Longmont Learning Center
Hints on Searching the Internet
Longmont SeniorNet
Hints on Searching the Internet --
Connecting online and Internet Service Provider
In order to look at web sites, your computer has to be connected online which means that your computer has to be connected through a phone line or other communications network to the computer system of an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The Internet Service Provider is a company that provides accounts to individuals that permit the individual to connect his or her computer online and to “access” the Internet. There are many ISPs to choose from. Some users may have a high-speed, always-on connection. Whenever your computer is connected to the Internet you are said to be “online.”
Use the program and the settings on your computer provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to connect to the Internet.
Browser
A browser is a software program that allows you to view and explore pages on the World Wide Web (the Web). In this course, you will use Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) as your browser. The steps are based on IE version 6. There are other versions of IE as well as other browsers available, such as Netscape and the customized browser used by America Online. The basic concepts described in this course generally apply to them all.
Disclaimer: The World Wide Web contains everything from pages made by school children and families to commercial web sites developed by large corporations, and includes everything in between. There are no overall standards of acceptable content. You may find text, graphics or ideas on the Web that you consider offensive. If, in searching for information or a particular web site, you open a site that offends you, you can click the Stop button on the toolbar to stop the page from loading and click the Back button to return to the previous page or you can just close the browser window.
Note: Web sites and web pages change frequently. The web addresses or the look of some of the pages may not be exactly as described in this manual.
Open Internet Explorer
When connecting online, the first page is considered your home page and will often be the home page of your ISP. At our location here at Front Range Community college, it is set to their home page for the Longmont campus.
Parts of a browser window
Some of the parts of a browser window are similar to other software programs you have already seen. On the right of the title bar are the three buttons that minimize, maximize/restore or close a window. Below the title bar are the menu bar, the toolbar and the address bar.
The icons on the Internet Explorer Menu bar are similar to menus you have seen in other programs -- File, Edit, View, Tools and Help menus, as well as a new one that is called Favorites. Each of the items on the menu bar has a drop-down list of options.
The toolbar buttons are useful for “surfing” the Internet. Note that Favorites appears in both the toolbar and the menu bar.
The address box on the address bar displays the location of the web page you are viewing. Here is where you type the address of web pages you want to visit.
Surfing the Web - Navigating the Web
Type a web address - Type a URL
Sometimes you will see a web address (URL) in a newspaper or magazine ad for a web site you want to visit or a friend may give you a web address and recommend that you go there. If you know it, you can type the web address, known as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), in the address box at the top of the web browser window and press the Enter key or click the Go button to go to the web page with that URL.
Following are some basic guidelines for typing URLs:
Although upper- or lower-case letters do not usually make a difference, you should enter the web address exactly the way you see it printed in an ad or in the newspaper since it may be case-sensitive.
Be careful in typing the URL. If one letter or punctuation mark is wrong the browser will not recognize the address and you will not go to the page you want.
Do not use any spaces when you type the address. A URL may have dashes, underscores or other characters, but not spaces.
Use the correct three-letter extension (e.g., com, edu, org, gov or others).
Note: A few organizations may own multiple extensions. For example, SeniorNet owns both the www.seniornet.org and the www.seniornet.com addresses so either will work.
1 Practice typing in URL addresses. Type in www.aarp.org
2 Practice typing in URL addresses. Type in www.yahoo.com
3 Scroll up and down to see the information on the page and then click Travel. Scroll down and look at the page. Now click on the "back" button to return to Yahoo.com (Yahoo's homepage).
4 In the Address bar, type in www.travelocity.com and find the least expensive flight to Chicago leaving Monday of next week.
5 In the Address bar, type in www.seniornet.org
Use the scroll bar to move around the page. Use links.
6 Return to the set home page by clicking on the "house" on the Tool Bar.
Autocomplete feature
You may notice when you begin to type an address in the address box, a list of previously typed similar addresses opens. After you begin to type you can click on an address that matches the one you are typing to save time and eliminate mistakes.
Copy and Paste a URL
If you see a URL in an electronic document such as an email message, you can use the Edit menu to copy and paste it into the address box rather than type it.
Link to a URL
You can click a link, sometimes referred to as a hyperlink, on a web page to take you to another page where you can find more information on a topic. Links are usually words or phrases that are underlined and/or in a different color. Links can be in the form of text, graphics, photos, or anything else that can be presented on a web page, which when you click on them, take you to another page. When you move your mouse over a word or graphic that is linked to another page, your mouse pointer will turn into a little hand with the index finger pointing and the URL for that page may appear in the navigation bar at the bottom of your browser window. The person who creates the web page (or author) decides what will be linked and creates links to other pages by using special programming codes.
A link to a web page may also appear in an email message. You can click the link in an email message to open a web page in your browser.
Back and Forward buttons to go to a URL address
You can click the Back arrow button on the toolbar at the top of the web browser window to go to a previous page you opened or click the Forward arrow to return to pages you have opened.
Note: When the Back or Forward buttons are not available for use, one or both will appear faded.
Stop the page from loading and
While a page is opening, if it doesn’t open too quickly, you can make it stop loading before everything shows in the window. Sometimes you make a mistake and realize you don’t want to go to the web site you entered. You can stop it from loading into the browser window so that you can type another web address. Or, if a page is taking a long time to “load” all the page elements so that you can view everything on the page, you can stop the page from completely loading and then “refresh” the page so that it can try to load again.
Before the page completely loads, click the Stop button on the toolbar. The page stops loading.
Note: If the page loads quickly, you may not be able to stop it from loading.
Refresh the Page
When you click the Refresh button, the page starts loading again. This is best used when looking at current stock prices or any page where the information is continually updated.
1 Go to www.nyse.com Scroll down and look at the numbers under Market Activity.
2 Click the Refresh Button on the Tool Bar and see how the numbers updated.
Search Engines
The purpose of search engines is to guide your search for information. In this lesson you will learn how to conduct a search. A search engine is the software program used by web sites to locate and compile information on the Internet. Different search engines use different methods so there is a lot of variance in the relevance of information you retrieve for your specific needs. Some web sites focus on providing one or more search engines to support your searches and some are organized into directories that provide subject categories and subcategories.
Google.com
Yahoo.com
Altavista.com
Lycos.com
Ask.com (also known as AskJeeves.com)
Excite.com
Dogpile.com
Webcrawler.com
Overture.com
Hotbot.com
DirectHit.com
InfoTiger.com
Looksmart.com
Kartoo.com (this one has quite a different look)
Using Favorites - or "Bookmarking"
Visit some of these search engines sites and add them to your FAVORITES
1 At each site click the Favorites on the menu bar and click Add to Favorites. An Add Favorite dialog box appears.
2 Click OK to add the page to an existing list of Favorites.
3 Note: You can keep the current name or you can type a new name. To change the name, highlight to select the current name and type new name to replace.
Create Folders to organize Favorites
1 Click Favorites on the menu bar. A menu that lists your Favorites appears.
2 Click Organize Favorites at the top of the menu. The Organize Favorites dialog box opens.
3 Click the Create Folder button near the upper left. A New Folder icon appears at the bottom of your list, which shows in the window on the right of the dialog box.
4 Since the New Folder is already selected, type Search Engines and press Enter.
5 Close the Organize Favorites dialog box.
6 Click and drag each of the Search Engine sites into your folder
Activity -- Create a Second Folder in Favorites
1 Click Favorites, click Organize and then click Create folder. A New Folder appears in the list.
2 Since New Folder is selected, type My News to replace the title and press the Enter key. Then click Close. You now have a news folder in which to put some web sites.
3 Type www.nytimes.com in the address box and press the Enter key. You are taken to the home page for the New York Times newspaper.
4 Click Favorites and click Add to Favorites. When the Add Favorite dialog box appears, click Create in. Select the News folder and click OK.
5 Now repeat the steps above.and add these web addresses to your My News Folder
www.longmontfyi.com
www.newsweek.com
USING SEARCH ENGINES
(Some of this information is from SeniorNet online class)
How do search sites gather and organize information?
Search engines gather and fill their databases by using software referred to as "spiders" or "robots" to crawl through web space from link to link, scanning and cataloging pages. Once the spider gets to a web site, it typically indexes most of the words on the publicly available pages at the site. Additionally, Web page owners may submit their URLs to search engines, requesting that they be indexed and eventual included in the search engine databases.
Subject Directories are developed and data is entered into the database on a schedule which depends upon the company's work load. The frequency of the updating is hard for viewers to determine.
Whether you search the web using a directory or a search engine, however, you're asking that the database at that company be searched and matching keywords and phrases be returned for your viewing.
It is important to remember that when doing these searches you are actually searching a limited portion of the web, captured and indexed at an earlier date. You are NOT searching the entire web as it exists at this moment.
When a new Web page is first available it will typically take several months, if not a year--for the page to be catalogued or indexed by some search site. And until a page has been catalogued or indexed, you won't find information about it on any search engine.
What are the Pros and Cons of Search Engines?
With no card catalog or recognizable structure for the Web, search engines provide access to a limited portion of the publicly available pages on the Web They are the best means we have available for locating information on the web.
However, due to the manner in which Web pages are indexed by search engines, it is very likely that they will return hundreds of thousands of irrelevant responses to simple search requests. Consequently, searching the Web is very much another example of "practice makes perfect". Or, at least we can say that practice will definitely make the search experience much less frustrating.
Don't forget to 'Bookmark' sites you find along the way to which you may want to return later.
Are all Search Engines the Same? No.
Although how the data is collected may be similar, no two search engines are exactly the same in terms of size, speed and content. No two search engines index the exact same information. They don't use the same ranking schemes. They have a somewhat different user interface. And each search engine offers its own set of search options. Therefore, expect your search to be different on each engine you use.
Before we're done, you will get familiar with several different search sites.
Guessing the URL
Since many, many companies and/or individuals now have Web sites and have purchased their own "domain" name, you can sometimes find these sites by guessing what their domain name might be.