Bookmarks
When you've found a good website, your browser lets you store the
addresses or URLs of your favorite pages. In Netscape these are called
'Bookmarks' and in Internet Explorer 'Favorites'. Then, when you want to
go back to a particular page, you can go there in one click, instead of
trying to remember where it was that you got there from, or even having
to recall a very long URL. Adding a bookmark couldn't be more simple. Just click your mouse on the 'Bookmarks' or 'Favorites' menu at the top
of the screen and move down to select 'Add Bookmark' or 'Add Favorite.'
TERMS AND DEFINITION
Bandwidth: This refers to the maximum amount of data which can be
carried at a given time by your internet connection (modem - phone line
- ISP). A low bandwidth connection means your internet connection will
be slower, pictures will take more time to download. Think of bandwidth
like a tube line. Some passengers wanting to travel at busy times will
be disappointed - they won't fit on the train and will have to wait for
the next one. This is what happens when you try to access the internet
with low bandwidth at busy times - even simple pages can take longer,
and large complex images could take (seemingly) forever.
Hacking: Hacking involves unauthorized access to a computer, its files
and programs. 'Hackers' perform this hacking for their own amusement,
challenge or sometimes financial, ideological or commercial gain. Hacking is a far less common and less malevolent practice than is
commonly imagined. As a private user, you are exceedingly unlikely to be
affected by hacking.
FINDING STUFF
Different kinds of search engines
General Search Engines often known as spider searches, search the entire
Web for keywords. These include: Alta
Vista, WebCrawler,
HotBot.
Web
Guides/Metasites combine a search facility with a huge list of websites organized
by category or location. So there could be a section for
sports, with a subsection for squash clubs, and in this section you
might find a list of squash clubs with links to their websites.
These
include: Yahoo!, Excite,
Lycos.
Other specialist search engines Yell, (Yellow Pages
online); Ask Jeeves, (looks at several search
engines at once and
prides itself on its natural language interface) White Pages are like
internet telephone directories, with people's names, email addresses and
sometimes address/phone number. There is no central internet directory -
the fastest way to find someone's email address is still to phone them
up and ask them - but many internet users now list themselves in one or
more white pages: Four1,
Whowhere, Bigfoot.
FINDING STUFF
Finding what you want:
One of the main problems facing any new internet user is how to find the
things they are interested in. No-one knows exactly how many pages there
are on the World Wide Web, but it's certainly more than several million
and growing all the time. To find something on the Web you need to
have its address or URL. But without the online equivalent of a 'phone
book, where can you look it up? Once you're clear about exactly what
you want to find, to discover where it is on the Web, you need to use a
special tool known as a 'search engine'. The sheer amount of
information available on the Web can be daunting, especially if you are
looking for specific facts rather than just casually 'surfing' around to
see what you come across. But the job of these special search engine
websites is to help you sift this huge array of information making it
much easier to find what you need.
Search engines work on the principle of tracing through the mountain of
material on the Web using keywords or subject categories that you have
entered on screen. Some work on a keyword system, some by subject
category and some do both.
TERM AND DEFINITION
Webpage: webpages are the basic building blocks of websites. They can
contain information, text, images or sound, or a combination of all of these.
FINDING STUFF
Where to start
One place to start searching if you have a browser with a 'Search'
button is simply to click on that. You'll get to a screen with a box
into which you type one or more words to search for. You may need to
choose a search engine from a list, and then click the search button
near the box to start searching. In not much more time than it takes to
jump between any two pages you should be looking at a list of sites
which match your search criteria. You can also go straight to the main
search pages of different search engines, and if you know which you
prefer, this is best. You simply type in the URL (see '>>Getting
around'), e.g. http://www.yahoo.com, and then follow
the instructions.
You can always bookmark different search engine addresses (keep them in
a list of 'favorites') in order to get back to them easily.
TERM AND DEFINITION
Newsgroups: Newsgroups are forums for exchanging information and views
over the internet. There are newsgroups on every subject you can think
of and more. To read the messages in a newsgroup you need access to a
newsgroup server through your internet service provider (ISP). When you
post a message it is systematically copied to other newsgroup servers
around the world so other people can read it and reply with their views.
To get a flavour you can look at an archive of newsgroups through a Web
interface such as dejanews. The network of newsgroups is known as
'Usenet'. See also Usenet.
FINDING STUFF
To do a basic search...
1. Click on the search button in the bar at the top of the screen, (your
browser menu bar), or type in the address for a search engine (e.g.
http://www.yahoo.com).
2. The Yahoo page (or any other
search engine
you choose) appears. Type a word into the window (e.g. BBC) and click on
Search.
3 In this example you are presented with 382 sites that
include the word BBC. This is far too many and the search needs to be
refined.
4. To refine the search go back to the search engine (click on
the back button). Type in a more specific query (e.g. BBC Education).
5.
In this example you are presented with 30 sites, which is more
manageable. Then simply click on a site to go to it.
TERM AND DEFINITION
Compressed: Computer files can be compressed so they take up less
memory. This makes them quicker to send over the internet. There are
many different file compression formats including GIF and JPEG for image
files. See also GIF See also JPEG.
FINDING STUFF
Good stuff to know about searching
When you enter keywords or categories it is important to be specific.
For instance, if you enter a vague reference word such as 'city', you
will get a phenomenal number of results but they would probably not be
very relevant. However, if you type 'Tower of London' or 'City of
London' you are more likely to find the specific information you are
seeking.
You could try guessing domain names - but in most cases, they're a bit
bizarre, and won't always take you to the page you'd expect: for
instance, whitehouse.org is the official US President's site, while
whitehouse.com is an "adult" site - and definitely not one to recommend,
be warned, (.org means an organization, and .com means a company, but
that could be almost any company who's registered that name). After all,
you wouldn't write off to someone by just guessing their real-world
postal address and necessarily expect it to get to them.
For certain cases - looking up films, or music, or TV shows, for
instance - there are specialized databases, like the Internet Movie
Database, the Ultimate Band List, or the Ultimate TV Guide. All of these
will take you to what you're looking for without confusing it with
anything of the same name: if you type 'Addicted To Love' into the Movie
Database, it takes you to the romantic comedy featuring Matthew
Broderick and Meg Ryan; if you type it into the music database, it takes
you to the 80s rock hit by Robert Palmer.
Once you've found your info, there's the whole question of whether to
believe it or not! Does the site look official, or could it be a fan
site? Does it have a proper domain name? (They aren't necessarily owned
by the company you'd first assume). Is it properly designed (eg does it
takes ages to download?), or is it a few pages of poorly spelled text
rambling across a dodgy background?
TERM AND DEFINITION
Frames: Frames are a feature of HTML that allow several different pages
to be displayed in one window at the same time. Lots of websites use
frames to keep a standard navigation bar on screen at all times as you
move around the website. However frames have many disadvantages. They
make pages more difficult to print and they make pages more difficult to
bookmark (because the browser may print or bookmark one of the frames
you can see but not the one with the information you want). See also
HTML See also Bookmark.
FINDING STUFF
Search Engines A search engine is a website that keeps a list of the contents of lots
of webpages and lets you look through them. Or, more formally, it's an
interactive, automated, database tool for locating resources on the Web
In practice, you type in the thing you are looking for - like "squash
club" - and it will show you a list (usually a long list) of pages on
other websites that contain those two words. Then you can simply follow
the link from the search results to go to that page.
If you're looking for websites, or general information, then there are
particular kinds of search engines to go for. If you're trying to find a
person, or an individual company, online, then you're best off heading
for the directory search engines, often known as 'white pages'. These
days many websites include a search element, if only to access content
within that site, so searching is a handy skill to acquire. Search engines can have all sorts of interfaces: some ask you to fill
out a form, for others you type in a query, or a single word, but all of
them expect you to submit some kind of request and in return they will
provide a list of possible answers, which you can link to directly.
TERM AND DEFINITION
File not found: The error message seen when you enter an incorrect URL
address or enter an address for a site which has moved or is now defunct.
Sometimes you will see reasons for the error message and sometimes a
site will even display a "we have moved " page. Often an site not found
is simply the result of a typing error or misspelling on your part See
also Error message.
FINDING STUFF
Horses for courses. Be aware of the difference between hierarchical search engines - like
Yahoo - and full-text ones, like AltaVista. Yahoo is organized like a
library, and so is usually the first place to try if you're looking for
something that there'll be a lot of coverage for - like a famous person,
or band, or place.
If you don't have any luck there, or if you're looking for something
quite obscure (like a friend of yours), or a specific quotation, try
typing the whole thing into AltaVista, which is more like someone who's
memorized the entire text of everything they've read - but didn't
understand any of it.
There are still further kinds of site collection such as content based
editors which collect sites by subject and link them to feature articles
on the same theme, for example, http://www.miningco.com.
There are lots of good search engines around. Although after a while you
may have a favourite search engine, using more than one will better your
chances of finding what you want.
TERM AND DEFINITION
Address Book: Most email programs have an address book feature that
lets you store your friends' or business contacts' email addresses and
look them up by 'nickname' - i.e. "Steven" for Steven Jones in Accounts.
The address book is particularly useful because unlike postal addresses,
getting one character wrong in an email address can mean your message
goes undelivered. Most email programs allow you to type just the
nickname in the box where you would normally type the full email address
when composing a message - the program will then look up the email
address in the address book and fill it in for you automatically.
FINDING STUFF
Some of the more popular search engines and directories:
http:// www.altavista.com
http://www.lycos.com/
http://infoseek.go.com/
http://www.webcrawler.com//
http://www.northernlight.com
http://www.looksmart.com
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.search.com/
http://www.miningco.com
http://www.ask.com/
http://www.encyclopedia.com
http://www.tutorials.com/
http://www.four11.com (to find e-mail addresses)
http://www.bigfoot.com (to find e-mail addresses)
TERM AND DEFINITION
Each [Contraction of Electronic CASH]: Increasing numbers of
businesses are conducting retail transactions over the Net. These
usually require credit card details and some people are understandably
concerned about the security aspects of sending this information over
the theoretically unsafe internet.
FINDING STUFF
Searching in practice
So that you don't lose your place, the links to search engines on this
page will open up in their own window. Even using a specific word,
search results may be surprising. A single search engine can be used in
different ways to focus in on useful results. Each search engine behaves
a little differently and will be using its own lists of sites to find a
match to your query, this is why their results vary.
Use Alta Vista
http://www.altavista.com to do a search for
'Arsenal'. You will get a result of over 150,000 webpages! Fortunately Alta Vista is kind enough
to only list the first few. (If you were really keen you could call up
page after page of listing and go through the lot!). Such a huge number of pages either means that there are even more
devoted fans using the Net than you'd think, or that the word 'Arsenal'
does not always refer to a football team! Alta Vista's enthusiasm can
be moderated by taking them up on their gentle suggestion of choosing
Arsenal Football Club in the 'Related Searches' section.
The resulting matches will now be much reduced to a slightly more
manageable 708, including the Official Arsenal website within the top 10
selection. You could always follow the prompt to refine your search
still further using the drop down box options provided. Try a search
for 'Arsenal' using Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com.
Yahoo
will find four
search categories including one with the lengthy title; 'Regional:
Countries: United Kingdom: Recreation and Sports: Sport: Football: Leagues: FA Carling Premiership: Clubs: Arsenal FC'. This category takes
you through to a page with about 7 links to Arsenal websites, also
including the official Arsenal site, and a further 20 or so fanpages.
TERM AND DEFINITION
Push: Push and pull describe the difference between the older 'demand'
type of internet use, where you typed in an address or followed a link
to get to a page, and the newer 'channel' model, where the information
is 'pushed' at you according to criteria you have pre-set. You may well
be consigning yourself to endless spam sites and 'suggested' CDs
however.
FINDING STUFF
More practice So that you don't lose your place, the link to the search engine will
open in its own window. Another search you might try uses Hotbot, to see what it can find on
Fidel Castro.
Initially it will come up with in excess of 18,000 hits. A result like
this is pretty useless except perhaps for statistical trivia freaks.
Use 'More Search Options' and you'll be able to fine tune your search
considerably, for example by choosing results in English or Spanish
only. One of the sites Hotbot lists is a CNN profile of Fidel Castro.
Were you to go to this page you will find another kind of search common
to the Web, a site specific search.
At the bottom of the Nav Bar on the left hand side of the page, there is
the option to search through CNN stories. Now if you search again on
Fidel Castro you will get a list of 400 or so stories in which he has featured, and this all from one source! When you start with a subject,
try to think of a number of words that relate fairly directly to it.
'Web' would not get you far, as millions of documents would in some way
be about them but, 'ABC' and 'WebWise' is more specific. Enclosing a
phrase in quotation marks is like saying 'exact phrase only' and narrows
things down nicely! - ABC Web Wise - may still get over a million
matches, but "ABC WebWise" will limit the result to perhaps around 20.
TERM AND DEFINITION
UUencode ("U-U-encode"): A way of encoding a binary file (e.g. an
image) as text so it can be attached to an email message and sent across
the internet. The recipient of the message needs software that can
decode the attached file otherwise the picture will come out as a long
page of jumbled letters and numbers. As time goes by more and more
people are using a format called 'MIME' so there is less chance of
incompatibility problems. However, UU-decoding software is widely
available should you ever need it. See also MIME.
FINDING STUFF
Top tips summary
1. Word order matters. Search engines usually give priority to the first
word you enter, so submitting 'Neot's St' will usually be more effective
than 'St Neot's'.
2. Avoid using words like 'and', or 'the'. They can really slow down or
distort your results.
3. Including an underscore (like_this) between words or placing
quotation marks around them ('like this') makes it clear to the search
engine that you're looking for a phrase, not individual words.
4. Including a plus sign ('+') before a word makes sure all the pages
that are listed contain that word.
5. Be sure to make the most of the search options offered by individual
search engines. Having a quick look through 'advanced' searches section
can save a lot of time.
6. Boolean searches. This is one way of producing more focused results.
It works by including or excluding certain words. For example, you can
type in two or more words and join them with 'AND' or '+' making your
search much more refined. Just entering 'volcanoes' would deliver
hundreds of results, but putting something like 'volcanoes+Mexico+active' would give far more useful results. Entering
'Morecambe OR Wise' finds pages with Morecambe, Wise, or both of them
together. Typing 'Trimble NEAR peace' searches for the two words within
the same paragraph, rather than simply on the same page. 'Fat Boy Slim
AND NOT Zoe Ball' will produce a music site rather than anything on
engagement rings. Don't forget: all these link words must be in
capitals.
net_basics >>Getting going>>Getting around>>Finding
stuff>>Email>>User
beware>>The lowdown
What is searching?
1. Why search?
2. Where to start
3. Basic process
4. Useful tips
Search engines
5. What is a search engine?
6. Different kinds
7. Horses for courses
8. Some popular ones
Refining searches
9. Searching in practice
10. More practice
11. Top tips summary
How searching works
12. Search robots, keywords
13. Meta tags
14. Meta info summary
15. Peeping through portals
Once you've found it
16. Loading the information
17. Printing out pages
18. Copying & pasting text
TERM AND DEFINITION
Floppy drive: A floppy drive is the slot usually found on the front of
a computer for reading floppy disks. A floppy disk is small portable
magnetic diskette in a plastic holder used to store information. Despite
the name floppy disks are not particularly floppy! See also Hard drive.
FINDING STUFF
How does all this searching work anyway?
Many search engines work by sending out "spiders" or robots, (or
even worms, or crawlers - you get the idea), which are autonomous
internet programs that trawl the Web looking for sites not yet included
in the search engine's database. As they do so, they send back
information about each site they visit, which is stored, yes, you guessed
it, in the search engines' databases. If you were to ask a librarian how
to find information on a topic, they'd probably ask you a few questions
to clarify what exactly you were looking for, and why you needed it.
They might also make recommendations based on who you were: a child, an
academic, a journalist.
Search engines aren't that interactive or intelligent and are less
inclined to base their suggestions on past experience. This is one of
the reasons you'll find search engines making lots of suggestions that
aren't that relevant to your search, although it also comes down to how
intelligently you make your request.
Essentially search engines base their findings on location and frequency
of keywords on a page. Search engines check to see if any keywords you
submit appear near the top of a webpage, for example in the headline, or
the first few paragraphs. If your keywords appear a lot on a page, then
the engine will assume that this high frequency means the page is very
relevant to your query.
Every search engine searches differently. Some index many more pages
than others do, and others are updated much more frequently. Certain
engines boost pages according to criteria. For example Excite considers
popularity - on the assumption that a page that has lots of links
pointing to it is likely to be worth a visit. Some engines may rate
sites higher that they've reviewed positively, (eg magellan and planetclick).
TERM AND DEFINITION
Latency: Latency is the natural delay which occurs when using the
internet. It is the equivalent to the delay on a long distance or
transatlantic phone call but is far more noticeable as you are dealing
with digital data - a 1 or 0 out of place will hold up a whole page,
make a credit card transaction unauthorisable or let the baddy get you
in a game!
FINDING STUFF
Meta tags - influencing search engines
A ranking factor that web developers can, to an extent, exploit is meta
tags, as these can help control the way search engines categorize sites.
Meta tags are included in a page's html code to help search engines
index the page appropriately. If you go to 'View' on your browser and
then select source, you will get a very different perspective on this
page. What you'll be seeing is the nuts and bolts code that makes up
this page. Or, if you were to look at the top of the homepage of
WebWise you'd find something like this:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Web Wise - Education's guide to the Internet</TITLE>
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Everything you wanted to know about
the internet from how to get online to the history of the Web"> <META
NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT=", webwise, email, searching, internet history,
navigating, beginner, challenge"> </HEAD> The information to focus on
here is what is included in the META NAME tags, (tags are the term for
the arrow brackets: < >), as many search engines index according to the
information within description and keyword tags.
"Description" helps developers control the way that search engines
describe the content when they list that page, as in many cases this is
what will actually appear, rather than what the might otherwise create.
"Keywords" supplies essential words for the search engine to associate
with that particular page. It also gives your page a chance to come up
if someone types in any of the words listed. For example, someone might
enter "email" which will match with one of the keywords in the tag.
Without that tag, there would be no chance at all, since "email" doesn't
appear on the page or in the description tag.
Search engines like HotBot and Infoseek will consider keysearch
enginewords included in metatags; others such as Lycos don't read them
at all, so meta tags are not the answer to web producers' dreams. In
fact, search engines can penalize or even exclude pages that appear to
be abusing metatags, or spamming. This might be because a word is
repeated hundreds of times on a page to increase the frequency rating.
TERM AND DEFINITION
URL ("U-R-L" or "earl") [Abbreviation of Uniform Resource Locator]:
The address of a website or document on the Web (e.g. www.bbc.co.uk). It is
the simplest way to find a site you know exists - key in the address
exactly as its written and enter it directly in the location bar of your
browser. If it doesn't work, recheck every full stop and slash in the
address. If it still doesn't work the link may be old or the website
might be 'down'.
FINDING STUFF
Meta summary
For further information:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167891
In summary - what influences search engines: The first 25 words on the
page are key to the way the page will be indexed Title tags are also
very important - they contain information about whose site the page
belongs to as well as key words Definitely add meta description and
meta keyword tags to your web pages. Some search engines will ignore
them, but others will give you a boost if you have them.
TERM AND DEFINITION
Flash: Flash is an animation format. Because the file sizes are small
it is popular on the internet. To play a Flash file you will need the
Flash plug-in. See also Plug-in.
FINDING STUFF
Portals, Gateways and Directories
The accepted way of getting to the information you want on the Web has
traditionally been through search engines, but increasingly people are
accessing sites through portals: managed gateways to the internet. These
vary from huge commercial partnerships aimed at the mass market, through
local community networks, to highly-focused services that act as ways in
to both information on the internet and academic databases in subject
areas.
In the best of these, each link includes a brief description of the
site's contents, and only sites of high quality and relevance are
listed. This analysis is what sets the really useful ones apart from the
more usual (and less helpful) 'list of links and services' type. It all
comes down to personal preference, but remember there's a huge range of
ways of both accessing the internet and getting to information.
Experiment to find the way or ways that suit you. For some years now,
academic institutions, libraries and museums worldwide have realized it
would be a good idea to work towards a common standard for metadata,
(data about data), allowing the rich online resources which are being
built up to join forces and interact.
Acknowledging that web searches could become far more effective if more
data was catalogued in a uniform way, the World Wide Web consortium, the
industry body that regulates standards on the Web, http://w3c.org
is
hard at work on an international metadata project
http://www.w3.org/Metadata to establish protocols for
cataloguing digital
data.
TERM AND DEFINITION
Frames: Frames are a feature of HTML that allow several different pages
to be displayed in one window at the same time. Lots of websites use
frames to keep a standard navigation bar on screen at all times as you
move around the website. However frames have many disadvantages. They
make pages more difficult to print and they make pages more difficult to
bookmark (because the browser may print or bookmark one of the frames
you can see but not the one with the information you want). See also
HTML. See also Bookmark.
FINDING STUFF
Loading the information
Your favourite search engine has obligingly found you what you were
looking for. What do you do next? It should be a matter of following a
link straight from the results page, but if there are 15 or even 50
suggested links that you might want to investigate later, you could:
write them down print the page save the page to your C: or A: drives
(hard disk/floppy disk) copy them all to a specially created folder in
your favorites/bookmarks. If you'd like to go to the first suggestion
straightaway, try the direct link, or you can always type the URL into
the address bar.
TERM AND DEFINITION
Scanner: A device which reads images or printed material and converts
them into a digital format which the computer can then process. Scanned
images can be used in desktop publishing or added to web pages. Scanned
documents can be opened in a word processor and edited.
FINDING STUFF
Printing pages
To print a webpage, click the icon of a printer on your browser at the
top of your page. This will print the webpage you are looking at on
whichever printer you've selected. For many people with modern word
processing packages, this will be just like printing out a text
document. Of course, you do have to have a printer set up first! Some
pages, however, don't print very well, particularly if they use colored
type on patterned backgrounds. Check to see if there's a special
'printable version' on offer.
TERM AND DEFINITION
Signature file: A signature file is a piece of text that can be inserted
automatically at the end of an email message when it is sent. Most
people use the signature file to include their name and contact details
- it saves typing them out every time you send a message - but some
include disclaimers, copyright messages, thoughts for the day, or even
pictures made up from text characters, e.g.
_____
/ \
| 0 0 |
| v |
| \_/ |
\____/
FINDING STUFF
Copying and pasting text
If you find a site packed with information that's relevant to your
search, it might be useful to cut and paste text from the webpage to
another application, such as the notes you're preparing for your essay
in a Word document. Be aware that there are significant copyright
restrictions on doing this. You may simply be able to highlight the
text you want on the surface of the page and then copy it elsewhere,
just as you would if you were cutting and pasting within a word
processing package. If this doesn't work... Try going to 'view' in your
browser, and selecting 'source'. This will take you to the raw code that
makes up the webpage. If you hunt around you should be able to find the
paragraphs of text that you're interested in. Again, simply highlight
the text, copy it and paste it wherever you wish to store it. See also:
saving images; saving webpages.
Boolean operators give precise results
when searching Internet
When doing a search, use keywords called Boolean operators. Not all
search engines operate the same but in most this will get you more
precise results. For example: You are searching for information on
growing mushrooms. So you enter "growing mushrooms. Now you will get
thousands of hits that include either word. If you add (capitalized) AND
in "growing AND mushrooms" you will get only hits that included both
words.
Another help is to add the capital letters NOT. Lets say you are doing
research on certain types of corn. You could add NOT pop, NOT sweet
corn. This again will help narrow down the results.
NEAR added between two words means you will get results that have these
two words within 10 words of each other. Otherwise you will usually
get hundreds of hits that both words appear anywhere.
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