What is a Web Browser - Lesson 2

Viewing web pages with web browsers, click inside the URL field (white) and delete out the entire elements currently within. What does URL stand for Uniform Resource Locator, remember?

Next you need to type a web address into the URL field. Start by typing http://, which stands for Hyper-Text-Transfer-Protocol as shown in the example here . 

Q: What is HTTP stand for? HTTP is the method through which hypertext files, such as web pages, are transferred over the Internet. HTTP is a client/server based Internet protocol, or set of rules.

Next we want to tell the browser we are going onto the www ( World Wide Web) web site. Place this next portion of information into the URL filed, the same as example here.   Now add a Dot (.) after the www, this is a separator between elements within the web address. Next we will place the name of the server-destination spot we wish to view. In this example we will be using "Yahoo", have you ever heard of this site?

The last piece of information needed to complete the web address is another Dot (.) and the letters com (.com). What is dot com you ask? It is the category the web sever/page has been registered on the Internet. There are several other that can be used when registering your web page. Some of these are NET, ORG, CA and others to mention a few. Have a look in your white booklet to find these and other listings within. 

The last part after entering all the proper information just tap the Enter key to make the process of loading the "Yahoo" web site. If all went well you should be viewing a page similar to the screen shot shown here.

What is a Web Page? - Lesson 2

A web page is made up of programming code called "HTML", Hyper-Text Markup Language. This coding is the background structure that allows a web browser (IE or NS) to read it's contents. The main features of a web page that interest most web surfers are, the textual and graphical bits and pieces within the documents construction. 

There can be several other elements embedded within a web page, but we will mainly be viewing the Linking as shown by this image below from Yahoo web site. Note the blue underlined elements from this page, have your web browser point to this same page type in the URL http://www.yahoo.com.

Q: What are all these names with blue lines under them? These are the mechanism, which makes up most of the Web and Web pages. These are called Hyper-Links. Why blue? Well this is the standard for Hyper-Links when being created and user on the Web. 

Q: Why are they underline? The words are underlined to show active Hyper-Links. Place your mouse pointer over any of these blue links and the arrow should turn into a small hand with a finger , the nice finger. It worked, sure it did. Now just click on it and you will be catapulted to another web page through this Hyper-Link at Yahoo. 

I will use the link labeled Auctions to show a demonstration of another page being loaded into the web browser, point and click on . Two things will change 1 - the URL address will equal  http://auctions.shopping.yahoo.com/ and the web page content will change to this image and different text.

There you have it great work!  Now we can try different links from this new web page loaded, please click on any Hyper-Link from the new web page loaded.

 Lets try another well know web site, please type into the URL http://www.altavista.com then tap the enter key. Look very similar to the Yahoo site correct! In most case many sites on the web will display similar content consisting of text, graphics, links, sound, etc. Select any of the new Hyper-links when the AltaVista page has finished loading.

Q: Ok how do we get back to where we started from? Well, we could use the Back Button that would step us back one page at a time. We could also use the Home Button , which would take you back to http://www.conestogac.on.ca . Either method would work or try them both, since you want to try as many new mechanisms as you can.

TIP - when you are going to click on the back button with mouse. Click on the black arrow-down to see a dropdown list appear. 

Try Netscape Navigator, see if everything you have accomplished thus far is the same with that software for loading web pages. Practice using Hyper-Links from any web page you know. I will be giving several out in class, but you may bring in any you may find.

On to Lesson 3

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