NETSCAPE
TUTORIAL
by Judith Murray Griffiths
December, 1996
For the Southwest Regional Library Service
System
OVERVIEW OF THE WORLD-WIDE WEB
What is on the Web?
You can find information on subjects from aardvark to zyzzyva.
You can shop for cars, clothes, music, food specialty items, and more.
You can tour a virtual museum and view images of paintings.
You can get the latest news.
You can find and download computer software programs.
You can even listen to radio shows that originate in other parts of
the world.
What is a
web page?
Web sites consist of pages that often combine text, images and sounds. By
selecting certain words, images or icons on a particular page, you will be
linked to another Web page or Internet resource -- which might be on the
same computer server or on a different computer anywhere in the world.
When you bring a page to your screen, you'll see the whole page or, if
the content is extensive, only a portion. Scroll bars let you see the rest.
The scroll bar is the area to the right of the content area that has an upward
pointing arrow, a downward pointing arrow and an indicator bar in between.
What is
Netscape?
Netscape is a popular Web browser program which you can install on your Internet-connected
microcomputer. You can navigate the Web with Netscape in three ways:
- by clicking on links that sometimes appear as underlined, colored text
like this text link that will take you back to the beginning
- by entering a URL, or address, for a specific Internet resource
- by using one of the many Internet search tools
What is a URL?
Each Web page has a specific address called a Universal Resource Locator
(URL). A complete Web site may include any number of Web pages and each page
has its own URL.
URLs have at least two parts and are made up of text, forward slashes,
punctuation, and sometimes numbers e.g.
http://www.lexmark.com/data/quote.html.
When you type a URL, you must be precise! A URL will not work if you type
a small letter for a capital letter or visa versa.
END OF OVERVIEW
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NETSCAPE
NAVIGATION
Importance of Previous Mousing & Windows Experience
This tutorial assumes that you have prior experience with Windows and with
a mouse. If you are having difficulties, you may just need more practice in
those areas.
- Finding, Starting, and Stopping links
- Buttons
- Pull-Down Menu Items
Finding, Starting and Stopping
Links
A link is a connection from one page to another. You find a link by looking
for one or more words highlighted with color, underlining, or both in the
content area of a page. Images and icons with colored borders also serve as
links. When the mouse cursor points over a link, the URL location of the
link appears in the status field at the bottom of your screen and the cursor
changes from an arrow to a hand.
You can bring a linked page to your screen by clicking once on the highlighted
text, image, or icon. Clicking on a link transfers page content from a server
location to your location. After you click on a link, the Netscape "N" animates
to show you that the transfer of the page to your computer is in progress.
You can stop a transfer in progress by clicking on the Stop button. You'll
find the ability to stop a transfer in progress is useful if the transfer
is taking too long for your liking. This might happen if the content of the
page is large or if the server computer is sluggish. Sometimes the page specified
by a link just isn't available. You'll usually get a message if a connection
was not made or a page not found. Examine the status field and progress bar
to receive feedback about the progress of a transfer.
An unfollowed link is a connection to a page that you have not yet viewed;
a followed link is one you have. Unfollowed and followed links are highlighted
in different colors. After you click on an unfollowed link, the link becomes
a followed link. If you go back to a page where you have clicked on a link,
you'll see that the link has changed from the unfollowed color to the followed
color. By default, unfollowed links are blue and followed links are purple.
You can either scroll up or click on this icon link to go back to the beginning
of the Navigation section.
Linking Via
Buttons and Pull-Down Menu Items
In addition to links in the content area, you can also access links using
Netscape buttons and pull-down menu items. Many of the links controlled by
buttons and menu items bring pages you have viewed at least once before. Button
links are particularly useful for going back and forth among recently viewed
pages.
Buttons - The Netscape toolbar offers these useful button links
among others:
- Back - Takes you backwards, one page at a time, to pages you've
displayed previously.
- Forward - Advances you, one page at a time, but is available
only after using the Back command or a history menu item.
- Home - connects you to the home page designated in your Options/Preferences.
You may designate any home page you want.
- Open - produces a dialog box that allows you to bring any page
whose URL you can supply.
You can either scroll up or click on this icon link to go back to the
beginning of the Navigation section.
Pull-Down Menu Items
- Menu items offer each of the links available through buttons plus
many more. The Netscape application keeps track of pages you have seen, lets
you create easy-access lists of favorite pages, and points you to pages with
current information about Netscape and the Internet. Choosing a menu item
that's the title of a page brings the page to screen.
- History items are under the Go menu and let you quickly retrieve
pages that you've recently viewed in your current session. To bring a page
to your screen, choose the title of the page. Try clicking on the Go menu
item now in order to see your history list for this session. Click anywhere
else on the screen in order to make the Go menu items go away.
- The Bookmark menu allows you to save the addresses of interesting
Web pages . You can add a bookmark for the page you are viewing by choosing
Bookmarks/Add Bookmark. You can see and use your list of bookmarks
by choosing Bookmarks/Go to Bookmarks. Once you add a bookmark to
your list, the title stays until you remove it. The permanence and accessibility
of bookmarks make them invaluable for personalizing your Internet access.
Because bookmarks play such an important role, the Netscape application offers
many options for creating bookmark lists. Basic options let you create and
use a list of bookmarks. More advanced options let you create hierarchical
menus that make it possible to organize your bookmarks into folders and manage
your bookmark list. These tools may differ depending on the
platform you are using. Try clicking on the Bookmark menu item now to see
if this Netscape already has a bookmark list.
- Items from the
Directory and Help menus bring pages with up-to-date information on Netscape
software and Internet exploration. The Directory/Internet menu item
takes you to a partial directory of Internet search engines that you can
use to find specific information or a particular page, either by searching
page titles, subject fields, document content, or other indexes and directories.
The Help/Handbook menu item serves as your online manual.
You can either scroll up or click on this icon link to go back to the beginning
of the Navigation section.
END OF NETSCAPE NAVIGATION
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HARD COPIES (Saving pages, Printing, Cutting and Pasting)
Netscape software gives you the opportunity to save a page as a file on your
computer. The File/Save As menu item produces a dialog box that lets
you save the current page as a source (HTML) file or a text file on your
computer. A file saved in HTML source format retains the HTML formatting of
the page and is useful if you want to use a Web page as a template for creating
a new Web page. A file saved in text format is presented as plain text. If
you plan to pull the file up into a word processing program to edit and print,
it should be saved as a plain text file.
To see this dialog box:
- Click on the File menu item
- Click on the Save As menu item
- Locate the part of the Save As dialog box where you can choose
the file type
- Click on the arrow to the right of that part to see the choice for
plain text
- Cancel out without saving anything
Many of the File and Edit menu items in the Netscape application
work as they do in other Windows applications. You can print the content area
of web pages, though you might need to adjust the size of the Netscape window
to have a page print the way you wish.
To print the contents of the current page:
- Choose the File menu item
- Optionally, you can choose Print Preview to see a screen display
of what will print. This is useful if you want to know how many pages will
be printing.
- To skip the print preview, choose the Print item and you will
get a Print dialog box where you select printing options and begin
printing
- Cancel out without printing anything
To cut, copy, and paste:
- Click and drag in order to highlight text in the content area of the
window
- Choose copy from the Edit menu
- Without closing Netscape, open Windows Notebook accessory or a word
processing program
- Choose Paste from the Edit menu in order to copy the
highlighted text from the Web page into the word processing document.
END OF HARD COPIES
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to go back to the beginning.
URL EXERCISES
The first part of a URL is the protocol, or the HOW of the connection:
- http:// - takes you to a Web page e.g.
http://www.aclin.org
- This is the most common protocol.
- ftp:// - takes you to a server that transfers files from a
remote computer to yours e.g. ftp://ftp.netscape.com
-This protocol is often used to get software from the Internet.
- telnet:// - uses a helper application to open a text window
and lets you log into a remote computer and use it as if you were standing
in front of it e.g. telnet://sparrow.scan.org
- This protocol is often used to access library catalogs.
- gopher:// - opens up a connection to a gopher server which
is a menu driven method of offering text information on the Internet e.g.
gopher://gopher.csn.net
- Many university sites continue to have resources on gopher servers and
have not converted to the Web format.
The second part, the host domain name, is the WHERE of the address:
- The host domain name also has parts and is made up of text and periods
e.g. www.aclin.org or sparrow.scan.org - Every accessible computer
on the Internet has one of these unique domain names.
There may be additional sections which comprise the directory path on the
host computer and lead to specific directories, sub-directories and files
separated by forward slashes e. g.
http://www.lexmark.com/data/quote.html
- In this example we would go to a Web page on the lexmark computer and then
to a directory named "data" and then to a file named "quote.html."
A list of useful sites for libraries follows without the http:// part of
the address. The newer versions of Netscape assume that you are entering a
URL to a web resource. Either use the Open toolbar button to open a
dialog box where you can type in the URL, or type the URL right into the
Location box (after deleting the URL of the current page that automatically
shows up there).
If you see an Internet resource that you would like to bookmark for future
reference, click on the menu item for Bookmarks/ Add Bookmark.
After going to any of the pages using the URL, you can return to this screen
by clicking on the Netscape Back button or by using the Netscape
GO menu's history list.
|
| USA Today |
www.usatoday.com/ |
| The White House |
www1.whitehouse.gov/ |
| Switchboard |
www.switchboard.com/ |
| Literary Prizes, Awards |
www.ccc.govt.nz/Library/Lit_Prizes/ |
| CARLweb |
www.carl.org/carlweb.html |
| Lando's Latino Links |
castle.cudenver.edu/~oarchibeque/latino.html |
END OF URL EXERCISES
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SEARCHING EXERCISES
Search engines are
software programs which collect thousands of Web pages. They each have a
built-in method of searching those sites using key or subject words. In addition
to searching for appropriate Web sites, the search engines display and make
accessible the Web sites with the desired subject information. Find and feel
comfortable using several search engines. The one you like best may not be
accessible at the time you need it and they all search differently and give
different results. Some popular search engines to try are:
Start with the simple search features of an easy-to-use search engine like
WebCrawler. A simple search involves typing in several keywords that describe
your topic. Most simple searches look for documents that contain one, some,
or all of the keywords, but will rank the highest those documents that contain
all of the keywords. Since the WebCrawler is a relatively small index of
popular Web pages that have been reviewed and selected, you will be able
to locate a few good sites if your topic is popular on the Internet. When
you link to the few good sites, you can look for alternative search terms
to use to refine your search.
A good, overall strategy is to learn three search engines well and to use
the advanced search features of all of them each time you search, always beginning
with a simple search on the WebCrawler or use one of the Meta search sites
like MetaCrawler
which searches more than one search engine at a time. For your other two
searches, try using fast, large, search engines that index the full-text of
Web pages and have advanced search capabilities. Two award-winning engines
that meet these requirements are AltaVista and InfoSeek.
It is a good idea to make yourself some printed cheat sheets that contain
the necessary information for each of the search engines that you use regularly.
You can divide the cheat sheets into three sections such as: What does it
search?; How does it search?; and How does it display results? You can gather
this information by reading the HELP files for each engine. Along with the
important details, include examples of how to truncate, how to indicate adjacency,
how to search phrases, now to nest Boolean search terms, how to limit searches,
etc. Many other people have done search engine comparisons that can be found
on the Web that are often in chart form. One good example was done by Candy
Schwartz and can be found at http://www.simmons.edu/~schwartz/mydtls.html
.
To practice a search, print out the following directions (if you don't
know how to print see this tutorial's section on Hard Copies
), click on the WebCrawler address in the above table, and follow the print
directions.
Suppose that you want information on straw bale house construction.
- If your cursor is not already in the blank search term box, click there
now.
- In the box type: straw bale house construction
- Click on the Search button to start the search.
- Scroll down to see your search results.
- At this point, if you want more than just the titles, you can click
on "Show summaries for these results."
- Without clicking on any links, browse through your first 25 hits.
- You should see several titles that look promising, like Straw Bale
Construction, and Resource Guide for Straw Bale Construction.
- Go ahead and link to one or both if these.
- End of search.
- Use the Netscape back button, or Netscape's history list under the
Go menu item, in order to get back to the tutorial.
END OF SEARCHING EXERCISES
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BOOKMARK EXERCISES
Bookmarks can easily become unmanageable. Netscape has a Sort feature under
Bookmarks/Go To Bookmarks/Item. It will sort bookmarks into alphabetical
order, but if you have a long list, merely alphabetizing does not help much.
Creating bookmark folders in Netscape makes it easy to group bookmarks by
subject. However, when you do this, you may find that your subject headings
are arbitrary and lack order. Try using the Dewey Decimal system that libraries
use! Here are some useful Dewey names for folders. The list is not complete,
but you can add to it from the Dewey Decimal summaries.
- Searching - keep this folder on top and use it to store the bookmarks
for search engines
- 005/Computer Software - use this for sites that have downloadable
software
- 020/Library
- 050/Serials
- 070/News
- 150/Psychology
- 320/Government
- 330/Economics
- 340/Law
- 370/Education
- 380/Commerce - use this for retail businesses on the WEB
- 400/Language
- 550/Earth Sciences - weather sites can go here
- 610/Medicine
- 630/Agriculture - gardening sites can go here
- 640/Home Economics - use this for recipes sites
- 750/Painting
- 780/Music
- 790/Recreation
- 800/Literature
- 910/Geography & Travel
- 920/Biography & Genealogy
- 970/History of North America
- (whenever you add a new bookmark, it goes to the end of the list until
you click and drag it to a folder)
To practice creating folders, print out the following directions (if you
don't know how to print see this tutorial's section on Hard
Copies
), and follow the directions. If you don't see what is described, you have
a different version of Netscape. Use your Netscape's Help menu item to find
out how to work with bookmarks in your version of Netscape.
To create a folder:
- Click on the menu item Bookmarks/Go To Bookmarks
- Place the cursor above where you want the folder name to appear
in the list of bookmarks.
- Click on the menu for Item/Insert Folder.
- You will get a dialog box where you can type in the name of the folder.
- Once you have a folder created, it is merely a matter of clicking
and dragging a bookmark into that folder.
To change the name of a folder you have already created:
- From within Bookmarks, click on the menu for Item/Properties
- Then make your changes in the dialog box.
Folders can either be collapsed (the contents don't show) or open (the individual
bookmarks all show). Double clicking on a folder collapses the folder if
it is open, or opens the folder if it is collapsed. The double click acts
like a toggle switch, alternating between the two choices. I tend to keep
my folders collapsed so that I can quickly go to the subject that I want
and open only that folder.
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END OF BOOKMARK EXERCISES
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Last revised May 2002