INTERNET BASICS

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 What is the Internet?
• A worldwide network of computers
• Allows access to send and receive
information almost instantly
• Combines the immediacy of broadcast with
the in-depth coverage of the newspaper
• Provides access to numerous reference
materials such as library collections,
museums, and research facilities

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 What’s a Web browser?
• Reads the HTML text and converts it into a page
you can read
• Finds, retrieves, views, and sends information
• Used to send/receive electronic mail
• Used to participate in newsgroups
• Used to look for text and graphics on the WWW
• Netscape and Internet Explorer are the two most
popular browsers; Opera is considered the fastest.
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 What’s a URL?
www
• Uniform Resource Locator
• Internet file address gotoltc.edu

• Consists of four parts:

• protocol
• domain/server name
• path
• file

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 Example of a URL
http://www.southwest.tec.wi.us/???????
http is the protocol
www.gotoltc.edu is the domain/server
is the director/path
is the document/file

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 What do the
domain/server names mean?
• .edu - educational • .net - for networks
institution • .mil - for military
• .com - commercial services
enterprise • .int - for organizations
• .org - nonprofit established by
organization international treaty
• .gov - government
organizations
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 What is HTML?
• HyperText Markup Language
• Programming language used to build web
sites
• Contains standard codes (tags) that
determine how a page will look
• Tags allow for the hyperlink connections
across the internet
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What’s on the Toolbar
• Back -moves backward through the pages
you’ve viewed, beginning with the most
recent
• Forward - moves forward through the
pages you’ve viewed using the Back button
• Stop - halts the process of the action being
performed (usually downloading a page)
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What’s on the Toolbar
• Refresh - updates any web page that has
been previously viewed and stored
• Home - returns you to the page that you
have designated as your Home Page
• Search - displays a choice of internet
search engines and a place to enter the key
words for your search

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 What’s on the Toolbar
• Favorites - displays a list of the sites that
you’ve saved as Favorites
• Print - prints the page you’re viewing
• Find - allows you search the page you’re
viewing for certain words/phrases

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What is a search engine?
• A service that indexes, organizes, rates, and
reviews web sites
• Different search engines work in different
ways
• Some rely on people to maintain a catalog of
web sites
• Some use software to identify key information
on sites
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Which type of
search engine is best?
People catalog sites Software catalogs sites
• looking for a broad, • looking for a rare, less
common topic common topic
• want to yield fewer • want to yield more
results results
• want to yield higher • Excite is a good
quality results example
• Yahoo! is a good
example
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General searching tips . . .
• Use more than one search engine
• Read the “About” page--many search
engines have detailed information pages
about how to get the best results
• Be specific with your searches (search on
golden retriever, not dogs)
• Get more results by being general

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 Ways to
refine your search . . .
• Exact phrase - enclose the phrase in quotation
marks
• Group parts of the search - enclose parts of the
search in parentheses
• Various forms of a word - add an asterisk to the end
of the word (good if a word might end in s, ing, or
ed)
• Use a + sign or the word and to search for two or
more words on the same page
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 Let’s try a search!
1. Select three search engines such as:
Excite
Yahoo
Google
2. Enter in two words you want to research
such as: food + habits
3. View the following three slides for the
results.
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 Results of Excite search
• Entered food + habits
• Received 3, 621, 420 results
• Offers a selection of related words to add to
your search
• Offers a link to booksellers for related
books
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 Google
Results of the Google Search
• Entered food + history
• Received 556,000 results
• Offers search tips
• Offers advanced search

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 Results of Yahoo! search
• Entered food + habits
• Received 483 results
• Offers a selection of related words to add to
your search
• Offers a means to search within the results
of the current search
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 How to spot the links
• Move the pointer over the page
• When the pointer changes to a hand, the
item is a link
• A link can be a picture, a three-dimensional
image, or colored text (usually underlined)
• Click on the link to go to another page
(inside or outside of the current site)
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 How to Bookmark a Web
page
• Go to the page you want to add
• On the favorites/bookmark menu, click Add
to Favorites/Bookmark
• Use the default name that is shown, or
rename the page (do whichever helps you
identify the site quickly and accurately)

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How to copy/paste
Word.lnk
text from web pages
• Highlight the text you want to copy by
clicking the left mouse button and moving
over the text
• Once text is highlighted, right click and
select Copy
• Go to word processing application such as
MS Word
• Right click, select Paste
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 How to copy graphics
from a web site
• Move the pointer over the graphic you want
to copy
• Right click on the mouse
• Select Copy
• Go to word processing or other application
• Right click, select Paste

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How to save graphics
from a web site
• Move the pointer over the graphic you want
to save
• Right click on the mouse
• Select Save Picture As
• Browse to the folder where you want to
save the file
• Click Save
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 How to create a desktop
shortcut to a web page Yahoo!.url

• Go to the page you want to add to your

desktop
• Right click on the mouse (position the
pointer over the text of the page, not over a
graphic)
• Select Create Shortcut

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