Understanding the Web

Before you can surf the Web, you need to understand a little bit about how it works.

Information on the World Wide Web is presented in pages. A Web page is similar to a page in a book, made up of text and graphics. A Web page differs from a book page, however, in that it can include other elements, such as audio and video, and links to other Web pages.

It's this linking to other Web pages that makes the Web such a dynamic way to present information. A link on a Web page can point to another Web page on the same site or to another site. Most links are included as part of a Web page's text and are called hypertext links. (If a link is part of a graphic, it's called a graphic link.) Links are usually in a different color from the rest of the text and often are underlined; when you click a link, you're taken directly to the linked page.

Web pages reside at a Web site. A Web site is nothing more than a collection of Web pages (each in its own individual computer file) residing on a host computer. The host computer is connected full-time to the Internet so that you can access the site and its Web pages anytime you access the Internet. The main page at a Web site usually is called a home page, and it often serves as an opening screen that provides a brief overview and menu of everything you can find at that site. The address of a Web page is called a URL, which stands for uniform resource locator. Most URLs start with http://, add a www., continue with the name of the site, and end with a .com.

tip

You can normally leave off the http:// when you enter an address into your Web browser.

You can use any Web browser to surf the Web the instructions here work equally as well with Netscape or MSN Explorer, or the browser built into America Online.