Santa Cruz Public Libraries, California

JUMPING AROUND THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Using Netscape 4.7 with a Mouse

This is a basic, simple tutorial on moving around a screen, moving around the World Wide Web, and finding your way back home. It will also briefly explain a URL.

The mouse and the white arrow:
On the pad next to the keyboard is an object with a cord coming out of it. This is the mouse. Put your palm on the top surface of the mouse and move the mouse around on the pad. When you move the mouse around on the pad, an arrow appears and moves on the screen.

You are going to jump to a document that will tell about moving around the screen and between documents. Move the white arrow to the following words: Frog Page. When the arrow changes to a hand, click the top left side of the mouse once.

You are now back to the document called,
Jumping Around the World Wide Web.

The World Wide Web:
The World Wide Web consists of thousands of independently operated computers that can connect to each other. Stored on these computers are documents that are called hypertext documents. The document you are reading right now and the one you just looked at, the Frog Page, are hypertext documents.

Hypertext:
A hypertext document has been marked with tags that tell your computer how to display it on the screen. You do not see those tags. What you see looks like any other page of text and images with one significant exception. What makes a hypertext document special is that along with text and images, it has connections (links) to other computer files. Just now, when you clicked on underlined words and moved from one document to another, you were using links.

Links:
As you have seen, a link can be a colored, underlined word. A link can also look like a graphic. Sometimes the graphic looks like a box or button. It may have a word on it giving you an idea where you are going. At the end of this paragraph is an example for you to try. It will take you to the Library's home page. Remember that you can come back using the back button at the top of the screen.

Very often, you will encounter another kind of graphic that is called an image map. This graphic, frequently large, has links embedded in it. That means that you can click on certain parts of the image and you will jump to another document. How do you know that a graphic is an image map? When you run the white mouse arrow over sections of the image, you will see that the arrow changes to a hand. That change indicates that there is a link that you can click on. Sometimes you are given a clue that you are dealing with an image map because there are words on the image. Sometimes you just have to try it.

Here is an image map with a link to another document. Try it out.

Moving Around the Web:
As you have already experienced, a link will connect you to another document. So far you have been using links to move between two of the Libraries' documents. It is possible for a link to connect to a document on another computer. That computer could be anywhere in the world.

Most documents that you jump to will have links to other resources. Those documents will also have links that you can click on. Pretty soon you can be far from where you started. How do you know where in the World Wide Web you are?

The URL:
Every document or file on the World Wide Web has a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The URL is the address for the file. Each URL is unique and stands for a particular document on the Internet.

A URL looks like a string of letters, punctuation and sometimes, numbers. Look at the upper part of the screen at the long white box with the word Location in front of it. What you see in that box is the URL for this document. Whenever you jump from one document to another, the URL in that box will change. The box will always show the URL of the document or file that you are currently reading.

Using URLs:
Knowing a URL can be handy. If you come across a resource that you would like to use again, you can write down the URL--all of it, exactly as it appears in the location box. The next time that you want to go to that resource, you don't need to remember how you got to it. You can type in the URL in the location box.

Typing in the URL:
You first need to highlight the URL already showing in the location box. To do that, move the mouse over to the beginning of the location box. Now press down on the top left side of the mouse just as you have done before, but this time--keep holding it down as you sweep across the URL already in the box. When all of the URL is highlighted, let go of the mouse. Now start typing the URL you want to go to (the other URL will disappear as you start to type); when you've finished typing the URL, press the enter key on the keyboard. You should go directly to the resource with that URL. You can practice the movement with the mouse right now even if you do not have a URL.

This is the end of the basic tutorial. To review:

1. World Wide Web contains hypertext documents and graphics.
2. Hypertext documents have links to other hypertext documents.
3. A link can be a colored, underlined word or a graphic.
4. You can move up and down a screen using the arrows on the right of the screen.
5. The back button moves you back one document.
6. The home button takes you to the home page.
7. Each document on the Web has a URL.
8. You can type a URL in the location box and go directly to a document.

If you like, you can now:

• learn how to look for information with our Savvy Internet Searching,
• select a link on our Internet Tutorials page,
• or, go back to the Library's home page.