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Browser Basics ...

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Browsers and Surfing the Internet and WWWeb
Surfing simply means that you go from place to place looking for things that interest you, stopping for a while and then continuing. Commonly we channel surf with our television's remote control and we surf the Web with our Web browser, aka browsing. You can also surf the Internet with your web browser or other GUI (graphical user interface) sytems such as the email window, a chat room forum, bulletin board, etc.
 
Choosing your Browser

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.

 
Try This: Move your mouse cursor to the Start button on the bottom left of your desktop. Right click and choose Explore. This opens Windows Explorer, a tool that allows you to see all the files on your hard drive, zip drive, CD Rom drive or floppy disk drive. Find an html file and double click it. Usually the html file will have an icon that shows which browser is set as your default browser and thus which browser will automatically open and display that file.

 

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.

 
Try This: Move your mouse cursor over the Start button on the bottom left of your desktop. left click on it. Go up to Programs and select the Netscape icon to start Netscape. Note: sometimes you scroll to a netscape folder and find the icon inside it.
 
Using your Browser

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:

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.

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.

Try This: clear the location window on your browser then type each of the following consecutively and hit the enter key of your keyboard or click on the go button on your browser.

      • www.amazon.com
      • amazon.com

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.
 
General Browser Features

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:

Navigation Choices 

Browser Tools

Planned Site Tools
  • Back Button/Forward
  • ButtonGo - drop down menu
  • Vertical Scroll Bar
  • Horizontal Scroll Bar
  • Location Window - URL
  • Location window pull-down menu - pick URL
  • Dropdown Menu Bar: File - open page from
  • Bookmarks/Favorites
  • Reload/Refresh
  • Stop Button
  • Scroll Bar
  • Location Window - When you click in the window the text will become highlighted. What you type will replace it. If you click to highlight the text then click again somewhere in or around the text, then you can edit it. Double click to highlight text. Use the arrows keys to scroll across text that is too ling to see
  • Sizing the whole Browser Window - put mouse pointer on an edge; when it turns into a double arrow, click and drag the edge to size it.

 

 

  • Within a page

  • Between Pages

  • Between Sites

  • Multiple Browser Windows

  • Frames

  • a memorable Domain Name (URL)
 

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.
Special Navigation and Page Content:

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/

FTP - a link can download a file through the browser from an FTP server.

Documents - a link can open text and other documents stored on the server in a format created through proprietary software (Excel, Word, etc.)
Working with Boomarks (Demo)

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
Managing Your Web Browser's Cache

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.

 
Printing a Web Page

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
Browser Preferences

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

 
Internet Error Messages

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:

Unable to locate the server. The URL you typed in does not exist, and/or cannot be found at the moment.
404 Not found on this server. The domain name exists, but not the directory or file you entered. Check your typing. The file may not be in the same location anymore, or may not be there at all.
There was no response. The server could be down or not responding. The domain name exists, but is not sending any acknowledgement back to you. Maybe later.
Nothing happens. There may be some network interruption, from your connection to the Internet on through any numbers of computers across the world. Try again, etc.