by Orlando C. Fernando
revision 2; June 18, 1998
The purpose of this guide is to help out the many newcomers to accessing the Web and understanding the behavior as different screens appear on your computer. Although Netscape program will be often used as an example, similar explained behavior should result in other Web programs as well, including Internet Explorer, the AOL web browser, WebSurfer, and Mosaic.
This guide assumes you have a modest knowledge of using a computer's mouse and the concept of clicking to run an icon-starting program or choose an option. Knowledge of Microsoft packages and DOS is not necessary.
The World Wide Web (WWW for short) is the INTERNET (or INTRANET) application of electronic network hyperlinked pages which are accessed from different users across the network. It can be INTRANET-oriented if the information can only be accessed by a limited system of users, such as on a internal local area network (LAN) of an organization. Otherwise, it can be INTERNET-oriented of the information can be accessed by most users around the world. The information can be text, pictures, animation, sound, and/or user-interactive (such as filling out a survey or even playing a tic-tac-toe game!). Whatever the information, it is contained in several "largesheets" of data called pages, with the introductory page called the home page. The home page and all its accompanying pages form a web site. Note that a home page is also used to mean the first page that pops up when you start your web browser (refer to section 1.2).
This "web" terminology stems from the fact that there is no set organization of how these hyperlinked pages are organized. Choosing an option from one page can send you to a second page, but that second page may not necessarily have an option to return to the first. If you made a flowchart of many typical Web page connection layouts these days, it would form a complicated field of connect-the-dot lines that can overlap each other and intertwine, like a spider's web. And like a spider, the web page author (or web developer as a more common term), can add more web options leading to new pages whenever he/she wants.
It's a common misunderstanding to equivocate the WWW with the INTERNET. The WWW is simply one means of accessing a part or function of the INTERNET. Other means, such as file transfer protocol (FTP), telnet, and e-mail are other tools of the INTERNET. (You can, however, use the WWW to ftp, telnet, and e-mail which makes the definition even more complicated!) From a purist view, the INTERNET is really the entire physical network all around the world.
Well, if you got this guide from the WWW, you already know! You access the web through a web browser, assuming your PC already has a network connection (usually via phone lines, cable modem, or Ethernet) and some network interface (such as a modem or RJ-45 (spelling?) Ethernet wire). The browser works a lot like an old ViewMaster toy which you may have had as a kid. A ViewMaster lets you look at different cartoon slide reels by putting a reel in the ViewMaster and pushing a lever to view each slide. In quite the same way, a browser lets you input a web page address called the URL,then once you get the page, you can click on certain options on the page to view further pages or information. The most popular browser software nowadays are Netscape (by Netscape Communications Corporation) and Internet Explorer (by Microsoft). Such browsers are available on IBM-compatibles, Macintoshes, and Sun workstation computers. Another PC browser is Mosaic (by NTSC), one of the first successful browsers of the early 90's whose developers moved out of the company to form Netscape Communications Corp. and Netscape. Yet another browser is WebSurfer (by NetManage, Inc.). Lynx is a low memory UNIX system browser that only displays the textual contents of web pages.
To access a certain web site on your browser, you need to know that site's URL address. Normally it begins with "http://..."and continues on with an obscene trail of words, slashes, periods,and more colons. There is an entry line in your browser to typein your desired site, then hit ENTER. In a matter of seconds,you'll be greeted with one of the many joyful pages on the Web!
The WWW contains several search engines, which are actually web pages themselves. Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, InfoSeek, and Alta Vista are among the most popular. By going to one of these web sites, theyprovide you with a search form to type in a topic of your choice then click on a search button to display all the resulting web page titles it found. They work much like today's libraryelectronic search catalogues. They display their page titles from"best guess" to worse. As an added convenience, you can click directly on any of the found titles to go directly to that page.
How do search engines DEAL with so many web pages? They use web spiders (I kid you not) which search various regions of the INTERNET for live pages and indexes them based on frequent keywords used on their page. Web page developers can even submit their pages for a particular search engine which significantly increases the likelihood that they'll get indexed right and you'll see their entries in a search. Yahoo and InfoSeek are especially good search engines because of how nicely organized they present their results, showing the topics and usually even a quick summary of the page's contents.
You can save the spot on your currently viewed page by saving its URL address in a personal list, known commonly as a bookmark, hotlist item, or favorite. The lingo depends on what browser you're using. A top menu option on your browser should allow you to add your bookmark while there's another option to view it again from your accumulated bookmark list. (You can also delete and rearrange bookmarks into nice and neat folders.) Note that you are only saving your place, not the actual page itself, on your PC. You can come back to a familiar bookmark spot after viewing other pages, or on the 20th time you get on your PC. The bookmarks are saved on file. Web pages change, shift, and/or die over time, so your bookmarks may not always keep current over time. That's why it's sometimes better to save the home page of your place rather than the specific page you were reading within the site. Home pages (usually the www.SOMETHING OR OTHER.com sounding URL), especially commercial ones, tend to stick around for a long time. Most likely the page text will appear before the pictures due to the complexity of what needs to be downloaded (delivered from the network to your computer's memory). And when the pictures download, they may appear fuzzy at first then clear up, appear from top to bottom, or not appear at all until the picture is fully loaded. Additionally, some pages may not be displayed atall until all its data elements are fully loaded! Most browsers today will present to you downloading information live on the bottom of your screen to tell you what's going on. Usually some message like "Loading 10% of 23K" will appear, indicating that it's loaded a certain percentage of information that's so many kilobytes (KB or K for short) of data.
The Stop function also comes in handy sometimes to stop an animation from fully loading or a sound selection to complete. A few of these things can get quite long and annoying!
The author usually presents some sort of tables of contents-like list of options after the title to choose from. When your mouse arrow points to an option, link information is usually presented at the bottom of the screen indicating the page location that choosing this option will send you to. By clicking on one of these options (just single click, not double-click), you can access another bit of information either on the same page, another page, or even another site. Usually you're icon will change as you hover over clickable options (like a pointing finger). By the way, you don't have to wait for a page to fully load before picking an option if it's clearly (or even partially) visible to you!
Most often these words are clickable options which are hypertext links to go to other information, usually another web page or another spot in the current page. The way such options get implemented depend on how the author designed it. Notice also, that if you revisit an option you already chosen, it will turn yet another color to indicate you chose it before. You can choose it as often as you like.
It depends on the author's design. Some authors may even allow you to click on a picture to see a full screen version of the picture or to copy it to your hard drive for personal use (respecting copyright laws, of course!). Some clicked pictures may even give you a full animation and/or sound. Again, it varies according to the author's intent.
In Netscape's 2.0 version (or higher number) of the software, usually called "Netscape Navigator," you can even right-clickon a picture to download the picture among other choices, regardless of author's intent. You can find out your software's version number by choosing Help from the top menu then choosing Aboutfrom its pop-up menu. (for more on downloading stuff, refer to section 2.6 and section 2.7.)
Some pictures are more than pictures. Actually, they're called imagemaps, pictures that allow you go choose various options by clicking on a certain spot or region in the picture. If not explained by the author, imagemaps are recognizable by looking like various colorful objects in one picture with an option phrase in each object. It's kind of a cross between Sesame Street and Family Feud boards. When you hover your mouse around the picture,the x-y coordinates at the bottom of your screen will probably go like crazy. Similar to plain pictures, you click on the desired region to choose the appropriate option.
Some options on the page, especially commercial web sites, allow you to save some files from their web page straight to your local PC for free. They might be shareware, freeware, software patches, pictures, or just about any other type of PC file you can imagine! Once you click the option, you'll get a browser question on if and how you want to save the file. After you decide, you'll get a thermometer-looking display telling you live how far along the download period is coming. Once this display starts, feel free to browse other pages if you wish (you DON'T have to stay on the option page anymore, but you DO need to keep your browser open and connected to the modem/network).
You may have some application helper programs already set-up on your browser so that when certain types of files are downloaded (such as a Word file or an Excel spreadsheet), your browser will automatically launch a new program (such as Word or Excel) on top of your browser to see it. You can set up your Preferences to enable more application helpers than what's originally set up, such as to deal with .zip files, Adobe Acrobat files, or Visio files. Those specifics are beyond the scope of this guide.
A nice feature of Internet Explorer is that for most Microsoft-oriented application helpers (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), it is capable of showing your stuff right in the browser without launching anything else. It's part of their efforts (for better or for worse) to have all their proprietary Microsoft products easily work together. That assumes, of course, that you bought those other applications in the first place!
If, unfortunately, the author didn't provide you with a back function on his page, there's still hope. Yes, by choosing the back function on the top menu of your browser, which is usually depicted by a left arrow icon, you can usually backtrack (granted the computer has a page in its memory to go back to). If you're only on the first page in your browser, however, you can't, appropriately, go back. Be careful that you know you're intent of where you're going back to, for it can get confusing if you've gone back and forth choosing options on various web pages.
Netscape, Mosaic, and Internet Explorer also provide a Go top menu function to go back to many points in the history of your web "travels".
You'll often find that some pages you went to in the past will come up quickly if you re-access it be retyping its URL address or even when going back to it another day. That's because when the computer loads the page(s) for the first time, it is stored in a cache, or temporary memory in your hard drive. This cache idea was created just for this purpose, to not have to make you wait for the classics. However, after visiting a lot of different pages, the cache capacity will eventually get used up and be forced to delete or "forget" the older pages to put in the new ones.
There is also a remote possibility of cache working against you. When you revisit a page that you know got updated with new information, you'll find the old version still being displayed. Let's just say the cache remembered too well! Netscape so far seems the only browser I've encountered with this problem. You could simply use Refresh or Reload button to get the newest version of the page. However after long term use (weeks or months), you can and should remedy this by clearing the disk and/or memory caches via the top menu options. For you browser experts, you can go to the menus to adjust preferences as to the maximum capacity the disk and memory caches can fill up (having high cache capacities may be great to keep a lot of page memories, but remember you got your hard drive space to think about!).
This is now a growing popular term in WWWese to mean that the author is currently making some major cosmetic or functional improvements to the page(s). During that time, he/she may have a partially presentable but ugly temporary page (kind of like watching stag baseball during the old baseball strike) or just have a simple"sorry" note and go no further. Several authors now use a road construction sign picture on their page to indicate this.
Be wary that just because you find a juicy web page link through a search engine, doesn't guarantee that it will work when you click on it. I'd say this occurs 30-40% of the time. It's usually because the web author had either stopped supporting the page or had moved the page to another server location and failed to update the search engine of its change. A few search engines will even periodically check to see if any pages no longer exist and automatically delete the entry from the index altogether.
What's even spookier is that you may find two entries that look exactly the same, but one works while the other doesn't. This goes back to the same aforementioned reason. If you look carefully, you'll find that two entries point to different URL's. The dead one, of course, being most likely to be the deceased one.
It's possible that the network can't communicate right with your browser. You need to make sure that your proxies on your browser are set up correctly with the right addresses and network ports. Setting up proxies is usually a top menu option. There should be options to set proxies for handling the various types of URL's, such as for normal addresses (http://), ftp, telnet,etc. and how to handle things if no proxy is available. Check with your local network provider on what proxies to set.
Actually, the notion that you can't load any pages may not be completely the case. It just may be those on the network. If you have web pages residing right on your hard drive or on floppy disk, you'll still be able to access those pages if you open them locally, usually by choosing the File Option fromthe top menu of your browser. So in the meantime of fixing your network problem, you may enjoy some limited access locally.
Usually most browsers are fairly decent at explaining the reason for that error. Usually, a short screen is presented (which is even a temporary web page itself!) indicating why the URL wasn't found. It usually has a "401" number connected with it or some other nebulous error code. Aside from typographical mistakes when you entered the URL, it's also possible that the web site no longer exists. The web site may be gone forever or it had "moved" to a new URL address. Some authors are even nice enough to save you from this error and show a page saying that they moved their site, give you the new address, and even click on it to get to the new site. For you bookmarkers, make sure that after successfully getting to the new site to delete the old site and save the new spot.
This is thankfully a better error than the first (which I guess really makes that a worst error? ;). There are simply lots ofother PC users trying to access the site other than yourself.Be patient and try reloading again and again.
A not-so-nice error. A web site actually runs on a physical network web server. It is customary for a company with many websites for product announcements, internal job openings, and the latest executive golf scores to reside on one or few web servers. If a server is down, all corresponding web page files on that server is also down, meaning that nobody can access it until the server is fixed. You'll just have to twiddle your thumbs.
Incidentally, the manager of a web server is often called thewebmaster (no, not "spiderman" as you clever ones may have guessed ;).
Often it means you're trying to download a certain type of information that your computer never saw before and doesn't know how to handle, like eating sushi for the first time! Your computer's "stomach"needs to be told how to handle showing this new type. Often you'll get the choice of (1) selecting a computer viewer, or helper application software, to check the info out and use it to see this type of info from now on, (2) just downloading the bit of information to your local PC so you can worry about seeing it some other timeor (3) not bothering with it at all. Selecting (1) assumes that you have an appropriate viewer to begin with. If not, you'll have to get it from a friend or, believe it or not, off the web! Note also that, even with viewers, you still may not be able to check out the information if you're missing a critical file or hardware piece on your PC setup itself such as certain .dll files and a sound card to hear a sound bit. To get more technical, you can also pre-set certain browser preferences to have certain types of info always be handled by certain viewers based on the extension of your file (for e.g., setting up a graphical viewer to always display web page's .gif picture files). (for more on downloading stuff, refer to section 2.6 and section 2.7.)
You may also require certain add-ons, or plug-in's to show certain info. It could be information requiring Java or JavaScript programming language capabilities or special animation capabilities such as Shockwave or Vivo Player.
No explanations? Make sure. Look at the bottom of your screen to see any loading information and watch if the numbers go up. If something is loading at only a few bytes per second (like less than 100b), especially from a model dial-in on an IBM 486 computer(non-Pentium), it's going to be a wait. Wait even more if you're running many other programs at the same time (like a Spreadsheet program, a word processing program, and two other network-oriented programs for e.g.). If you can end those other programs, it may help. Another option may be, if you don't care for the graphics, to load the page without images (most browsers will have a top menu option to do that). Some web pages may also give you an option to load a text-only version of their pages of information. Recall that text loads faster than pictures (refer to section 2.1.)
Finally, for IBMers, if you can't even select any top menu options or move the mouse while you wait, your Windows environment ran out of thinking memory. In other words, it crashed, and you'll need to turn off your PC and restart your computer to remedy.
There are also various errors attributable to the web developer. The author can make a faulty option on the web page. An imagemap may be dysfunctional. Some authors, though, choose to make certain options in a list non-chooseable (you can tell for it won't be in a different color than the normal text) because he/sheis either working on the link, or the option is no longer available for an indefinite period of time.
It's not an error on your part, but the intention (or sometimes mistake) of the web developer. The author may be trying to study your web browsing habits on his/her sight and is taking stats on you. So you receive cookies, that do this very function, and boy they're not always yummy! If you keep getting a little pop-up Window reminder from a site to buy a product, you encountered a cookie! Like bad leftovers, these cookie files will stay on your PC and take up space. Most browsers can be set up to always ask your permission to get a cookie. Newer version browsers will also allow you to automatically reject them. Otherwise, the immediate thing you can do is simply close all the extra windows.
Again, it's not an error on your part, but the intention (or often times the mistake) of the web developer. The author is guilty here of using a popular web development feature called frames, a method of dividing up your browser display into smaller "boxes" to display information or provide you with an organized topbar or sidebar list of options. If not careful, the author could link you to another person's home page without closing his/her frames first. The result? Having their page pop up in his last used "box". If this other author used frames also and made a faulty link as well, the next author's pages could fall into an even smaller box. The end result could get messy. The best remedy is to go to a home page (like your very first one) that doesn't use frames at all, then go back to that linked author's page. Of course, a lecture to the author on using frames can't hurt as well!
Web pages are generated in a simple hypertext markup language called, in short, HTML. The language uses special codes enclosed in <>'s called tags, to indicate various commands, such as underlining a sentence, putting bullets in along list of options, or display a little icon or picture next to a phrase. To do more advanced pages including live animation and music, HTML code may include a section to run Javacode, a new C-like development language from Sun Corporation. Specific features & commands of HTML and Java are beyond the scope of this guide.
It's from one of several web programming techniques. CGI, PERL, and UNIX shell programming scripts are the most popular means to generate such web server statistics. This may be possible through other low-level languages like C and Java. Specific features & commands of CGI, PERL, and C are beyond the scope of this guide.
Copyright 1998 by Orlando C. Fernando. This page is for personal use only. It may be openly distributed for non-profit in wholeor part, but authorship must be credited.
1.2: How can I access the Web?
1.3: How can I see someone's Web pages?
1.4: How can I find some Web pages based on a topic?
1.5: How can I save my place on a page to come back another time?
Section 2: Basic Features on Web Pages
2.1: Why do some things come up on the screen before others?
2.2: This web page is taking hours to load!
In some cases, the information coming up on screen can be in megabytes of information in which you may have to wait a while! People using modems will wait longer than those on cable modems or direct Ethernet to get their full page displayed. If you're sick of waiting forever, you can always choose a Stop function on your browser to just give you what its loaded so far. (Any non-text not yet loaded will show weird symbols in its place to indicate they weren't gotten.)
2.3: How do I get to use different options on the page?
2.4: Why are there certain words in odd coloring?
2.5: Can I click on pictures to gain more information?
2.6: Hey, this option lets me get (download) stuff!
2.7: I click this option, then suddenly another program shows up and I get my stuff!
Section 3: Troubleshooting / Strange Happenings
3.1: I'm on a page in which I can't go back. Or can I?
3.2: How come some revisited pages come up faster than others?
3.3: What does it mean when a page is "under construction"?
3.4: I found a web page through a search engine, but says the web page isn't found!
3.5: I can't get any pages to load whatsoever!
3.6: When accessing a page, I get an error that a URL was not found.
3.7: When accessing a page, I get an error that the site is busy.
3.8: When accessing a page, I get an error that the site is down.
3.9: When using an option, I get an error that I'm missing some tool.
3.10: I simply wait forever for a page to appear. No explanations why!
3.11: Can web developers cause some general errors?
3.12: Why do I keep getting more and more browser windows appearing as I surf more and more?
3.13: Why do I keep getting my newer and newer web pages in smaller and smaller boxes in my browser?
Section 4: Advanced Web Techniques
4.1: How do authors make these pages?
4.2: How in the world can they tell me I'm the 19th person to see the page?
