You have a computer with a modem connected to the telephone.

The computer can be a PC or a Mac. The discussion here is largely for PC users, but some may also be relevent for Macs. You will be able to get by with an old and slow one, but you will need 32MB (million bytes) of RAM memory, and at least 1GB (gigabytes = 1000 million) of Disk space. Speed is not vital unless you also want to use the computer for games. I have a Celeron 400 on my PC.
The modem these days will be 56kbps (thousand bits per second) and anything lower than this is a bit tedious.
It will be convenient to have a telephone near you on the same line as the computer so you can check whether or not you are still on line.

You are using the Windows operating system

Windows 3.x software is now considered to be old-hat but there are many still in use. Upgrading to a later version sometimes needs a more powerful computer.
Windows 95 or Windows 98 are fine. Windows 2000 is for specialist users and is a lot more expensive. Instructions here are largely for Windows 95 or 98.

You have signed up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP)

It really does help if you can get someone to do this for you who has done it before. Theoretically you put the CD-ROM into the drive and follow the instructions.
It is quite likely that if you then sign up with a second service provider you will mess up the link to any previous providers. This is a pity if you have told a lot of people your Email address.

The computer has been set up so that your browser or mail package dials the required telephone number of the ISP

See above. The links should be set up automatically by the programs on the CD-ROM. If they do not work then you need help.

You know how to use the computer keyboard and the mouse

Practice makes perfect. Perhaps get used to the keyboard using the word processing program. Or play one of the games like patience that probably came with your computer. Practice clicking the left-hand button on the mouse, and be aware that the right button is often useful for specialist tasks. Also practice double-clicking

You can Start a Program

There are two ways to start a program running.
Windows has a START button bottom left of the display. Click on this and a list of section headings is displayed. One of these is Programs and when the cursor rests on this heading a list of the available programs is displayed. Click on the program you want to run.
Icons are sometimes shown on the desktop (the display that comes up as soon as Windows is loaded).
Either double-click on the Icon for the program you require. Or you can right-click it once to display a pop-up menu and then click Open.

Window Controls

You can control the size of the window for a program as follows:
top right in the top bar, there are three icons:

• the right icon [X] is to close the program because you no longer need it.
• the middle is either a single 'document' which is maximise, go to full-screen, or two little 'documents' which is make a smaller window.
• the left underlined icon minimises the window to nothing leaving a buttom on the active program bar at the bottom of the display for when you need it again.

When the window is less than full size, the width and height can be adjusted by moving the cursor to any of the margins and click and hold the left button to pull the margin bigger or smaller. With the cursor bottom right of the window a diagional arrow allows you to click and hold while changing height and width at the same time.

NOW READ ON

Using the Internet Explorer browser

Internet Explorer version 6 is the current popular one. Version 4 or 5 will be fine. V3 is time for an upgrade which is free. You may need help to download the latest version and install it. It is easier to install it from the CD-ROM that comes from your ISP (see above), or from the CD-ROM that is one the front cover of some computer magazines.

Or you can use Netcape (see below)

There should be four bars across the top of the display:

• the top (blue) bar shows the name of the website currently on the main part of the display; and the three window control icons
  
• next is the menu bar with words like File, Edit, View, Favourites, Tools, and Help. If you click on these words a menu for that heading is displayed. Click anywhere else on the display to collapse the menu
  
• third is a row of Icons usually with text descriptions. Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh, Home, Search, Favourites, History, Mail, and Print. Normally these icons will give you a text prompt as a 'tool-tip' if the cursor hovers over the icon for a second or so.
  
• fourth is the Address Bar. Addresses keyed into this line and then actioned by pressing the RETURN key will cause the computer to dial out to the Internet if not already on line, and find the address specified.

There should be two bars at the bottom of the display:

• Status shows what is currently happening
• the START bar with the start button, space for program icons if you wish, the buttons for the programs that are currently loaded so you can get back to them easily, and a Desk Tray with the time, and space for other useful program icons if you wish.

If the contents of the display are too long for the space then a vertical elevator will be shown on the right of the display.

Similarly, if the current contents are too wide, then a horizontal elevator will show across the bottom.

Netscape Navigator

Version 5 is the current valid version, version 6 is still getting the bugs out.

The layout of the display is similar to Internet Explorer. The Menu bar has File, Edit, View, Go, Communicator, and Help. The row of Icons is similar; note the word Reload, instead of Refresh.

Portal Websites

It is likely that the CD-ROM which you used to set up your connection to your ISP will have made the initial Homepage point to the portal of the service you have signed up for.

The portal may not be to your taste. You may want more news, or more on the weather, a horoscope, or joke of the day. Feel free to change to another portal, or not have one at all.

You can change the homepage in:
IE: Tools | Internet Options | Homepage
NS: Edit | Preferences | Homepage
You can choose any page you like, or blank. I have mine set to one of the pages on my own website on my hard disk, which happens to have my list of links both on my hard disk and on the Internet which I use every day.

Domain Names and URLs

A domain name is a name like www.waller.co.uk or www.whiteplanes.com and the website owner pays money to get the name of his choice. If you don't pay for such a name you get stuck with the default format provided by your ISP which could be www.btinternet.com/~fadsc (note the ~ character) or ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/remenyi

The Internet address itself is called a URL (Universal Resource Locator), and is either the domain name, or the ISP address plus any page referencing. Some URLs get very long.

If you request a name, or a page URL and it is not found then you get a standard error page from that server called a 404 error and you have to try again. Sometimes this is a simple keying error. Sometimes the page reference has changed. You can either give up, or start deleting things from the right hand end until you get something that is useful.

If you want to quote a domain name, leave off the http:// - everyone and every browser knows that. And no need to quote the page name providing it is index.htm or index.html This is assumed to be the default. So you can just say www.waller.co.uk/family and go straight in because the first file there is index.htm
But if you quote an address on your own website so people can click on it, then you should always have the http:// so that the browser knows what do to.

If you tell someone a domain name, do not put punctuation round it because if you do they will not easily be able to copy and paste it into their address line.

Going on line

If you have an address in the Address bar, as soon as you start the browser, the system will immediately dial out and go on line and access that address. You have the option of working off line if you wish.
To access another address you can:

• Highlight the address you want, and use Edit | Copy, and Paste into the address bar, press RETURN.
• Highlight the address and press Ctrl+C (which is copy) on the keyboard, and then Ctrl+V (paste) into the address bar, press RETURN. That is: hold down the Ctrl key and press the C key etc.
• Click on any address currently on the browser display that starts with http://
• key in the address you want, from references in newspapers, magazines, letterheads, adverts or whatever. In this case it is not necessary to key in http:// Just go straight in with www.waller.co.uk or whatever.

Note that most addresses on the Internet start with www. If you key an address that does not have this it will probably work; if it does not, then move the cursor to the beginning of the address you have keyed and insert www.

http:// stands for HyperText Transmission Protocol and tells the system that it has to go off on the Internet and find it.
The other protocol you may meet is FTP which is File Transfer Protocol and is used to upload files to the Internet website. This is not the problem we want to address today.

When the website is displayed

Navigation within a website depends on links to other pages, or sometimes to paragraphs on the same page. They can be text links or images.

Text links are underlined. The standard colour for a link is blue; when your cursor is over the link it will turn red; once the link has been used successfully it will show as purple. Some website authors choose different colours. We do not think this is a good idea.

The words used, or the picture or words in the image should tell you that this is a link and what you will see when you get there. Some images change colour or shape when the cursor is near. This is called Hover.

In any case the cursor will change from being a pointer to a pointy-hand when over a link. And the status bar at the bottom of the display should show the URL of the destination.

Click the link and you go to that URL. Alternatively use the TAB key on the keyboard to travel down the page link by link until you reach the one that interests you, then press RETURN.

If you want to come back, then click the BACK option in the bar at the top of the display, or in Internet Explorer you can use the keyboard BACKSPACE.

There will often be a menu of pages that you can visit on the website. Or on larger websites there may be a Sitemap with all the available pages listed.

Search Engines and Directories

There are estimated to be 1 billion pages on the Internet, 87% of them in English. Which is the particular page you want to see.

We have mentioned newspapers, magazines, adverts. But also there are tools to narrow down the search for what you want to see today.

There are about 12 well-known Search Engines: Altavista, Alltheweb (FAST Search), Directhit, Excite, Go (Infoseek), Google, Hotbot, Lycos, Search.Netscape, Northernlight, Webcrawler, Whatuseek, some of which share information.
plus Searchuk, Euroferret who are for the UK/Europe. and Ukplus, Yahoo, Looksmart, Search.Aol, Dmoz, which are directories.

Some ISPs have one or more search engines linked from their Portal website. I use http://www.google.com/ which looks up references from the top dozen search results from about six search engines, removes any duplicates.

Some authors are better at getting their websites referenced than others. There is a lot of rubbish. And a lot of 404 site-not-found references. But there is also a lot of good stuff in there. Someplace.

Bookmarks or Favourites

When you are actually looking at a page you may want to come back to again you can add the URL to your list of favourites using the Add option provided. You can later on just click on the item and the system will go there again.

In IE: Click the Favourites Icon at the top of the browser, or click the Favourites Menu option. They both give the same list; the Menu option gives drop down menu; the Icon gives a seperate window on the left of the display which you can remove by clicking the X top right.

In NS: Menu option Communicator | Bookmarks shows your list.

There are two keyboard shortcuts:
Ctrl+B displays the bookmarks
Crtl+D stores the current URL at the end of your list of bookmarks

Additionally, IE has a History icon that displays a window to the left of the display. This shows a list of all the pages you have looked at for the last few days. If you click on a page name the system may be able to display the page without going on line by getting a copy from the cache on your hard disk. This does not always work, but if you then go online you can reach that page very quickly.

Frames

Some websites have pages organised in frames. In this way the information at the top, side, or bottom of the page stays still while the contents in the centre scrolls to show all the material.

The good news is that you always know whose site it is, and you have a list of links to go elsewhere on the site always in view. It looks very pretty.

The not so good news is that the space available for the content is sometimes very small, like looking through a keyhole. And you can seldom print the whole page as a coherent whole, you have to click the cursor within the contents area and then print. Also the BACK function may not work. And the heading at the top of the display does not actually show the name of the page you are actually in and it will not bookmark correctly. I could go on.

Ending Your Session

You can tell whether you are on line by looking at the bottom right corner of the display. If there are two little computers that flash occasionally then you are still on line. Or you can have a telephone on the same line as your modem, then pick up the receiver and if there is no dial tone you are on line.

Right click on the two little computers, and click Disconnect. On some browsers or Email packages, if you exit from the browser you will be asked if you wish to disconnect. Or there may be an option to Disconnect. Disconnecting from servers, notably Compuserve may take some seconds.

Always close all the programs before you switch off the computer. You can use the [X} top right, or go to Files : Exit, or you can press Alt/F4, all of which have the same effect. If you have not saved your data since the last change you made, then you will be asked if you want to save the data and you can answer Yes.

If you do not close all the files, then the next time you switch on the PC it will have to run some diagnostics to check that nothing has been corrupted.

Finally, click START (bottom left of display) and click Shut Down. Or use Alt/F4. You have options to Shut Down, or to restart the computer. If you select Shut Down, then the processor will switch itself off. Remember to switch off the display, and the scanner if you have used it.

NOW TO ENJOY YOUR SURFING
ENJOY!