- Web browser
- A program, or piece of software, that runs on your computer and allows you to view web pages. The two most common web browsers are Netscape Communicator, and Internet Explorer.
- Web page
- A document published on the World Wide Web.
- Web site
- a collection of pages published on the World Wide Web by the same author(s).
- Home page
- This actually has two definitions. It can either refer to the main page of a web site, or the page that comes up in your web browser (Netscape, Internet Explorer) when you first launch that program.
- HTML
- This is an abbreviation for Hypertext Markup Language, the language which is used to format web pages. Many times you'll see the end of a web address ending in .html or .htm which means that the web page you are looking at is formatted in HTML.
- URL
- Uniform Resource Locator. The address for a World Wide Web page or site. When you find a web page or site that you are interested in, you can tell what its address is by looking in the white box that stretches along the top of the web browsing window (see example below).
- Web page title
- These are the words that appear in the bar above your web browsing window. The title of the web page you are on is what gets saved when you add a bookmark to your bookmarks file, so look at this before adding a bookmark to make sure it makes sense.
- Bookmark
- If you are using your computer at home, make sure you figure out how to save
a bookmark in your web browser. The bookmarks file is a place to store web sites
that you would like to visit again. If you are using Netscape Communicator, there
should be a "Bookmarks" menu and you can choose "Add bookmark" any time you are on
a web page that you would like to see again. Note: The bookmark gets saved under the
title of the web page. If you are using the Cabrillo Lab, any bookmarks you save
will be erased as soon as you log out from that computer. There is a way to
save your bookmark file on a floppy disk. If you'd like to do this, you might see
if you can get someone at the lab to help you set it up. You will need to purchase a
floppy disk.
Web Browsing Lab
- You should know how to go to a specific web address (like the syllabus)
- You also need to know how to use the Back and Forward buttons on your web browser.
- You should be comfortable clicking on links within a web page to go to other pages, either on the same site, like the homeworks for this class, or to a different web site, like the questions for the final exam.
The purpose of this lab is to learn:
- How to accurately write the URL for a web page or web site in order to be able to return to that address directly at a later time.
Keeping track of URLs
You must do this portion of the lab online. You do not need to turn anything in. This is just for practice to see if you can accurately write complicated URLS. Click on the links to the six web sites below. After you have clicked on each one, write down the URL that appears in your "Location window" of your web browser. Use the back button to get back to this worksheet. Please note:
- URLs are CASE SENSITIVE (if a letter is capitalized, you'd better write it that way)
- There are NO SPACES in a URL!! If you see something that looks like a space, it is actually a character called the underbar _ (shift-hyphen on your keyboard).
- Some websites have a TILDE character in their URL (this can be found to the left of the 1 on your keyboard. It looks like a squiggly line ~ .
A site about Egypt
__________________________________________________A photo tour of Washington D.C.
__________________________________________________Some dubious information about Thomas Jefferson
__________________________________________________Some more credible information about Thomas Jefferson
__________________________________________________A business selling skincare products
__________________________________________________Some site created by a person with space on an English University web server
__________________________________________________
Now for each item in the list above, go to the File menu of your web browser and choose Open Location. Type in the URL you have written. Did you get to the same page, or did you get an error? If you got an error, go back to that link, and see where you might have made a typo in writing the URL.
Computers are exact! Much of the success of web searching and web browsing depends on your ability to write URLs exactly. The more careful you are when writing URLs, the easier you'll find it to navigate the World Wide Web. If you are getting a lot of errors on these six practice URLs, then you need to learn how to use "Copy" and "Paste" to copy the URLs and paste them into the e-mails you send me. URLS must be exact.