Science EdNet - How to use the tutorialTips for beginners to the InternetToolbar If you are very new to the Internet you might like to read through A Basic Guide to the Internet (http://library.albany.edu/internet/internet.html) and Understanding the World Wide Web (http://library.albany.edu/internet/www.html), which are both part of the University at Albany Libraries Internet Tutorials. ToolbarIn Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, the browser toolbar has a number of buttons that make browsing faster and easier. Back allows you return to pages you have viewed, beginning with the most recent. It also provides a drop-down list of recently visited sites. Forward allows you to move forward through pages you have already viewed. Stop stops the process of downloading a page from a website. Click this if you are having trouble downloading a page or if you don't want to wait. Refresh or Reload updates any web page you have stored in your cache and may help also if you are having trouble connecting to a link. Home returns you to your home page. This can be any web page you designate. Search displays a list of Internet search engines. Favorites or Bookmarks is a list of the sites you have saved. Click on the site address to return to that site. History displays a list of sites you have recently visited; they can be organised by categories such as date visited and most visited. Print prints the page you are viewing. In Windows, the taskbar at the bottom of the screen is useful for alerting you to how many windows you currently have open. If you click the Back button and remain on the same page, but you are not back to where you started, check the taskbar to see if you are in a different window. LinksEvery underlined and coloured expression, like A Basic Guide to the Internet or http://library.albany.edu/internet/internet.html, is a link (a 'hyperlink') to another Internet site or to another part of the same site. You know it is a link if your mouse pointer turns from an arrow into a hand when you move it over the highlighted text. Click once on the link and it will take you to a new page. Pictures or graphics can also be hyperlinks. Move your mouse over the page to check for links. Links will often change colour after you have visited them so that you know where you have been. Sizing buttonsWindows users Click on the Maximise button next to the Close button, to expand the window to fill the screen. The Maximise button turns into a Restore Window button which will return a maximised window to its original size. Clicking on the Minimise button will make the window disappear from the desktop. It doesn't disappear completely, it vanishes to the taskbar where clicking on it will restore the window. Clicking on the Close button will close down a pop-up window. Macintosh users (OS X) Zoom button: Click on the green button in the upper left corner of the window (which shows a plus sign when you move the cursor over it) to expand the window so all the contents are displayed. Click the button again to return the window to its original size. Minimise button: Click on the yellow button in the upper left corner of the window (which shows a minus sign when you move the cursor over it) to send the window to the Dock. To view the window again, click the Dock icon for the window that you minimised. Close button: Click on the red button in the upper left corner of the window (which shows an 'x' when you move the cursor over it) to close the window. Internet addressesWhen you see a string of characters starting with 'http://' (eg http://www.albany.edu/library/internet/internet.html), you are looking at a typical website address (also known as a URL - uniform resource locator). While clicking on the underlined links is the easiest way to get to another page, you can also type (or copy and paste) the address in the address bar at the top of your browser window. Be careful, because a single mistake (eg adding a space between letters) will mean the browser won't be able to find the site. If you are having trouble connecting to a link that contains lots of slashes, try cutting the URL back to its basics (eg http://www.albany.edu) to get to the home page of the site. From there you may be able to find the page you are looking for. It may simply have been moved to a different address. BookmarkingIf you find an interesting site you wish to return to later, add it to your Bookmarks (Netscape) or Favorites (Internet Explorer).
You can organise frequently used sites into folders, rename sites or delete them in Organise Favorites (IE) or Manage Bookmarks (Netscape). When you bookmark a website and add it to your list, the address stays there until you remove it or change lists. If you are not working on your own computer and wish to save bookmarks from a session, you can do this in Internet Explorer by going to the File menu and exporting the Favorites to a disk with Import/Export Wizard or Export Favorites. You can then import them to your computer. In Netscape, you need to go to Bookmarks then Manage Bookmarks and select the folders you would like to save. Go to the File menu in this window and then Export Bookmarks. Save the file to disk and then import to your computer. If you are constantly changing computers, try using a Web-based bookmark manager such as those listed at A Hotlist on Bookmark Managers (http://www.kn.sbc.com/wired/fil/pages/listbookmarkte.html). You can register with one of these services and access your bookmarks with any web browser. Internet terminologyThere is a glossary of Internet terms included in the tutorial, but if you are unclear about any other terms or want further explanation, have a look at the Glossary of Internet Terms by Matisse Enzer (http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html) or the Netdictionary (http://www.netdictionary.com/html/index.html).
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