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The Internet is a wonderful
place. I've said this before but I'd like to say it again. It really
is. I'd be bored out of my brain if not for the Internet. I've logged
an estimated 18,000 hours awake and connected to the Internet
(40 hours a week at work and sometimes 40 more at home) including "real"
work (3 years of web development); probably just less than half of
that time doing non-development work (surfing, emailing, etc). If that
sounds nerdy, well, it is, but I've had a lot of fun at it. And I've
learned a lot.
Having been on the Internet
since 1991, (before the Web even, (see History
of Weather and the Internet) I would like to think that I have
accrued some efficiency techniques over the years that may help you
surf more effectively. Now that the Internet is too big to surf in one
lifetime, your time online must be spent effectively. Power users may
already know some or most of the information below. If this is you,
congratulations. If you are new to the Internet, this page is a
must read. For this tutorial I assume that you have successfully
connected to the Internet and have your Web Browser open. NOTE: Most
of these tips are PC-oriented. If you have a Mac they may work
or they may not.
1. Know how to look for
information.
- First Love : Finding
the site you need - via the Web Address
- First of all, if you are
looking for a particular site, try typing in the company name or key
word into your browser's "address"
area. You should always keep this address area visible, it
will help you out throughout your surfing experience by telling you
where you are. If you are using a recent Netscape or Internet
Explorer type in www.whatever.000 where 'whatever' is what you're
looking for. and '000' is the domain name extension. If you are
looking for ford, typing in www.ford.com will get you to the Ford
website because 'com' stands for 'company.' But typing
www.whitehouse.com won't get you to the Whitehouse of the US
Government, in fact I don't even want to tell you where it will go.
An enterprising lowlife company purchased that address to get hits
from the unsuspecting viewer. But you know better. Why? Because the
'com' doesn't make sense - the US Government is not a company, it is
a government. Change '.com' to '.gov' to be taken where you want to
go. (www.whitehouse.gov).
Same for Educational sites (not www.psu.com
but www.psu.edu) and
non-profit organizations (not
www.weatherwatchers.com
but www.weatherwatchers.org).
By the way, don't worry about that little http:// that keeps
popping up in front of your Address - that is the Internet
terminology for "Hypertext Transfer Protocol" which means "this
is a web page, not an FTP page or a GOPHER page" to power
users. Most modern browsers don't require the http:// to be typed in
but will keep slipping it in for you. If you get around to
making your own web pages,
you'll need to include that code.
- Hey! That didn't
work! What now?
- If your browser gave you
an error message (see
here
for an old page I made with details on Netscape Error Messages, some
information may no longer be accurate). That doesn't necessarily
mean that the site address doesn't exist (see
here for details) but
it does mean that you can't get to it, and that's what matters right
now, eh? Next step is to try to find the object of your desire with
a Search Tool. I'll leave that discussion up to the "Finding
What You Need" section.
2. Understand browser 'tricks.'
- The power of CNTRL-F.
- Did you know that at any
time when you have text in your browser window (even the view-source
window) that you can search through that for text? That's right.
Pick Edit/Find from your browser's menu, or press CNTRL-F, that's "hold
down the Control Key then press F then release both." Note:
this won't work for images. How can you tell text from images? This
might sound easy, but it's easy to make images that look like text,
and CNTRL-F won't work through these. Right click (click with your
right mouse button, a very powerful tool) over the area containing
the text/image. If "View Image" (Netscape) or "Save
Picture" (Internet Explorer) appears then it is an image.
- More about this Right
Mouse Button...
- There are loads of things
you can do with the Right mouse button (or "hold down only
button" on Macs) menu. You should use it frequently. It allows
you to interact with the page. Let's say you want to open a link in
a new window without making your current web page go away. Right
click over the link and pick "Open In New Window." When
you're done with that window you can close it by using the menu "File/Close",
the keyboard shortcut for that (CNTRL-W) or the Windows 95 "X"
button in the upper right hand corner of the window. Clicking on a
non-linked portion of a page will give you a menu from which you can
pick other useful things without having to navigate the menus at the
top of the browser, such as "Add to Bookmarks / Favorites,"
"Back/Forward," "View Source" (important for learning
HTML), and others.
- Don't be fooled!
Where does this page / image come from?
- One of the bad things
about the Internet is that it is easy to fool the novice user.
You've got to keep in mind when surfing that things aren't always
what they seem. Let's take an example. Go to this
example page. I'm going to
open it in a new window for you so you don't have to close this one.
When you are done with this lesson you can close it by using the
techniques listed above.
- What do you see on
that page? Well it looks like this web page, done by me, has a
Surface Map of the United States on it. If you wait around another
half hour and reload the page, the image will have updated. How
neat! I have an updating surface map on my page. I'd better bookmark
this right? No. I have fooled you into thinking that this is my
image. If you bookmark this page, instead of the real source, you
may be disappointed to find the image gone in the future. I am
incorporating another web site's image into my web page. How can you
be sure? Use the right-hand mouse button trick I described above to
"View Image." When you do this, watch the Address window
as it changes from http://www.weatherwatchers.org/blahblah to
http://www.weather.com/blahblah. The address change means that you
have left my website. This image is owned by weather.com, which is
the Weather Channel, and I have no rights to it. I won't go much
more into the morality or legality of doing this type of thing here
but will reserve that for the "Make
Your Own Web" section in case you are wondering about
that type of thing. [Note: In Internet Explorer, this checking is
much harder to do (which is why I don't use MSIE much). You will
need to right-mouse click and choose "Image Properties"
then compare the address that shows up in that window with the
address.] Q: What if you wanted to see what else Weather.com had to
offer? I cover this in the "Finding
What You Need" section. It is called "Directory
Descending." HINT: To find "Directory Descending" in
that page, use the CNTRL-F trick I told you about above.
- Part II. : More
Better Foolin'. There are also more technological ways to fool
the user with text instead of images... take this
page as an example. Again, it should open in its own new
window. Look at the address. This is still at the CASI site,
www.weatherwatchers.org. And there is a tremendous list of weather
sites which I claim to have compiled. Should you pat me on the back
for a job well done? No! In fact I have stolen the entire list from
Mike's WeatherNet site. But I didn't have to expend any effort to do
this because the information is still on his site. How did I do
this? A more technological form of fooling the 'newbie' user can be
accomplished by using Frames. There is a frameset document which
directs your browser to display first my document at the top then,
remotely, bring in Mike's weather list below it. Notice how his list
has a second scroll bar which is independent of the whole window.
This indicates that it is a frame. To check for originality, you can
right-click with the mouse again, and pick "Open Frame in New
Window." This will open the frame in a new window and you can
check the Address area. Notice that the URL is no longer
weatherwatchers.org but the WeatherNet
site at http://cirrus.sprl.umich.edu/wxnet. Unfortunately, in
Microsoft Internet Explorer (up to version 3 anyway) there is no way
to check for originality in frames. All of this said, I
don't want to make out frames to be a bad technology. There are many
valid uses for frames, including framing your own pages. I even
frame outside sites in the CASI Weird Weather section so that all
information can be on one page, but I make it clear in the top frame
that the bottom frames are not mine.
- Backwards and
Forwards : Where to get Where You Have Gone Before
- OK so you went to a great
webpage recently and you didn't use the Bookmarks/Favorites to save
it. Now what do you do? Well if you remember much about it, you
might be able to find it using
Search Engines, but they don't have everything and it might
take a while. If it was recent enough, it could be in your "GO"
menu. Hit "Go" at the top of your browser. Holy sites,
Batman! There are the last dozen or so sites that you went to. If
it's not in there, and your cache hasn't expired it, look in your
History file. In Netscape, hit CNTRL-H. Holy mega sites Batman,
there are the last several hundred sites you visited! Double click
on any of them to visit them again. (or use CNTRL-F to Find!) (Tip
within a Tip - if you don't want a site to appear in your history
highlight it then hit the Delete key on your keyboard). One
additional trick (which works in the 4.0 versions of the browsers)
is to start typing the front end of the web address into the Address
window and see if your browser can guess the address. Don't fear it
- it's not reading your mind, it is just looking in your History
file for matches. Type http://www.weatherw into the Address window
right now if you have a 4.0 browser, it should finish it out with
http://www.weatherwatchers.org (unless you've been to www.weatherw
followed by anything else recently).
- Additional Tricks
- Too lazy to keep hitting
those BACK and FORWARD buttons? Use ALT<-- (hold down ALT while
pressing the left arrow key) and ALT-->. Want a quick way to View
the Source of a document? Type view-source:address in the Address
area of your Netscape browser, where "address" is a valid
web address. For example (Netscape only),
view-source:www.weatherwatchers.org
will show you the HTML 'guts' of the CASI Front Page. Want a quick
Javascript command window for command line input? Type
javascript: in your Netscape
Address area.
With these simple tips,
hopefully you are on your way to surfing successfully. If you have any
tips for me or questions, you can email me at
netnerd@weatherwatchers.org |
