Lab Session

What is the INTERNET

Cyberspace: termed by William Gibson in his fantasy novel Neuromancer.

Main Services on the Internet

WWW Web Browser (e.g. Netscape): Software on your machine that works with the WWW. It organizes the WWW for you.
- Software tools transforming the binary data of the net into pictures, text, movies, and sound.
E-mail
Newsgroups text oriented
IRS Internet Relay Chat

Why is it so big?

1. It works with global standards.

One of the most important standards is the idea of a global identification of files. This is called the Unique Resource Location (URL).

Standardized components of an URL: http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/Schneider/

http:// , news:, telnet://, mailto://

www2 , www

tltc.ttu

edu , gov, com

/schneider

2. Sharing idea reduces redundancy

A. Computers that are linked on the INTERNET not only share their resources; by design they make their own resources available.

B. If I want to provide the FBI statistics on my homepage, I do not have to copy all the statistics to my computer account. It is sufficient if I link these data providing its URL.

3. The Hypertext principle

Logical structure of information

Netscape or Internet Explorer

(1) Drop down boxes: control of all program functions

FILE EDIT VIEW GO BOOKMARKS OPTIONS DIRECTORY

(2) Buttons to control network browsing

They are a subset of the drop down boxes

(3) Below these buttons you see the current URL location

URL Unique Resource Locator

(4) The large part is data found at this URL. Netscape reads this data of the WWW and displays it as if it were a picture. This picture is also called a page.

(5) Homepage

The first thing that you see on the WWW is a special page, your start page.

If you get lost use the button HOME with the house Icon to go back to your starting point.

(6) Hypertext organization of the pages

Sometimes you click on icons, other times on the underlined text

BACK FORWARD menu icons

GO TO OUR TEACHING HOMEPAGE

Direct access of an URL

Get the URL from your syllabus: http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/Schneider/
Enter the cited html address
beware: URLs can be case sensitive

How to conserve information from the WWW

Print
Save as file
Send by E-mail and share

Four different ways to get WWW information into your word processor:

1. Netscape: block text

Launch your windows word processor: paste

ALT + TAB to toggle between both programs

2. NETSCAPE: click File, click Save As

3. Print a WWW page: click File, click Print

4. Send the document to yourself via E-mail or to another student with whom you collaborate: click FILE, click Mail Document

Searching Information on the Internet

1. Local search in a document "CTRL F"

2. Global Search on the Internet MENU BUTTON: Excite

Directory, Net Search, Choose Excite

A. Hypertext

Education , Universities, American Institutions

B. Keyword

bureau of justice statistics

3. Combining the local and global search

Some popular search engines

AltaVista HOME http://www.altavista.com/

Excite http://www.excite.com/

Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/

Infoseek http://infoseek.go.com/

Google http://www.google.com/ (My recent favorite)

Example for Category or Hypertext Search