To use cut-and-paste, you first select the text you want to copy. A simple way to select text is to drag the mouse pointer through the text. That is, place the mouse pointer just outside the text you want to select. Then hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse pointer straight across (not up pr down) through the entire URL (and nothing but the URL), as in the example shown in Figure 12 (if you're viewing this on the screen. It's animated, so won't look like anything if you're viewing a printed copy of this page).
Figure 12
Caution: Don't try selecting the text in Figure 12. That's not really text. It's just an animation of what it looks like to select text. But you can select any other text in this page by dragging the mouse pointer through it.
Once you've selected the text, it will be highlighted somehow, perhaps as white letters against a black background. If you make a mistake on the first try, click on the selected text and try again. When you've selected the URL, the whole URL, and nothing but the URL, you're ready to move to step 2.
Once you've selected a chunk of text, you can do whichever of the following is most convenient (and available in the program you're using at the moment) to copy that text to the Windows Clipboard:
Figure 13
You won't see anything happen on the screen. The selected text is just copied to the "invisible" Windows clipboard. But don't worry about that. All you need to know is that the copied text is in the Clipboard and can now be pasted anyplace where you might otherwise type the text.
The goal here is to get that copied URL into your Web browser's Address bar. Most likely, there's already some URL in the Address bar, so you need to replace that URL with the one in the Clipboard. The easiest way to do this, usually, is to right-click on the URL that's currently in the Address bar (so the whole URL in the Address bar is selected), then choose Paste from the shortcut menu that appears, as in Figure 14.
Figure 14
At this point, the new URL is in your Web browser's Address bar, as in Figure 14. Now you can just press the Enter key on your keyboard, or click the "Go" button to the right of the Address bar. (The name of that button varies from one Web browser to the next. If you can't find the right button, you can always press the Enter key).
As a rule, you'll only find URLs that aren't hyperlinks in certain types of message boards and e-mail messages. So it's very unlikely that you'd ever have to copy-and-paste a URL from a Web page. But just in case you want to practice this technique, the URL below is like one that you'd find in a message board (in that clicking on it does no good). So you could try copy-and-pasting that one into your Web browser's menu bar now.
http://www.coolnerds.com/Newbies/howBrowse/YouDidIt.htm
So that about wraps it up for Web browsing survival skills. There's lots more you can do with a Web browser that what we've covered here. But what you've learned here should be enough to get you to any of the millions of Web pages available to you on the Internet.