A Browser is a piece of software. You can load more than one browser program onto your computer. Internet Explorer comes with your Windows operating system and is set as the default browser (the browser that is automatically used if you double click an html file to open it.)

If you add another browser, such as Netscape Navigator, you can choose it to be your default browser when you load it. In any case, you can always choose which browser you want to use by going to Program and choosing it.

When you first start a session with your browser, you'll notice that a default page loads automatically without you typing in a URL and hitting enter or a go. You have the following choices for setting your default page:

• a blank page
• a portal page
  • http://www.aol.com/
  • http://www2.compuserv.com/home.html
• a personal portal page
  • http://www.excite.com/
  • http://www.lycos.com/
• browser manufacturer's home page
  • http://home.netscape.com/
  • http://www.msn.com/
  • http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
• a search engine or directory home page
  • http://www.askjeeves.com/
  • http://www.google.com/
• any web page of your choice (one you like, or one that you use frequently)
  • http://www.pdga.org/
• Your own home page or business page
  • http://www.myra.com
  • http://www.myrasellshomes.com/

Portals are websites that try to entice you with content that they design, including services, website links and Internet access. They arrange and organize their content to appeal to users and make it easy for new users to sample the Internet. There are portal ISP's like AOL and there are portal pages like search engine sites. Both allow you to customize the default page to personalize its content to your tastes.

A server is referred to as an Internet "host" or webhost for websites specifically when you put your website on that machine.

URL Basics - Internet addresses, domain names
Internet websites have addresses that allow you to type the address into a browser window and have the browser locate them on the servers that host those sites. This is called a URL or Uniform Resource Locator. You type it into the browser's "location window." This URL is also referred to as a path, indicating where a file is on a server's hard drive.

The web server (aka IP address server) is referred to as an Internet "host" or webhost for your business when you put your website on that machine. To keep all of the machines on the Internet straight, each machine is assigned a unique address called an IP address. IP stands for Internet protocol. And each website has an IP address on that server.

It takes three IP addresses to find and retrieve a wbpage. A server has a static IP address that does not change very often. A website hosted on the server has a static IP address that does not change very often. A home machine that is dialing up through a modem often has an IP address that is assigned by the ISP when you dial in. That IP address is unique for your session and may be different the next time you dial in. In this way, an ISP only needs one IP address for each modem it supports, rather than for every customer.

Every computer on the Internet has a unique Internet Protocol address or IP. They consist of 4 numbers separated by periods. Each number can range from 0-255 (256 total #'s) which allows 256 to the fourth power or 4,294,967,296 addresses for computers on the Internet. However, this number identification isn't user friendly...it is hard to remember. To help us, a Domain Name System, DNS, was created to translate these number ID's to alphabetical character ID's known as URL's. Try the following:

http://140.147.249.7/
http://18.92.0.3/
http://198.137.240.91
http://160.111.252.106/
http://209.97.46.5

A Path or URL is what you type into the browser's "Location" window. It is the URL or Uniform Resource Locator that tells the server address, folder and file path that leads to your web pages on that server.

http: is a software protocol that browsers use to send and receive web files. There are other protocols for sending and receiving information that is not stored in a WWW format.

www: is the common beginning for a web address. Technically, it helps define the server that handles and hosts the information being requested.

domain name: is the name you pay for and reserve to give your particular website a unique identity. It refers to the place on that server where the information (a website) is stored.

top level domains: The following chart shows top level domain suffixes also known as extensions. These give a clue as to what type of organization has built the website. It is the tail end of the URL.

Search for your domain name to see if it is registered:
Network Solutions
WHOIS by DirectNIC.com
http://www.cruzio.com/

DNS Servers - If you spend any time on the Internet then you use domain name servers without even realizing it. Domain name servers, or DNS, are an incredibly important but completely hidden part of the Internet. The DNS system forms one of the largest and most active distributed databases on the planet. Without DNS, the Internet would shut down very quickly. DNS servers organize and find everything on the WWW.

The DNS system is a database, and no other database on the planet gets this many requests. No other database on the planet has millions of people changing it every day, either. That is what makes the DNS system so unique!

Domain name servers translate domain names to IP addresses. That sounds like a simple task, and it would be -- except for five things:

* There are billions of IP addresses currently in use, and most machines have a human-readable name as well.
* There are many billions of DNS requests made every day. A single person can easily make a hundred or more DNS requests a day, and there are hundreds of millions of people and machines using the Internet daily.
* Domain names and IP addresses change daily.
* New domain names get created daily.
* Millions of people do the work to change and add domain names and IP addresses every day.

For more information: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dns1.htm

Top Level Domain Names. There have been six top level domain name extensions (suffixes) in use for many years since being adopted in the early 1980's. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a non-profit organization that oversees online addresses. It was created at the behest of the federal government and functions through ICANN  (see Who regulates Registration and the Internet?, below).

In November, 2000, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) met and approved six new extensions in an effort to relieve the crowded field of current suffixes. The 19 member governing board reviewed 47 proposals. Each applicant paid a nonrefundable $50,000 application fee. The applicants are awarded the rights to manage the domain in the event it is approved. Many applicants were rejected as inexperienced or lacking in necessary technical capabilities.

The new suffixes started becoming available in mid-2001. It will be interesting to see how many companies and individuals will want to register addresses with the new extensions.

Among those rejected where: 

Country Domains  | CCTLDs | What you Should Know About CCtlds


Original article source: http://www.dotcom.com/news/cctld.html (click here to go off-site)

Abbreviated URL's

We already know that URL's are website addresses that have the protocol, the domain name, folder's and files as their parts. Some browsers are "smart" enough to allow you to type in only part of the address, perhaps the part you can easily rememeber, and the browser software guesses the rest.

Note that all browsers will allow you to leave off the html file name. They look inside the folder for a file called index.html. It is a commonly followed convention to always name your homepage filename index.html. This practice takes advantage of this browser feature.

Web browsers also allow you to navigate within and between sites. However, their goals aren't the same as the Web architects and often thwart the visitor's attempts at navigation. Frequently, the visitor can get confused or lost when using the browsers navigational tools.

Consider the following:

Recognizing this browser navigation limitation above puts the navigational needs of the user and the goals of a website business into the web architects hands. The site designer or web architect must not only consider how to make the site navigable for the user but also has the responsibility of keeping the visitor at the intended site. Below is a chart of common navigation tools found in webpages.

Chart of Popular Webpage Navigation Tools

Links Links are underlined text that may be placed in a table, stand alone or in the middle of a sentence. The mouse arrow turns into a hand with pointing index finger alerting you to a link. Buttons will look like the example to the left and will be used to navigate within a page or to post an assignment, submit a form or send Email.  xxx | yyy | zzz A menu bar appears at the top or bottom of a page and may hold common information in each case for every page it appears on. It often is meant to  allow navigation between pages at a site. It may have icons, text or other small graphics as links. Menu Bar   A graphic of any sort may be given "hotspots" that are lin ks to pages,  or parts of the page it is on. This is known as an image map.   Buttons, bullets and arrows are commonly used for navigation within a page or between site pages Bread Crumbs Home > All Categories > Toys & Hobbies > Trading Card Games > Search Results for 'pokemon ex' sample Pull Down Menus Cabrillo College eBay Amazon David's Homepage   Tables Tables like this are used to highlight information and/or links. Return to top.

Other, slightly more involved Webpage navigation tools include:

• popup browser windows - This can be done as:
  • onMouseOver - example
  • onClick - example
  • Check Browser - loads when the URL you typed loads
    
• redirects - The link opens a new browser window even though the new browser window may cover the first, you know it is new because the Back button won't function and you'll see two active bowsers in the Windows toolbar at the bottom of your screen. example
• framesets
• Frames Examples:
  http://www.bstar.net/bermudatriangle/
  http://www.laketahoerentalworks.com/mainpages/sites.html
• site search engines
  • http://www.cruzio.com/ Search Google or Search Cruzio on left and right side of the screen

The other common way to navigate a site takes more planning and is very effective if done correctly. Many Web sites, and all eCommerce sites should, include a Site-Specific Search Engine. A search engine can automatically index your site content once or several times a day.
Example:  http://www.verisign.com/siteMap.html

Site-Specific Search Engines are fairly easy to set up but difficult to set up effectively. Many sites are not well-planned before they are built. Rather, they grow sort of organically or in leaps as the site becomes popular. This can lead to a navigation nightmare and to a site-specific search engine returning poor results. 

There are three principle ways to get a site indexer (site search engine). You can either pay for a site search engine, find freeware site search engines or use a search form component created in an authoring tool.

Links may open special files. However the browser version, the browser software and other system peculiarities, including user-set preferences may cause it it perform differently.
sonic.mpg
Snow Mountain

Animations may be used to run on mouseovers on the page -
http://ligsg22.epfl.ch/people/clavien/public_html/ctouch_v3.html

Web Pages are built with Flash Animation Software rather than html:
Need to relax? Try ZEN (really) at http://www.do-not-zzz.com/
Paul Seymour Designs http://www.psd7.com/

Netscape offers a tutorial on "How to Customize Bookmarks."
http://wp.netscape.com/bookmark/index.html

• Create a new Bookmark
• Organize Bookmarks
• New folder
• Move Bookmarks
• Remove Bookmarks
• Change Bookmark properties
• Find Bookmarks search
• My Sidebar Search
• Designate New folder
• Designate new Search Folder

Open Windows Explorer (the file management system, not Internet Explorer) by right-clicking the mouse on the task bar "Start" button (lower left corner of your screen). Go to Program Files and open the Netscape Folder.

• Find your bookmarks file
• Find your Cache Folder

As you browse (surf) the Web, your browser keeps copies of the pages you visit on your hard drive. This is called cache (pronounced cash). As you return to a visited page, your browser checks to see if there is a newer version of that page on the Web by comparing the time stamp for the copy in cache with the time stamp for the web page on the server. If the page has not changed the browser will load the page from your computer's cache. This makes for faster loading speed and reduces traffic on the Internet.

You can do several things to Manage your computer's cache and the browser's use of it:

• change the amount of cache (increase the file capacity)
• purge the cache files (empty or delete the cache)
• change the cache file location
  • to correct web page loading problems (JAVA, etc)
  • to eliminate the record of what you have been browsing

Memory cache is amount of RAM memory dedicated to caching web resources.

Disk cache is the amount of Hard Drive space dedicated to caching Web resources.

You can clear either Memory or Disk cache of files stored there.

File/Print Preview
Always do a print preview first. This will show you how many pages are there. It gets expensive to print out a lot of pages, and is not ecological.

File/Print
This brings up a Print Dialog Box. Make sure you are printing only one copy. You can select which pages to print, so you don't have to print the whole thing. DON'T print again if your first job does not appear. Usually there is another problem, and then you will get multiple copies of the same thing.

Print Frame
Some WWW sites are divided into separate areas called frames. When you click in one frame, that is what you print. Use Print Preview to make sure which frame you are printing.
(can see this on the Louvre page or the Netscape Navigator help page)
http://www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm

On the Netscape Browser menu bar, click on Edit > Preferences and you will see the Preference window open as shown below. Lets explore.

When you use the Internet you are dependent on the proper functioning of a whole chain of computers, phone lines, and associated software. Not surprisingly, often there is a delay or malfunction, and you don't get the results you hope for. The best advice is this:

Try Again.

If this does not work, then look for obvious errors on your part and:

Try Again a Few More Times

Still not successful:

Wait some minutes or hours and Try Again

The number one cause of frustration with using computers and the Internet is assuming that it should behave as you think it should. Often it does not, however logical and reasonable your expectations may be.

That said, there are some predictable error messages that you may encounter that can give you some useful clues: