How to Use the Internet

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Your Web Browser (Explorer, Netscape, etc.) shows you world wide web (WWW) pages written by companies, governmental bodies, the military, non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and ordinary people. The purpose and content of these web pages are determined by their authors. Each on the many millions of web pages is identified with a unique "address" called a URL (uniform resource locator).

Most of the URL's that you will use are of the form: http://www.iiii.ddd/llll. The http:// stands for "hyper-text transfer protocol" and indicates the standard document handling protocol for the WWW. The letters www are commonly, but not universally, used in URLs as a further indication that the URL is part of the world wide web. iiii stands for some specific identification of the organization or computer that is storing and/or has written the web page. ddd stands for the "domain code". The most common domain codes are "com"pany, "edu"cational, "mil"itary, "gov"ernmental, "org"anization (non-profit), special inter"net" companies, or, for locations outside the U.S., there are "country codes" like "ca"nada, "uk", "de" (Germany), "jp" (Japan) etc ( list). The llll stands for additional location information which may be blank or very, very long. The location often ends with .htm or .html as an indication that the document follows the standard "hyper-text markup language" format that is understood by "http".

The World Wide Web has a few key defining features. Understanding these features will make it less confusing to use the Web.

  1. First, the aspect of the WWW that makes it a "web" is that all of the pages on the Web are available to view immediately if you know their address (URL), but most of the time you pick one or a few pages as starting points and then navigate through the web, i.e. move from page to page, by click on the "links" indicated by underlined and colored text (or pictures outlined in color). Most links take you to another web page; some links take you to another part of the same web page, and some contain information (files) in a format not native to the WWW. These other files range from unformatted text ( Click here for an example) to pictures, sounds (Example), and movies, to programs that you can install on your personal computer and then use later without being on the internet. Your web browser will attempt to present the information to you if it can; if not it will pass the file to a "helper" program which will present the information to you (RealAudio is a common example). If the browser can neither handle the information itself nor find a helper, it will ask you what to do. Your options are to 1) tell the browser where to find an approriate helper program on your computer, 2) find a helper on the WWW, get a copy onto your computer ("download" a copy), set up the helper, and tell the browser about the helper, 3) just save the file onto your computer for some later use, or 4) cancel what your are doing and ignore the link.

  2. Second, there is no general organization to the web. It is just a hodgepodge of information thrown together in a big pot. Some individual organizations and people have made excellent attempts to organize as much information as possible in a useful fashion, but these attempts are independent and often very different from each other. This is discussed further on my "Search Overview" page. The only natural organization of the web is that each person or organization has a "Home Page URL" and, usually, all other pages written by that person or organization can be reached from links on the home page. Anyone can remove or rename their web pages at any time.
    For now, consider some of the consequences of this:

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