Surfing the web - Getting Online
In our last article we discussed how to connect to the internet. Once you have established your Internet account, you are now ready to "surf" the World Wide Web from your computer. To do so, perform the following steps (specific instructions will vary depending on your access provider and software):
1. Start up your computer, and make sure that your modem is on and connected to a telephone line.
2. Open your internet software.(Typically, you will be provided an icon on your desktop. Clicking on this icon will take you through the connection process to get on to the net).
3. Start the connection, which generally takes between 15 and 30 seconds.
4. Once you have successfully connected, click on your Web browser- e.g. Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox (you can see the icons on the lower left side of your screen. In some cases it may launch automatically).
If you have successfully accessed the Web, you will see the home page on your screen. This is the first page that your browser is set to open. Often the home page is a site belonging to the manufacturer of the Web browser you're using. On most browsers, you can change the home page to a site of your choice.
· If you simply want to explore and get to know the Web, type the website address/name into the entry field (the entry bar at the top) of your browser, then click on the "Go!" button. This is the most basic method of accessing a Web site. However, you have to know exactly where you want to go, and then type in the address correctly in order to get there.
· Click on hyperlinks to move among websites; your home page will show some links to interesting sites. (In a layman’s terms, hyperlinks are keywords on which a hand icon appears. Hyperlinks link you to another page on the website).
· To conduct a search for websites, perform the following example:
1. Connect to the internet and type http://www.yahoo.com/ in your browser's URL entry field.
2. Press ENTER or RETURN on your keyboard.
This will take you to Yahoo!, one of the most popular Web indexes. Underneath the Yahoo! logo, you will see a blank search entry box, as well as hotlinks of site categories.
3. Click on one of the category topics and follow the categories until you reach a site that matches your interests.
...OR...
4. Click your mouse in the entry box. This will place a blinking cursor in the box.
5. Type one or more words pertaining to information you'd like to locate on the Web. E.g.If you wish to search for information on railway booking-don’t just type railway – you are likely to get a lot of information not required e.g. railway board, railway stations, railway timetable, railway enquiry. Be specific and type railway booking. You can use ‘AND’, ‘OR’,’NOT’ as operators as well as ‘+’ & ‘-‘ – e.g. railway+Indian will search for websites of Indian railway only. Otherwise the search will reveal all information relating to railway worldwide. Narrow your search with specific keywords that best represent what you wish to find.
6. Click on the SEARCH button to the right of the entry form, or press RETURN or ENTER on your keypad.
After a few seconds, Yahoo! will return with a list of hotlinks that match your search criteria. The more specific your criteria, the fewer and more specific hotlinks you will see.
How do Search Engines Work?
Yahoo, Google, AltaVista are all search engines. They are vehicles used to search for information on the internet. Search Engines do not really search the World Wide Web directly. Each engine searches a database of web pages automatically harvested from the billions of web pages residing on servers. When you search the web using a search engine, you are always searching a somewhat stale copy of the real web page. When you click on links provided in a search engine's search results, you retrieve from the server the current version of the page.
Search engine databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called spiders. These "crawl" the web, finding pages to be included in their database. After spiders find pages, they pass them on to another computer program for "indexing." This program identifies the text, links, and other content in the page and stores it in the search engine database's files so that the database can be searched by keyword and whatever more advanced approaches are offered, and the page will be found if your search matches its content.
Recommended Search Engines:
Google has one of the largest databases of Web pages, including many other types of web documents ( blog posts, wiki pages, group discussion threads and document formats (e.g., PDFs, Word or Excel documents, PowerPoints).
Google alone is not always sufficient. Getting a "second opinion" is therefore often worth your time. For this purpose, we recommend Ask.com or Yahoo! Search. The burden is on you - the reader - to establish the validity, authorship, timeliness, and integrity of what you find. Documents can easily be copied and falsified or copied with omissions and errors -- intentional or accidental. In the general World Wide Web there are no editors to proofread and "send it back" or "reject it". Most pages found in general search engines for the web are self-published or published by businesses small and large with motives to get you to buy something or believe a point of view. So be careful and enjoy websurfing.
