The Internet on a Budget - Part 4

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Surfing the Internet:

* The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is one of the most popular ways of getting information
on-line because of it's "multimedia" (text, images, sound and animation)
aspects. Since the Web's graphic interface was developed in 1993 the Web
has become everyone's idea of what the "Information Superhighway" is.

 - One fundamental concept of the Web is hyper links.

The ability to jump to another page of information by clicking on a "link"
keyword is what hyper links are about. Links on this page will be a
different color than the rest of the text and should be underlined. There
are now tens of thousands of web sites on-line with millions of pages of
information world-wide.

 - The "browser" is your doorway to the Web.

What your browser looks like, the features it has, and how you use it
depends on your computer's operating system and the browser you use. All
browsers allow you to navigate the Web by either pointing and clicking
with your mouse on hyper links or using the keyboard to navigate. There
are text-only browsers that allow almost any platform to use the Web,
although they'll miss the multimedia parts of the Web. Most people will
use a graphical browser to gain the full effect of the Web.

With so much information on the Web, finding what you want could be a
problem. Fortunately, most browsers come setup with a "Start Page" and a
"Search Page" just a click away to help you get there. These pages give
you an idea of what's out there and allows you to search for the
information you want in most of the popular search engines. Even so, there
is no ultimate search tool for the Web, though Yahoo
( URL:http://www.yahoo.com ) comes close and you'll eventually learn which
engine gets the kind and type of information you want by using them all.

Most browsers have a "bookmark" feature that allows you to place URLs of
pages you've found interesting in a structured set of folders and links
just a click away -- your personal index of Web sites. You can also create
a custom start page with the information you most frequently need either
on your browsers home page or on one of the search engines home page.

If the Web wasn't enough for you there are also personal communications
tools to get you in touch with everyone else on the Internet such as
E-Mail, IRC, and News.


* The Power of E-Mail, Conferencing & Support Groups

There are three major ways of communicating with other people on the
Internet, E-Mail, NEWS, and IRC. E-Mail is universally the Internet
service most people are most familiar with. It's basically the Internet
equivalent of regular "snail" mail from the post office. Most modern
browsers include an e-mail client and make it relatively easy to use
e-mail from them. To find someone's e-mail address look them up on the Web
using one of the popular white pages directory services like Four11
( URL:http://www.four11.com )

Usenet Newsgroups (also called "NEWS") are places in Cyberspace where you
can join in thousands of bulletin board type discussions on any topic
imaginable. Any Server on the Internet can host a Newsgroup There is no
central Usenet authority. Each news server can decide which newsgroups it
will carry and which, if any, it will host. No topic is off limits here
and you may want to limit your child's access to newsgroups though one of
the blocking services.

With the advent of modern browsers for the Web, you no longer need a
separate application to "read" newsgroup articles -- it's built-in
already. The trick is in finding the newsgroups that interest you. Ask
your ISP about the list of newsgroups it carries and remember that no one
carries them all. Understanding the "code" of newsgroups titles is
important to finding what you want so you might want to join
URL:news:news.announce.newusers and URL:news:news.newusers.questions first
and then read the "FAQs" (Frequently Asked Questions) in
URL:news:news.answers to learn more about newsgroups.

Another service, "IRC" (Internet Relay Chat) is a live version of Usenet,
like talking on a party-line telephone. There are a number of "channels"
that come and go as created by the participants. A channel remains in use
as long as at least one user is joined to it and the first person to
create that channel is its "Operator" and controls that channel. This is
another service requiring careful supervision if used by children due to
the inherent anarchy of IRC.

You can find lists of publicly accessible IRC servers and clients and
additional information on IRC in the URL:news:alt.irc hierarchy newsgroups
or on the web at
URL:http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Chat/IRC/ .


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Prepared by Peter Conrad Cumminsky, consultant, ASEE, CET, Team OS/2
(707) 987-9484
Visit my Computer Taming web site at
URL:http://www.angelfire.com/biz/taming/


(C) Copyright 1993-1998 [email protected]

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