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The Web is the most colourful and, at the moment, the most exciting part of the net. These 'pages' are now full multimedia experiences. They comprise of a few basic componants: Text, Pictures, Links, and Urls. Text and pictures are self explanitary, they are text or pictures within the page. But the others I shall explain. |
Links are the coloured text, usualy red or blue, that when clicked transport you to annother page or annother part of the same page. They can also be used to control Netscape. You may find that when there is an E-Mail address there is also a link that automatically activates the E-Mail part of Netscape. |
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Url is short for Universal Resource Location. In plain English it is the 'address' that tells the computer where to look for the page that you have requested. The Url appears in the thin text bar below the buttons at the top of the page. |
A good place to start on the Web if you have never used it before, are specialised serchers called "Search Engines". To use these you simply enter one or more keywords (eg swimming, cats, dairy products, danish hamsters, etc) and then press the submit button. The different engines that are available to you from this site are just a few of many. They have different levels of complexity, some just list pages while others give a small descripton or even the first 10 or so words from that page. Which ever you choose to use is up to you, but as I said this is only the starting point of the web. |
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E-Mail is the most used part of the Internet. It involves sending 'Electronic Messages' or mail around the world at lightning speed. As well as sending text based messages you can also 'attach' documents. |
These can be files you have written in a word proccessor or even sound and graphics. Click on the link to enable the Netscape e-mail utility. An E-Mail address consists of the name of the person or company, and the provider or server they have their acount on (eg twopiers@easynet.co.uk), there are no spaces in the name. |
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News groups are not so much for getting news (although you can), but a place to share info, tips, even shareware. They are disscusion groups, people talking about nearly every subject there is to talk about. For that reason there are a lot of groups, about 16,000 on the Easynet server at the moment. To the left is what you see when opening a program called NewsWatcher for the Macintosh. The left hand window is the list of groups, and the right hand window is the contents of one of those groups. Simply double click on an item to read what that person has to say. If there is an icon that has binary on it in that persons window you can double click on it to download a picture or some more text. |
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FTP stands for 'File Transfer Protacol'. It is used to transfer files that are to large to be E-Mailed from one computer to another. The files are deposited on a server ready for the other person to access them. They are deposited and retreived with dedicated FTP software, one of which is Fetch. |
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You simply enter the name of the server (eg. easyweb.easynet.co.uk), the user name (in our case the first bit of our E-Mail address (twopiers), the password, and lastly the directory. If you are looking for Two Piers files they will be in the directory called 'co-op'. This brings you to a standard open diologue. |
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You will see a list of files, any of which you can view by selecting it with one click of the mouse then by hitting get file. It will then ask you where you want to save it, choose that then hit OK. To place a file on the server press the "Put File" button, select the file within the 'open' diologue and hit OK. It will then appear in the list you are currently looking at. You may also access other peolpes servers if they allow it. Many 'public' servers exist (these are ones that don't require a password to access). You can access some from the shortcuts pop-up menu within Fetch. You can find others by serfing the web and talking to other people in the know. |
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IRC stands for 'Internet Relay Chat'. It is a way of 'talking' to other people in real time (Instantly) over a series of servers.
The program to use is Ircle. When Ircle hasopened up go to the File menu and select 'Open Connection' (or press command-K). A load of writing will scroll down the screen and then your away.
First you will need to pick a name for yourself. Do this by typing "/nick newnick" ( where newnick is the name you want to have).
To talk to people you have to join a channel. Go up to the Short Cuts menu and select join.... . Then type the name of the desired channel (Brighton is a good one to start with).
Then you will see that the window named Userlist has some names in it (unless there is no-one on the channel). These are other people on the channel.
You type intoa page that not only you can see but so can everyone else who is in the userlist. At the bottom of the screen is a grey strip. Everything you type apears here first. To put it on the page press return or enter.
For a full set of commands, functions, and general help, select Help from the Apple menu.
Warning - This is highly addictive and should be done in moderate amounts.
