Section 2.1. Your First Web Page


2.1. Your First Web Page

Start up your computer, get on the Internet, and open up your Web browser program, like so:

  • If you're a Windows person, open your Start menu and click the name of your Web browser. Unless you've installed an alternative browser like Fire fox or Netscape, that probably means Internet Explorer because that's what comes with every version of Windows since the last century.

  • If you're a Macintosh maven, open your Applications folder and double click Safari, Apple's own Web-browsing software. If your Mac's really old, you may find the Mac version of Internet Explorer or Netscape on your computer instead ofor in addition toSafari.

  • If you use America Online or a similar service, open the software bearing its name; it has a Web browser built in.


Tip: Even though AOL offers a built-in browser, you don't have to use it. If you prefer Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or some other browser, try this: First connect to the Internet using the custom AOL software. Then, once you're on and you hear the cheery voice say "Welcome!", you can open up Internet Explorer, Firefox, or any browser you like to use on top of AOL's browser.

The first Web page you see is probably one chosen by Apple, Microsoft, AOL, or whoever provided your browser software. It doesn't matter, because you can easily jump to a new page or change your browser's startup page to be one of your own choosing (Section 2.3.3).

No matter what the Web page, you're bound to see some hyperlinks . Hyper-linksor links for shortare typically sprinkled throughout the text of a Web page as words or phrases that stand out against the regular text, because they're a different color , they're underlined , or both. Clicking a link immediately takes you to another Web page containing information about the words in the link you just clicked. Links are what make the Web the Web : They connect pages to other pages, weaving them all together over the Internet.

For example, on a movie review page, you may see the lead actor's name as a link. If you click it, your browser takes you to a page containing a biography of the actor and a list of previous film appearances . On portal sites like MSN (Section 2.2), just about every word on the page may be a link to something else. On news sites (Section 5.1) that display a list of headlines, the headlines themselves are usually hyperlinks that take you right to the page containing the text of the story.

Pictures (usually little ones), labeled buttons , bars, and icons can be links, too. Clicking one whisks you away to another page or section of the Web site. These graphics are basically tarted-up hyperlinks.


Tip: Clicking a photo on a Web page often gives you a larger version of the picture in a new browser windowor takes you to the page containing the story the photo accompanies .

2.1.1. Parts of a Web Browser

Now that you've got a Web page up on your screen, it's a good time to learn how to use the browser's buttons and menus to go where you want to go (and do what you want to do). Figure 2-1 shows a sample. Although the look and design may vary slightly, most Web browsers have similar controls.

Figure 2-1. A typical browser, Firefox for Windows in this case, is your dashboard for your Web travels . Type a URL into the address bar to beam your browser to a new site, or click any of the onscreen links to move to other pages within the site you're viewing. Buttons and toolbars at the top of the window also help you navigate and jump to new pages.

  • Title bar . This strip of text at the very top of the browser window tells you the name or title of the Web page you're looking at, like "BBC NEWS News Front Page" or "Slate Magazine." When you click the title bar, you can drag the browser window around on your screen if you want to move it.

  • Button bar . There's a row of buttons along the top that lets you do things like navigate through sites you're visiting, reload a fresh version of the present Web page (which is helpful, say, if you're stuck at work with no TV and are desperately checking the baseball game's score), print the current Web page, or see a list of all the sites you've recently visited. Typical buttons include Back, Forward, Stop, and Reload.

  • Address bar . Every Web page has its own address, which starts with http:// and is shown at the top of the browser.

    You can type a new Web page address into this box and then press Enter to go to a new Web page. A Web address is known by the nerds as a URL.

    And where do you get good Web addresses? From friends , articles, television, and so on. Look for http:// or www at the beginning of the address.

  • Quick Search box . To find specific information on the Web, you usually have to search for it, and a built-in search box lets you type in keywords right there, without having to stop and go to a search engine site (Section 3.1).

  • Links bar . Most browsers let you store quick links to your favorite sites right on the toolbar. It's also known as the bookmarks bar (Section 2.1.3.1).

  • Tabs . Modern browsers, including Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 7, offer a neat trick: tabbed browsing . This useful feature lets you keep several Web sites open on the screen simultaneouslynot in a hopeless mess of overlapping windows, but all in one window. File folder-like index tabs at the top of the window keep them straight.

With these basic features, your browser can take you all around the Web and back home again with a point, a click, and just a wee bit of typing.

UP TO SPEED
Power Users' Web: Tabs

You can't possibly imagine the feelings of power and indomitability that come from using tabbed browsing . If you have any aspirations whatsoever of becoming a power user , this feature's well worth exploring.

Tabbed browsing is a way to keep a bunch of Web pages open simultaneouslyin a single, neat window. Turning on tabbed browsing unlocks a whole raft of browser shortcuts and tricks.

For example, you can control when clicking a link takes you to that linked page in your current window and when it opens the linked page in a new tab . The secret: Press the Ctrl key ( on the Mac) when you want a new tab.

To close a tab, click its little X (close) button, or press Ctrl+W ( -W on the Mac).

You can also control whether a new tab appears in front of the other tabs you've opened or behind them. (Having new tabs appear in back is great when you're working your way down, say, a list of Google search results, and earmarking the most promising links this way for review later.)

The secret: In Internet Explorer, add the Alt key (that is, Ctrl+Alt+click a link) to open a new tab in front. In Safari, add the Shift key to open the tab in back (that is, Shift- -click a link). All browsers offer a Preferences or Options dialog box, too, that lets you set these preferences permanently, so you don't have to remember the keystrokes.


2.1.2. Moving to Another Page

Once you're done looking at your first Web page, it's time to move on to something more interesting. As described below, you have several ways of getting to your next page.

2.1.2.1. By address

Like houses in a city, every Web page has its own address so people can find it. As noted above, Web page addresses have their own official nerd name: Uniform Resource Locators , or URLs. You see URLs displayed on everything from the sides of soda cans to highway billboards. They're recognized as a shorthand way to say, "visit our Web site for more information."

To get to a Web page using its address:

  1. Open your Web browser program and click in the address bar (Section 2.1.1) .

    To save time and mousing energy, you may also want to learn the keyboard shortcut for highlighting the address bar. For example, in Internet Explorer and Firefox for Windows, it's Alt+D. In Safari for the Macintosh, it's -L.

  2. Type in the URL .

    That http://www.missingmanuals.com sure is a good one!


    Tip: Most browsers can save you typing by filling in the http://www . and the .com parts for you. You can get to sites by just typing in the domain name, like cnn or yahoo . (In Internet Explorer, you get this effect by pressing Ctrl+Enter, rather than the Enter key alone, after entering the address.) In fact, this book generally leaves off the http:// part in many of the Web sites listed, just because it's a given.
    UP TO SPEED
    URL Breakdown

    A standard Web address, like http://www.dilbert.com, is composed of distinct parts. Over time, you'll come to recognize them and cherish them as friends.

    The first part of an address, for example, is http:// . That HTTP business stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol , which is a sort of computer language (a Web standard) that describes to your Web browser how a page is supposed to look.

    The www section of the address stands for World Wide Web. It used to be a very common part of a URL because it let you know you were going to a Web site, but many sites don't even use it anymore. In fact, you can see URLs like http://images.google.com that go to a specific part of a site.

    The last part of the address, dilbert.com , is the domain name (the overarching site name, often the company's name), which the Web site's owner must register with a company (called a "registrar") that's certified to catalog Web site domain names and add new ones to a centralized Internet database.


  3. Press the Enter or Return key on the keyboard .

    Your Web browser should pause a minute as it redirects itself to the new address and then unfurls the new page in your browser window.


Tip: You can also cut and paste URLs into your browser's window to save yourself some typing.
2.1.2.2. By link

As mentioned in Section 2.1.1, Web pages are usually full of links, either in the form of colored (usually blue), underlined words in a page's text, or clickable buttons, bars, and icons on the page. Headlines in bold or photographs also usually take you to a new page.

2.1.2.3. By button

Those Back and Forward browser buttons mentioned in Section 2.1.1 can also take you around the Web. Click the Back button to cycle back page by page from all the sites you previously viewed , and click the Forward button to go the other way. You need to have done a bit of surfing already for these buttons to workyour browser needs pages to go back or forward to and neither button works on your first page of the day because you haven't been to any other pages yet.


Tip: Keyboard shortcut nuts should note that you can "click" the back button by pressing the Backspace (Delete) key in most browsers. Add the Shift key to go forward again.
2.1.2.4. By history

Web browsers can remember a list of the sites you've recently visited in the past few days in a place called the browser history , and it's often sorted by the day you visited the page. Click the site or page name in the history file to return to that page. Different browsers put the history menu or button in different places, so you may have to look around for it (see Section 2.3.4.2 for tips on how to add it as a button). In Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, it's a small dropdown menu triangle by the Forward button. Safari has its own History menu, and in Firefox, the history list is in the Go menu.


Tip: On most Web browsers for Windows, you can call up your history file by pressing Ctrl+H on the keyboard. Press -Shift-H to get your History with Firefox for the Mac.

2.1.3. Bookmarks: Getting Back to Where You've Been

The history list can get you back to sites you previously visited, but it remembers only the last few dozen sites.

When you find a Web page you might like to visit again, a better way to bookmark it for future visiting is, well, to bookmark it . Thereafter, the next time you want to visit that page, you're spared having to remember http://www.hothollywoodhairstyles.com or whatever; you can just choose the page's name from your Bookmarks or Favorites menu (Figure 2-2).

Figure 2-2. Consulting your Bookmarks or Favorites menu lets you select a Web site from the list and pop over there without having to type or remember the site's address, which can conserve valuable brain cells for other information.

2.1.3.1. Adding bookmarks

To bookmark a page or site that's currently up on your computer screen, go to the Bookmarks or Favorites menu and choose the relevant command: "Add Bookmark," "Add Page to Favorites," "Bookmark this page," or whatever. Most Windows browsers also let you right-click on a page and choose the add bookmark command from the shortcut menu; in Internet Explorer 7, you can just click the big yellow plus sign (+) at the top of the browser window.

Once you start saving a lot of bookmarks, though, the list can get as unwieldy as an old overstuffed paper address book with Post-Its and business cards constantly slipping out. If you want some tips for tidying up and organizing your Bookmarks/Favorites list, stroll over to Section 2.3.4.3.




The Internet. The Missing Manual
iPhone: The Missing Manual, 4th Edition
ISBN: 1449393659
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 147
Authors: David Pogue

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