How to Use the Internet

Outline

What is the Internet?

What is the World Wide Web and What Makes It Work?

What is Netscape and Internet Explorer?

Getting Connected to the Internet

What is the Internet?

The Internet is a network of networks, linking computers to computers sharing the TCP/IP protocols. Each runs software to provide or "serve" information and/or to access and view information. The Internet is the transport vehicle for the information stored in files or documents on another computer. It can be compared to an international communications utility servicing computers. It is sometimes compared to a giant international plumbing system. The Internet itself does not contain information. It is a slight misstatement to say a "document was found on the Internet." It would be more correct to say it was found through or using the Internet. What it was found in (or on) is one of the computers linked to the Internet.

Computers on the Internet may use one or all of the following Internet services:

* Electronic mail (e-mail). Permits you to send and receive mail. Provides access to discussion groups often called ListservsÐ'® after the software they operate under.

* Telnet or remote login. Permits your computer to log onto another computer and use it as if you were there.

* FTP or File Transfer Protocol. Allows your computer to rapidly retrieve complex files intact from a remote computer and view or save them on your computer.

* Gopher. An early, text-only method for accessing internet documents. Gopher has been almost entirely subsumed in the World Wide Web, but you may still find gopher documents linked to in web pages.

* The World Wide Web (WWW or "the Web"). The largest, fastest growing activity on the Internet.

What is the World Wide Web and what makes it work?

The WWW incorporates all of the Internet services above and much more. You can retrieve documents, view images, animation, and video, listen to sound files, speak and hear voice, and view programs that run on practically any software in the world, providing your computer has the hardware and software to do these things.

When you log onto the Internet using Netscape or Microsoft's Internet Explorer or some other browser, you are viewing documents on the World Wide Web. The current foundation on which the WWW functions is the programming language called HTML. It is HTML and other programming imbedded within HTML that make possible Hypertext. Hypertext is the ability to have web pages containing links, which are areas in a page or buttons or graphics on which you can click your mouse button to retrieve another document into your computer. This "clickability" using Hypertext links is the feature which is unique and revolutionary about the Web.

How do hypertext links work? Every document or file or site or movie or soundfile or anything you find on the Web has a unique URL (uniform resource locator) that identifies what computer the thing is on, where it is within that computer, and its specific file name. (More explanation on the structure of URLs.) Every Hypertext link on every web page in the world contains one of the URLs. When you click on a link of any kind on a Web page, you send a request to retrieve the unique document on some computer in the world that is uniquely identified by that URL. URLs are like addresses of web pages. A whole cluster of internationally accepted standards (such as TCP/IP and HTML) make possible this global information retrieval phenomenon that transcends all political and language boundaries.

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What is a Browser? What is Netscape and Internet