WHAT IS THE INTERNET?
The Internet, or World Wide Web, was created, by the linking together of many computers to each other. Initially, Universities and American and British defence establishments built the Internet as a means of exchanging and communicating research ideas, findings and military information. The defence industry's particular interest was for secure, multiple electronic communication paths, in such a way that, even if several computer sites connected to the Internet were lost, electronic messages and access to data would still get through to the remaining sites. It soon became apparent that as well as providing security for data communications, the method also reduced dependency on any particular type or make of computer: lots of different computers could find a common ground to talk to each other. It also meant that lots of computers could be given the same task, but with different chunks of data, to work on problems that were too big for any one computer to handle. A network of connections is like the picture, below: for each box there are many connection paths.
As the potential to store lots of information on computers evolved, along with other advances in technology and communication, the idea that computers from all over the world could be joined was born. This was what has now become the World Wide Web, a connection of world wide computer networks, still also known as the Internet, connected by fast telephone and sub-marine fibre optic cables and even orbiting communication satellites…
WHAT WILL THE INTERNET DO FOR ME?
The Internet or World Wide Web (WWW for short) allows you to access information from universities, colleges, schools, government, business and other ordinary everyday people, just like you and me. The content of the Internet is a vast array of text, pictures, video, sounds, music and software. You can find information from all over the world, quickly, and also find or follow links from information on one subject that relates to some other.
You can also use the Internet to communicate quickly with others virtually anywhere in the world, using words and/or sounds and/or pictures and/or video using Electronic Mail (email). You can send the same email to millions of people as easily as you can send to one person.
Anybody, with access to the right equipment and software can make use of the Internet and can even create a web page of their own. A Web Page is a 'place' in the World Wide Web that you can create and maintain any kind of information you would like to share with the rest of the world!
WHAT DO I NEED/WHERE DO I START?
The
correct equipment is essential. To connect to the web, your computer's base
unit, monitor, keyboard, mouse and a modem, either one that is built in to your
PC or an external modem and, of course, a telephone connection are needed.
You also need to have or have decided upon an Internet Service Provider (ISP for short). An ISP provides you with an access point to the Internet using a telephone line. See the Appendix for more information on ISPs.
Your computer is likely to include software that enables it to connect it and YOU to the Internet. The required software is probably already installed on your computer.
The types of software you need that will allow you to interact with the Internet are:
· Web Browser - Presents Internet content to you in text, sound and visual form and allows you to select places to visit or navigate the Internet
· Email Client - Allows you to prepare, send and receive email
Internet Explorer, a Web Browser, is commonly found on many Windows 95/98/ME/NT and 2000 machines. You may also find that your machine has Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, both are Email Clients, enabling you to prepare, send and receive email.
Look for the icons, shown below, on your computer's desktop:
You can also find these programs and launch them from the Windows 'Start' menu:
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
INTERNET EXPLORER OR OUTLOOK RUNS?
The computer loads
Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer asks the computer if it is already
connected to an Internet Service Provider (Assuming you already have an ISP -
If you haven't, see the Appendix). If no connection has yet been made, Internet
Explorer calls up the 'Dial-up Connection' program, as shown below:
< Connect to: Lists the names of ISPs you've signed up;
< User name: Is your identity at the ISP you selected;
< Password: Is your password for your ISP Username.
The 'Dial-up Connection' program makes a phone call from your computer, via your modem, to your ISP. Once your computer connects with your ISP's computer, the ISP prompts your computer for the Username and Password details. If they are valid, the ISP's computer and your computer connect through a two-way gateway to the Internet, WWW and Email services you asked for when you signed-up with your ISP. After successful connection, the 'Dial-up Connection' program disappears, its still running, but hidden, keeping an 'ear' on the phone connection. It gives Internet Explorer or Outlook the connection details they need and it creates what is known as a 'session' - a period of connection time.
When a 'Dial-up Connection' has been established, Internet Explorer connects to your ISP's 'home page. A 'home page' is the first Web Page that you get to when you visit another Internet user of the WWW. A typical home page might look like this:
The Web Page shown above is an example of what you might expect when you first connect to the Internet. This particular page is for a Search Engine, a web page that invites you to type some words that it uses to search some or all of the WWW! If you typed 'Music' in the Search box, then clicked the Search button with your mouse, this particular page would look at all Internet computer sites it held in its directory that had the word Music or music somewhere in their home page. The Search is done in parallel - all the sites known to the directory are contacted at the same time with a command to search for 'Music' - those sites containing that word report back to the Search Engine, which displays the 'Results' of the search, usually in a list:
When you find something in the list of results that interests you, move your mouse over the item and click it! For example, one of the returned 'hits' (Hits means a site that met the Search details you gave) was:
Music.com - A Part of the Music.com Network (TM)
Notice that the word Music is in bold. This is because it was (one of) the words you typed into the Search box. Also notice that the phrase is underlined and it is what you should place your mouse pointer on. These underlined text lines are known as 'links'. A 'link' is a pointer to a web site or web page or an object on a web page such as a picture or sound file. It can also be an instruction to your computer to send an email back to someone… Internet, WWW and email are all inter-linked.
Pictures can also be links. Sometimes, a picture is shown on a page, usually as a small-sized object. Often, you can click on a small picture, known as thumbnails or 'thumbs', which links to a web page containing a larger version of the same. You can also have a picture link, of a rock band, say, that links to a web page containing a sound file of their latest release or a text page giving you a biography or a list of their forthcoming tour…
The browser either contains the knowledge to show or play such objects itself, or knows of another program already on your computer that can!
TOURING THE INTERNET
EXPLORER WINDOW
Lets start at the top of the Internet Explorer window; we will use IE to refer to Internet Explorer from here on in:
At the top there is a title bar, telling you the name of the current web page and below that is the menu bar that contains File, Edit, View, Favourites, Tools and Help controls.
Below that is the toolbar which includes Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh, Home, Search, Favourites, History, Mail, Print and Edit.
On each press of the Back button, the IE consults a history of web pages it created since the start of the session. It finds and displays the previous web page you visited during this session. If IE gets to the start of the history, the Back button goes 'grey' and does nothing - you can't go back further than where you started the session.
On each press of the Forward button, the IE consults the same history of web pages, causing IE to find and display the next web page in the history. Again, if the button is 'grey' it means that either you are at the end of the history list or you have only just displayed your ISP's home page.
The Stop button stops IE from getting a web page - you may have decided that you don't want to go there after all, say. Stop will stop the transfer of the web page details to your computer.
The Refresh button tells IE to find and display the current page again - you might want to do this if not all of the page seems to have been loaded - this can happen sometimes and is normal.
The Home button tells IE to find and display the home page of your ISP. The home page's web address for your ISP is normally held by IE. It is often setup when you create an Internet Account. See the Appendix about Internet Accounts and signing-up to an ISP.
The Search button tells IE to find and display the home page of your favourite Search Engine. It, too, is often setup when you signup an Internet Account with your ISP, but IE always has Microsoft's own Search Engine site to go to, as a standby.
The Favourites button presents a list of web site addresses that you create! When you press this button, a list of web sites id presented that you can click on with your mouse - IE goes straight to that web site and displays the page. If you visit a particular web site for the first time and you find that it is of interest to you, you can add its address to the Favourites list. Just press the Favourites button - At the top of the list is 'Add to Favourites' - Click on it and the current web page address will be added to the list. You can also remove Favourites in the same way.
The History button presents a list of web sites that you have visited since you first ever used IE, not just for the current session. You can select a web site name from this list and IE will go to it automatically. You can clear out a History entry, by highlighting a web site address then clicking on it with the Right mouse button - a list of choices is presented.
The Mail button causes Internet Explorer to load and run your email software. Often, this will be Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express but it could be any other kind of email client software. It saves you having to go to the Windows Start button or to the desktop to run your email client. It is also useful when, on some web pages, there is a 'Contact Us' email link. (More about this later!) Because IE knows what your email software is, it can load it automatically - it even inserts the email address of the person or organisation you are about to contact, saving you the typing!
The Print button does just that - it cause IE to send the contents of the current web page to your printer! It loads a box to ask you for various options about how it should print - you might, for instance, not want to print pictures but want the text or you don't want it to print the background colour (and, therefore, save a lot of ink!)
The Edit button allows you to modify the web page! The web page copy, on your machine only, is modified! You could use this if you wanted to understand how web pages are constructed or how a particular feature of a page works… Not for the faint-hearted, though, and while your doing that, you will still be connected to your phone line…
Below the button toolbar is the Address bar. This is where you can type the Address (also known as the URL meaning Universal Resource Locator) of the site you wish to visit or the search engine you wish to use.
The address you type is not like a postal address! For Internet or WWW addresses, the Address box MUST start with 'http://' (http means HyperText Transfer Protocol). IE inserts this for you. After that, the web site's address you want can be typed. Typically, this starts with 'www' (for World Wide Web) and is followed by a full-stop. Next you type what is known as the 'domain name' - for instance google.com. The domain name has two parts to it, first is the site name and second, the domain separated by a full-stop.
The name identifies the site on the Internet - Google, for instance. The domain is an internationally agreed set of codes that denotes the type of web site. For example:
.com Commercial Often used by US companies
.co Commercial Often used by non-US companies
.co.uk Commercial A company in the United Kingdom
.net Internet Usually a service provider to the Internet
.ac Academic Schools, colleges and Universities
.ac.uk UK Academic
.gov Government Including local government
.mil Military
.de A German web site
.fr A French web site.
By way of example, the full web address for the Google search engine and its various components are given below:
Use Internet: Use 'WWW': Domain-Name
| | |
------ ------ -------------
^ ^
Name Domain
Many web sites have a simple address like, the one shown above, but they can be more complicated:
[ http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/U_S__Government/Agencies/Independent/NASA/ ]
This means, find the page(s) about NASA, Independent US Government Agencies in the directory entry held by the Search Engine of the World Wide Web site known as Yahoo! It causes IE to display a long list of NASA related web sites! Simple! You can select a link from the list and visit the NASA web site.
If you already knew the address, you could have typed it in the Address box directly:
[ http://www.nasa.gov/ ]
BROWSING
Browsing simply means moving around the Internet. Search engines provide you with a quick way to get started. Up to now, only two search engines have been mentioned. There are lots more. Some specialise in particular topics. Others like the two mentioned are more general in the way that they search the Internet. Use a search engine to find web sites on a particular subject and visit the site. Once there, follow the links on that site to other sites or other pages within the same site. This is browsing.
Here are a few more Search Engines for you to try:
ADVANCED SEARCHES
Most search engines offer an advanced search facility. To use this browse through (look for links on) the search engine’s first page for the advanced search facility option.
Here is the Search Engine AltaVista's home web page. The Advanced option is on the left hand side of the page. If you click it, you get the Advanced Search page.
The Advanced Search page's Boolean (means And Or Not kind of search) is setup to find pages that have 'Music' And contain the word 'Hendrix' Or the word 'Doors' or both. Advanced searching can allow you to be much more precise about what you want to find, cutting down on the returned 'hits'.
SETTING A DIFFERENT HOMEPAGE FOR INTERNET EXPLORER
To set a specific site as a homepage, that is the first page that Internet Explorer will open onto, you need to find the relevant page.
You may decide that you wish your homepage to be a search engine, in order for you to make your choice of where to go next. Alternatively it could be a site you visit most often.
The first step is to select your site and either have that site open with IE or perhaps, you've written down.
If you are already in IE, Select the Tools menu. At the bottom of the menu, is the Internet Options… item and click on it…
IE will bring up
its Internet Properties dialogue box. From here, select the General tab….
Press the Use Current button and your home page address will appear in the Address box. The next time you load IE or press the Home button, it will go to this page. You could also type in your change to homepage Address box manually. Either way, press the Apply button at the bottom of the form. You have just set a new home page!
WHAT ABOUT EMAIL?
To discuss email, this guide will assume that you have the email client 'Outlook Express' already loaded on your computer.
Outlook Express, we will use OE to mean Outlook Express from here on in, usually comes with IE. The reason for this is that, as already discussed, IE has a Mail button. If you had no email capability on your machine, IE would get into difficulty should you try to follow a contact link…
OE is a cut-down version of Microsoft's Outlook email product. It is cut-down such that it only deals with email - The full version of Outlook includes a Diary, Calendar, a Notes facility, Networked Meeting Scheduler - the kinds of things you don't really need on a home-based computer. OE will simply allow you to prepare or create, send and receive email. It will also allow you to participate in News sessions.
Emails can contain virtually anything: text, pictures, sound, video, programs or any mix of these in the one email message you could create or receive.
News has its roots in the earliest uses of the Internet, some 30, yes that's right 30 years ago! It works on a subscription and bulletin basis - subscription does not mean you pay to join, but that you ask to become a member on a news group, a topic of interest. In turn, when OE connects to the Internet, it can examine the news groups of which you are a member (the ones that you subscribed to.) Many special interest groups, covering a wide range of topics, are represented by these groups. You can participate in a passive way, receiving information only or you can become active, sending news-type emails to others in a given group. Generally, the groups are free from any form of moderation or censorship - you can say what you like. Be warned, however, that others in the group can and often do make their responses in very forthright terms! Some ISPs have started to moderate certain News groups. For the most part, people just get along, using the technology to share knowledge and experiences amongst themselves.
News, again because of its roots, also contains links to many of the first types of Internet sites and the data that they hold. Much of this data is text only but can still be of enormous interest particularly if you're doing some research. These older sites were organised in such a way that a general topic classified their access - if you wanted to know what the latest papers on nuclear physics - you would subscribe into the physics.nuclear group. Sites that held such information would publish location details of the document(s) in a directory index. Such indices, in a given community, are maintained by one or two sites only.
News is still very useful - check it out sometime, once you've established yourself on the Internet and got used to email.
Email is the younger technology - its about 25 years old - but it now has a world-wide standard for sending and receiving as well as how to present things like sounds and pictures, agreed about 15 years or so ago! New technology isn't really all that new anymore.
EMAIL ADDRESSES - HOW DO I GET ONE?
Your email address is usually determined by the ISP that you sign-up with and the Account Name that they allow you to use. The terms Email Address and Email Account mean the same thing but your address is your address, your email account also refers to the location on a machine somewhere in cyberspace (yet another term for the Internet) where your emails are held. The format of an email address is:
[ email-identity@domain-name ]
The '@' symbol is always used to separate your email-identity from the domain that holds your email account.
In the above example, 'email-identity' might be your name or an account number or an oblique reference that you decided and that your ISP allowed you to have. Email identity is becoming an issue - if you were the first John Smith to sign-up with a fictitious domain such as funny_beer.co.uk, you wouldn't have a problem. If you were the second John Smith to sign-up to funny_beer's domain, you would have to use something else or include the initial of a second name - JohnFSmith, for example.
You will only find out if you can use your proper name with your ISP when you sign-up. If you haven't already done so, think of some alternatives you could live with. I should imagine that there are many, many John Smiths signed up for email. One solution is to simply add a number to the end of your name - JohnSmith14874@funny_beer.co.uk, for example. Your ISP will tell you straight away if the email-identity you try is already taken.
The domain name is the usually the name of the ISP. For instance, keeping with the examples, it would be reasonable to expected that the web site address for Funny Beer would be:
The domain, funny_beer.co.uk is the same for both their email and web site - the Internet is a very logically joined-up place. Usually!
See the Appendix about signing up for the Internet for more details about email accounts.
HOW DO I USE OUTLOOK EXPRESS?
To run OE, either use the icon on your computer's desktop or find it from the Start menu, as you did for Internet Explorer. If you are not already connected to your ISP, the 'Dial-Up Connection' program will appear, again as shown for Internet Explorer. Once you have a connection to your ISP, OE will display its opening screen, then the main screen will appear:
Email clients generally use folders to organise their use. OE maintain the following Local Folders for you:
- Inbox Holds email message sent to you;
- Outbox Holds email messages created by you that are currently being sent or you've set a date and/or time at or after which they are to be sent;
- Sent Holds messages created by you that were successfully sent;
- Deleted Items Holds messages you deleted from any other folder;
- Drafts Holds messages that you are in the process of creating.
Additionally, OE will create folders for any news services and groups to which you subscribe. In the example picture, there is a subscription to the software company called Corel who have a news service call cnews.corel.ca (.ca means Canada.) Additionally, there is a news service called news.compuserve.com but there are no group subscriptions setup on that service.
The folders are local, on your computer, that is! Similar folders exist on your ISP's email service. Your ISP's master copy of the Inbox still receives email while your computer is off!
Messages in the Inbox that you have not read yet or are new since you connected are highlighted by bold text.
To read an email message, simply click on it with the mouse. Here is an example:
The message content is displayed in a box. The button toolbar allows me to create a Reply message to the sender. If more than one person had received this message, I could use Reply All to send a message back to everyone who received a copy of this message. If the Forward button was selected, a copy of the message could be sent to someone else. Just like Internet Explorer, I can Print the message, navigate up and down the list of messages in this folder, using the Previous and Next buttons and I can Delete this message.
Note that when you delete an email, it isn't deleted immediately. Instead, a copy is made in the Deleted Items folder before it is removed from its current folder. Messages are only truly deleted if you delete them inside the Delete Items folder.
Referring back to the main OE screen, to create an email to send to someone, press the New Mail button. A dialogue box appears and it already contains the sender's email address:
To complete the message, you need to give the email address of the recipient you wish to send to, putting it in the To: box. You can also 'carbon copy' the message to other recipients by putting their email address in the Cc: box. You should, next, give a subject for the email. An example Subject is given in the received email sample. These three items, together with your own email address form what is termed an 'email header'. The text of the message you wish to send is placed in the larger box underneath the Subject. This is known as the 'email body.'
If you want to include a picture, sound or video file(s) in you email, simply find them wherever they exist in your computer and copy then paste them into the large message area. Alternatively, if you have Windows Explorer open on the Desktop, navigate to where your file(s) is, give s single click on it and while holding the left mouse button down, drag it to the OE's body text box.
You can use the Check Spelling button to check any email body text for typing errors before you send the email.
Finally, to send the email, simply press the Send button - OE packages the message, makes a copy in the Outbox folder while it transfers the email to the sender's Inbox.
As a tip to constructing an email, use the language and style you would normally use when writing to someone. The style depends on the recipient! You can be a lot less picky with someone you know!
CONCLUSION
The Internet can be a useful tool for finding out information, communicating with others in a different way, purchasing goods and service and as a source of entertainment. It is increasingly a means of distributing software updates for products you may already have on your computer.
In the UK, the cost of connecting to the Internet continues to go in the right direction - towards nothing, that is. Like commercial television, the Internet is sponsored by many businesses, each competing to get their product advertised on the home pages of as many sites as possible. British Telecom is still the dominant telephone service provider. We nearly all use their physical telephone wires when we use a normal telephone but they are shortly going (being forced, actually!) to give access to other phone companies to create true competition on the local calls network. We might yet see zero local call charges!
In the very near future, Internet, Email, Telephony, Computing, Television and Radio are going to merge. You can already access email and some WWW web pages from Sky Television's and ON Digital's digital television services. Radio is also going digital - with the right kind of digital receiver you can access documents and pictures related the programme your listening to - Radio and Pictures? Isn't that called Television?
APPENDIX - SIGNING UP WITH AN INTERNET SERVICE
PROVIDER
In order to connect to the Internet and/or use email, you need a 'gateway' for your PC. Such gateways are provided by Internet Service Providers (ISP), firms and organisations that offer a means for your PC to dial into the Internet, and usually provide you with a 'login account' and 'email account'. The word 'account', when linked with 'login' and 'email' does not mean an account to which monetary charges are applied.
A login account consists of a Username and a password. These details are required by, at least, the Dial-Up Connection program. The Username is normally provided by the ISP you have chosen. The Password is either supplied (common, if you use an ISP-supplied CD-ROM to setup your service) or you can choose yourself. Either way, you need to write these down, in case you need them to setup your connection.
An email account is a kind of electronic mailbox, used to store email messages sent to you and as postbox for messages that you send. To use an email account, you need to have an email address. This may be simply given to you by the ISP, or you may be allowed to choose your own. You also need to set a password for your email account - choose one that is not the same as your login account's password!
If you sign-up using an ISP-supplied CD-ROM, the setup of the details for your PC is performed by the software it contains. I would recommend that you go that way.
With many new PCs, especially those that are 'Internet-Ready', you will find a directory on your disc or an icon on your desktop called something like 'Get Online' or 'Internet Setup'. These directories contain the CD-ROM contents from a number of the easier to use Internet Service Providers and automatically configure your PC to connect with the Internet.
Money makes the world go round - Some ISPs charge and some don't. Those that charge take you through a dialogue asking you to provide your bank or credit card details to debit monthly charges. Usually, the phone calls your PC makes are covered by so many hours 'free' per month then so much per minute or hour after that. Those that don't charge still do - the phone charges for the phone number they provide for your PC dial are split - so much for BT or whoever else you may get phone service and so much for the site operator. You need to decide which of these charging options suits you best.