Web-Browser Basics

Getting around inside a Web page.

• When you are reading a page, like this one, you can only see the part that fits into the browser's viewing area. To move up or down in a longer "page," use the slide control (or "scroll bar") that you see along the left-hand margin of your browser window. Put the cursor on the small rectangular button and drag it up and down to bring into view the portion of the page you want to look at. Try this now.

  Skip forward to the Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

What this introduction does (and doesn't) do.

• There are many fine Web Browsers available - Netscape Navigator, Mosaic, Microsoft Explorer, and a host of others. All of them provide easy and intuitive ways to do the things I'll describe here. I will limit myself to describing how to do things using Netscape Navigator Version 3.0, since that is the browser KSU Computer and Network Services has installed on our campus network, and makes available in its free CNS Toolkit for students who want to connect with the Web through the KSU system from their home computer. (MicroSoft provides an excellent Internet Tutorial geared to the layout and terminology of the MicroSoft Explorer -- something that Navigator novices would find well worth their while, too, since of course it covers internet basics that are not browser-specific.)  Moreover, what I say here will apply most directly to work done in one or another of the campus public computer labs.  From time to time, I'll mention procedures available to those of you who are set up to work from your own computer through a modem (or, if you're in a residence hall, through the "ethernet connection" available to you there).  Folks who aren't set up for working from home but would like to do so will find a couple of leads at the end of this memo.

  Very soon you will learn to do many more things with your Web Browser than the bare minimum described here. But let's get started with the absolute basics. For the first couple of days you need know only how to get around within and between Web pages. After a couple of days you should make yourself able to print a Web page that is in your browser screen. When you feel comfortable doing these things, you can experiment with using various search tools to discover documents on the Web of interest to you. You can leave the stuff on bookmarks and saving files until you find you are interested in trying it out.

  You can work through the document with the scroll bar. (Click here if you need to review how to do this). But if you want to jump forward to a particular topic, use the following menu. Just click in the highlighted area of the item you want to pursue.

  • Take a tour of the full browser window .

• • Find out what the Web is (in brief!)

• • Learn how to

• • • move around in the Web and how to get back to where you came from .

• • • quit a browser session and return to your desktop (at home or office) or to Windows (in a campus public lab).

• • • print a Web document .

• • • use bookmarks to store addresses of Web documents you want to get back to in the future. (You can also save & use other people's bookmark files .)

• • • save a Web document for reading or printing from another computer.

• • • search the Web to find documents of interest to you.

• • • set up things to work from home instead of from the campus computer labs.

• • Find out more about what you can do with a Web-browser and about the WorldWideWeb.

The full browser window. Let's notice what you see, starting at the top.

• The title strip. At the very top of the Netscape Navigator window, you see a colored band running from left to right.

• • If you are working on a computer at home or in your office on campus, you will find that this band runs from a "Navigator" logo on the left to a series of 3 little boxes on the right. Clicking on the right-most box -- the one with the X in it -- closes your browser session and returns you to your computer's desktop.

• • • If you are working from one of the campus public labs, you won't see those little boxes. To close a browser session on public lab computers you have to use the "File" menu described in the next paragraph.

• • Next to the little logo on the left of the topmost colored band you see the name of the document or "Web page" that you are reading. In this case it is "Web-Browser Basics."

• The menu bar. Next comes a series of words beginning with underlined capital letters, beginning with "File" on the left and ending with "Help" on the right. This is the "menu-of-menus": each item opens a drop-down menu with a series of choices of things (for example, commands) that you can do. We'll call it the "menu bar."

• • You might explore some of these now. Don't execute any of the commands, just point the mouse arrow at the various words in the menu bar and hold the left mouse button down. Don't release the mouse button in the menu area or you will execute whatever command the arrow happens to be resting on at the moment.

• • Some of these commands are used so frequently that the browser gives you a quicker way of accessing them, in the row of buttons that comes next.

• The main toolbar. Beneath the "menu bar" or "menu-of menus" is a row of square "buttons." In Netscape Navigator, these are rather large and begin with "Back" on the left and end with "Stop" on the right. For convenience in what follows, I'll call these the "fat buttons" and the row as a whole "the main toolbar." (In Microsoft Explorer, the buttons in the main toolbar are smaller and more numerous.)

• The address window. Next comes a long narrow window labled "Location." (In Microsoft Explorer it is labeled "Address.")  This is also known as the "location bar," "address bar" or "URL slot."  It contains the location, in the WorldWideWeb, of the particular document you are reading. ("URL" is an abbreviation for a piece of jargon: "Universal Resource Locator.")  For example, the complete Web address of the document you are reading at the moment is "http://www.ksu.edu/~lyman/english320/320browsing.htm".

• The narrow toolbar. Below the Location window, in Netscape Navigator, is a row of narrow buttons which I'll call "the lower toolbar." It begins with "What's New?" on the left and runs to "Software" on the right. These buttons take you to various pages on the Web that eventually will be worth your exploring. Only a few of them will be mentioned in what follows. (This toolbar doesn't exist in the Microsoft Explorer browser. Some similar functions have instead been worked into the main toolbar.)

• The document window or viewing area is immediately below all the header header items, which we have been describing so far. You are peering at a portion of it at this very moment.

• The status bar runs across the very bottom of the browser window. When a document (or "page") that you have sent for is loading, you can follow the progress of the transmission here. Right now it should say something like "Document: Done". And when you put the cursor on a highlighted link, as explained below, it is here in the status bar that you can see the internet address encoded under the highlighted word or phrase.

Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

What the "Web" is.

• The WorldWideWeb (or "WWW") consists of millions of individual "pages" stored on computers around the world that are connected with each other via the Internet. For example, you are right now reading a "Web page" entitled "Web-Browser Basics." Every public page on the Web has a unique address, so that any computer connected to the Web by a browser can access it by entering this address in the "Location" (or "Address") slot in the browser's header area.

Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

Following "links" among Web pages.

• To get to a document via the URL slot of your browser you have to know the address of the document you are looking for. This can obviously be a big problem, and there are all sorts of search tools available (some simple, some complex) for helping people turn up the addresses of Web pages that might be of interest to them considering their special concerns. More on this later.

• But there is an especially important way get to pages relevant to any page you happen already to be on. Certain Web pages are linked to each other by codes embedded in their text. These "hyperlinks" are hidden beneath words or phrases highlighted in a special color (for example bright blue). If you put your cursor on such a highlighted phrase, you can see in the information line running along the bottom of your browser window the address that is connected with that phrase.

• If you click on that phrase (double-clicking isn't necessary, a single click will do), the browser program will automatically try to contact the computer where that document is stored and tell it to send the document to your computer for viewing in your browser. Before we practice doing this, though, you need to know how to get back to a document that you have left behind by clicking on a link it provides. The next section tells you how this works.

• Sometimes the document you call for takes longer than your patience can stand. When this happens, you can stop the transmission by clicking on the "STOP" button at the right end of the main toolbar.
• Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

Getting back to where you took off from.

• If you are going to jump from page to page, here on campus or around the world, how do you keep from getting lost? There are several ways. The most important thing to remember is that you can always get back to the previous page - the one you leapt to the page you are reading from - by clicking on the rectangular "BACK" button in the main toolbar. (In Netscape Navigator this important button will be emphatically available at the far left of the toolbar. It will have an arrow pointing left. Microsoft Explorer's "Back" button is the third button from the left, and is marked simply with an arrow pointing left.) You can continue to "back up" until you reach the very first Web page with which you started your browsing session. (If you're working through the KSU system, this will always be the Home Page for KSU itself - unless you are working from home and have changed the default setting for your initial connection.) And you can work back down to the remotest document you have reached by clicking on the "FORWARD" button just to the right of the BACK button on the toolbar (it has a arrow pointing to the right).

• • Try this now by clicking the Back button above. Remember: to return to this page, click the Forward button after the new page (actually the one you read before this one) appears in your reader.

• Now try something different. Remember what we said above about links. Clicking on this link to the homepage for English 233 or English 320 will take you to that page. But first: How to you get back to this page? There are two ways, and you can experiment with both. First, of course, you can just click the Forward button, as before. But as you read down the homepage for our course, you will notice that there is a link there to the very page you are now reading. (It reads "Web-Browser Basics," but is underlined and highlighted in color.) Clicking on it will bring you back to this document. You will then have to page-down with the slide control to find your way back to this spot in the text. Try these two ways now, one after the other. When you return to this paragraph you will notice that the color of the highlighted phrase above has changed. Your browser is telling you that this is a link you have visited in the recent past. (This feature has been turned off in the public lab computers.)

• Finally, your browser keeps a history of the places you have visited in the course of a given session. You can see this record, in Netscape, by opening the menu under the label Go in the series of menu titles that runs across the top of your browser page, above the buttons on the toolbar. You can return to any of the places listed in the drop-down menu by simply clicking on the document title which is recorded there. Check it out now. There probably won't be a long list stacked up in it, but you can get the idea.

Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

Quitting a browser session.

• If you are working at home or in your office, you can leave your browser by clicking on the X in the little box in the far upper right-hand corner of the browser window. This will return you to your desktop.

• If you are using a computer in one of the campus public labs, open the File menu (that's the leftmost option in the file menu bar), and choose the last option, Exit. This will return you to the Windows menu.
• • (If you want to leave the terminal you are using in the most convenient condition for the next user, press Esc to return to screen to the Main Menu for the KSU system.)

Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

Printing a Web page.

• Very often you will want to print out a Web page you have arrived at. If the computer you are using to run your browser is itself already hooked up to a printer, this is simple. If you are working in one of the campus public labs, there are some university guidelines on printing in the public labs you should be aware of before you do this.

• If the document contains colored text, like this or this, and if you are going to print it out in one of the KSU public computer labs, then before you print, you need to go into the File menu at the top of the page, choose the Set-up option and then the option for Black Text.  Otherwise, blanks will show up on your printed document where the colored text does on the window.

• • This change will be good for the duration of your session.  That is, you won't need to make this change for every document you want to print off, only the first one with colored text.

    If you are working from a computer in your home or office, you might want to experiment with printing off a short document with colored text.  Many black-and-white printers will automatically covert all colored text to black, and the change required for the printers in the KSU public labs will be unnecessary.  And of course if you are printing with a color printer, everything should come through, but with color changes preserved.

• Printing itself is easy.  You can either click the Print button on the main toolbar (it is also marked with an icon of a printer). Or you can open the File menu at the top of the page (in the menu bar) and choose the Print option.

• • If you are working in one of the campus public labs, you may have to choose an additional option to tell the system which printer to send the job to. Choose a dot-matrix or ink-jet or laser printer. Avoid any "line printer," as these machines cannot print Web documents. If you're not sure that the lab you're working in has the right sort of printer, you can ask around. Or you can check out CNS's description of equipment available at the various campus labs, which is also available on-line and in broschure form (eligible for permanent presence in your backpack) in "Welcome to Computing at K-State."  If the lab you're in doesn't have what you need, you can find out where to go. This information is also available in the blue brochure on "K-State Computing" available in Fairchild 9, which every student should tuck into his or her backpack anyway.

• Why not try printing this document now? (Let me know if you run into problems.) You will eventually want to print (and soon) the Course Schedule and Text List. It will be a good idea to print off the Writing Assignments as these emerge in the course of the semester. These are linked through the Course Schedule.

Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

Keeping "Bookmarks."

• A useful feature of any decent browser is a utility that enables you to save the titles and addresses of pages you've found that you think you might want to get back to later. Netscape Navigator calls these records "Bookmarks."  MicroSoft Explorer dubs them "Favorites."  You can also devise "folders" for organizing the bookmarks you collect into categories, for easier access. This is invaluable for academic work.

• Recording a bookmark.

• • If you are working from a computer at home, you can go to the Bookmarks menu (in the menu bar) while you are in the document you get back to (its address should be in the URL slot when you do this) and choose the option Add to Bookmarks.

• Using a bookmark.
  • Later when you want to get back to the document, open the Bookmarks menu again, put the cursor on the title of the document you want to go to, and release the mouse button. Your browser will send off for what you asked for.

• Organizing your collection of bookmarks.

• • Open the Bookmarks menu and choose instead the option Go to Bookmarks. You'll get another screen, with a menu of its own at the top. Choose the menu option Item and, in the drop-down menu that then appears, the option New Folder. A query box will appear asking you to type in the label you want to give to the folder. Choose an appropriate logical category.

• • Put the bookmarks that belong in that category into the folder by placing the cursor on the bookmark, holding down the left mouse button, and dragging the bookmark name onto the folder name.

• • In the campus public labs, the bookmark utility has been disabled. This has been done for obvious reasons (a bookmark file made by a random list of users is of no use to any of them), but it also deprives you of a very useful feature. A partial solution is to save pages you come across that contain a wealth of useful links. If you put these on a floppy disk, you can take them home and call them up on your own, and copy the links you want into your personal bookmark file.

Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

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  Saving a Web document. You can save Web documents for calling up later on another machine.

• • For instance, if you run across a page with valuable links while you are working in one of the campus public labs, you can save the page to a floppy disk, transfer the file to some directory on your hard disk, and call that file up on your browser. You can then put the links you want into your personal bookmark file.

• • Or if you are working on a computer that is not connected to a printer, you can save the file to a floppy, take it to another computer that is connected to a printer and that has a Web-browser installed on it, call up the file on the browser there, and print it. Awkward maybe, but, hey, it works.

• To save a Web page as a file on a floppy.
  • Go to the File item on the menu bar of your browser and pick the option Save as... from the drop-down menu that emerges.

• • A query box will appear asking you for the name of the file to be saved and suggesting that you use the name of the file as its creator dubbed it. You can accept or change this, but be sure that you add at the beginning of the file name the path to the floppy drive of the computer you're working at. (You use the navigation utilities in the query box to make the floppy drive the current directory.) For example, if the page you are saving is originally called (as this one is) 320browsing.htm and you want to save it under the name Browser.html on the "a:" drive of your computer, you want to enter as the name of the document: a:Browser.html . (Note that the name for any Web page "source document" ends in either .html or .htm .  You can save a file with either extension (the 3-letter option was introduced to accomodate people constrained to work within DOS), but you can only call up a document if you specifiy the one it was saved in.  In either case, there should be no period after this final element.)

• • To use the copy you have made.

• • • Later or on some other machine, start the Web-browser and call up the file in the viewing screen.

• • • • The quickest way is to call up the file from the floppy itself. Put the file's address in the URL slot (location or address window). Here is the proper form in Netscape for the file we have just imagined: file:///a:Browser.html . Note that there are 3 forward slashes after the address element "file:" (where as documents actively running on the Web are addressed by a convention in which only two forward slashes follow the initial element, thus: "http://location".)  In MicroSoft Explorer you use a different form for calling up documents from a diskette drive:  File:A:\Browser.html .  After entering the address, you'll need to press <Return> or click in the URL window to tell your browser to load the document you've designated.

• • • • If you are going to want to consult the file repeatedly, you may wish first to copy it from the floppy to a suitable directory (folder) on the hard drive at home (i.e., not on a public lab computer). Here's how.

• • • • • First make a directory with a suitable name, say c:\webdocs . Copy the file again into that directory. If you are using an IBM-type computer running Windows 3.11 or WindowsNT or Win95, the full DOS path name of your document will thus be c:\webdocs\Browser.html .

• • • • • Get into your Web browser and put the file's address in the URL slot. Here is the proper form for the document we have just imagined: file:///c:\webdocs\Browser.html. Again note that there are 3 forward slashes after the address element "file:" But note also that any dash following "c:" will be also be a forward slash (even though if we were working outside of our browser on a PC we would have to follow the conventions of DOS and use backslashes).

• • Once you have the document called up in your browser, you can read or print it. Note that when you are reading or printing a file stored on your own computer or on a floppy, it is not necessary for the browser to be connected up to the Web (e.g., through a modem or a campus ethernet connection).
  • Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

• Copying & using other people's bookmark files. You might have a friend who's done a lot of exploring and has developed a valuable collection of bookmarks. You can copy that person's bookmark file to a floppy, and

• • store it under a new name next to your own bookmark file on the hard disk.

• • • CAUTION: When you save your friend's bookmark file to your disk, be sure to give it some other name than bookmark.html, which is the name given automatically to your own bookmark file. If you fail to do this, you will overwrite your own bookmark file with your friend's, and lose all the work you did to develop it! If your friend's name is Robert, just re-name his bookmark file robert.html and you'll be OK.

• • To access it from your browser, open the Bookmarks menu and choose Go to Bookmarks. Next go into the File menu under it and tell the browser to open your friend's file instead of your own. Later you can repeat the procedure to tell your browser to consult your own bookmark file.
  • Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

Finding documents of interest to you on the Web.

• There are lots of "search engines" you can use to find your way to Web pages with information useful to you in your studies or appealing to your personal interests. The best way to get acquainted with these is just to jump in and experiment. The "Net Search" and "Net Directory" buttons on the bottom toolbar (the row of narrow buttons just above the viewing area) will take you to places where you can start. You'll find directions when you arrive. The Net Search button will take you to different search engines on different occasions, but each of these provides links to the others. Try InfoSeek, Lycos, AltaVista, Yahoo! and Excite. See what you turn up searching under (say) "William Faulkner" or "Native American" or "Galileo Galilei" or "dissecting frogs" or "breeding fruit flies" .

• The KSU Library also has a page called Internet Search Aids that opens out to the Web at large. And sooner rather than later you should become familiar with the homepage of the KSU Libraries in its own right.

• I have provided a list of some links relevant to our course (English 320 or English 233) that you will eventually want to explore.   I will try to up-date it from time to time.  If you come across something interesting that belongs there but isn't, I'd be grateful if you'd let me know.

Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

Setting up to work from home rather than from the computers in the campus public labs.

• First, you should make sure that you have the right sort of hardware to do the job. If you're thinking of buying a new or used computer or of rigging up what you already have to enable you to work from home, you will want to check out what Computer and Network Services recommends as Minimum Recommended Specifications for Individual Computer Environments -- keeping in mind that the recommenders are thinking primarily of faculty members doing research (often involving complicated reiterative computations or intensive graphics).  As a student, you may be able to get by with considerably less.  You can take advantage of the fact that lots of people are up-grading to pretty fancy stuff, and therefor have quite decent and useable equipment to unload, often at bargain prices.

• Besides the minimum hardware, you will also need the software to run a "direct internet connection" (the jargon for the type in use at K-State is a "PPP connection" -- "Point-to-Point Protocol"). You also need the software that constitutes a browser. Fortunately all this is free to you as a student, and is provided in the CNS Toolkit, which is a whole series of useful programs (with instructions for installing and using) provided to students and faculty here. (You've already paid for the licenses to make these available, so you might as well collect on the goods.) There is a Web page describing how you can download the CNS Toolkit from any of the public labs. It tells you what you need to bring along, what the procedure is, what to do with the programs you copy, and how to get help if you run into trouble. There is also a course taught by CNS's Instructional Support Center on Highlights of Toolkit A, B, & C.

• Finally you need a special kind of access to the campus network -- something more than the "data switch" that is sufficient to handle just e-mail.

• • If you live off-campus, you need Dial-in Service , which is available from K-State for a fee ($5.00 per month or $10.00 per month, depending on how many hours of access you want to arrange for. (Through the link just cited it is even possible to set up an account -- after reading the terms!)

• • This is a great option for students living where a call to campus is a local call. But you might also want to check out what is available through other local "internet suppliers" like Flint Hill Computers and Fox Business Systems.

• • For those of you living out of the immediate Manhattan area, these options are too expensive. Look for a local internet provider in your community. You then connect up to pages at K-State just like one does from K-State to pages elsewhere -- over the internet. Your subscription fee (and the telephone connection you're already paying for) covers the cost of the connection to the internet.

• • If you live in a campus residence hall and have your own computer, you are really in luck. You can arrange for a super-fast connection (far better than anything available through a modem) at a really good price. Read up on residence hall ethernet connections and start gloating.

Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics.

Finding out more. There's lots more you can do, but that's enough for this memo. If you want to learn more, here are a couple of ways to go. 

• Enroll in one of the free courses offered by KSU Computer Network Services. These are short (1-2 hour) hands-on tutorials, usually offered in the evening so as not to conflict with the most students' class schedules. Check out the current schedule for CNS courses. Meanwhile you can also check out the CNS course outlines for the courses known as "Browser A" and "Browser B" (as well as courses on how to make your own Home Page and more).

• Click on the narrow Handbook button of the lower toolbar of your Netscape browser.

• Check out the Help menu (the right-most item on the menu bar). Especially worth peeking into is the option on Frequently Asked Questions.

• Consult the CNS compilation of Frequently Asked Questions., which is geared primarily to problems people encounter in dealing with the local system here at K-State.

• There is also Thomas Boutell's WWW FAQs, famous among Web aficionados.

• Finally I'll mention the suite of pages maintained by the WorldWideWeb Consortium.

  Return to Main Menu of Web-Browser Basics .

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .

     Contents copyright © 2001 by Lyman A. Baker. 

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

  This page last updated 22 October 1999.