Introduction to the Internet: Getting Started Step 3

Information Gathering on the Internet

World Wide Web (WWW)

The World Wide Web is a user-friendly navigation system for finding information on the Internet through the use of hypertext and hypermedia linking.

When you go on the Internet, you may have a specific destination in mind, or you may wish to browse through the Web, the way you would browse through a library or a catalog, looking for topics or things that interest you. This browsing is often called "surfing the Net" or "cruising the Superhighway."

There are several ways to get around on the Web:   Using Web addresses To get to a special destination, you can type in an Internet address in the space provided on the web browser. Web addresses are called universal resource locators (URLs) and begin with http://, which stands for hypertext transfer protocol. After you type in the web address, it may take awhile for the site's home page to appear on the screen, especially if it includes many pictures. The home page is like the table of contents in a book and once it appears, you'll probably see several choices you can click your mouse on to take you further into the site. (If you type in an address incorrectly, or if too many people are trying to use a site at once, you'll get an error message on your computer screen. Just try again.)  Baltimore County Public Library's home page is an excellent example of a site that leads to a wealth of valuable information.   Following links Many sites include hypertext links to other sites with related content. When you click on one of these highlighted areas, your computer will connect to another web site without you having to know or type its address. Return to BCPL's home page and click on some links that interest you.   Using search engines Search engines are indexes to the Internet. They enable you to search the Internet by keywords or topics when you don't know a specific address. Detailed information about using search engines will be offered in future PIE sessions.

Saving Information from the Internet

The two most common ways to save information that you find on the Internet are printing a web page and copying and pasting text to a text editor or word processor.

Print a web page: Open the web page that you want to print. Click Print on the toolbar (with Netscape) or go to File, pull down to Print, and click OK to send the page to the printer (with Internet Explorer or with Netscape). The printed page should resemble the image of the web page (including graphics). The quality of the printout depends on the quality of your printer.

Copy and paste text to a text editor or word processor: Highlight the desired text. With Netscape, click Copy on the Edit menu. Open a text editor such as Notepad, WordPad, or a word processor, such as Microsoft Word. Click on the page where you are going to place the text and click Paste from the Edit menu in the application that you are using. With Internet Explorer, click Ctrl+A to select the text on the web page (this copies the text to the clipboard). Open the location where you want to copy the text (for example, Microsoft Word or WordPerfect). Press CTRL+V to copy the text to the new location.

There are other ways to save information but which will not be dealt with here: Saving a web page to disk or the hard drive Downloading files Saving a web page without images Mailing a web page

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