Using the World Wide WebAccess to “Everything”

The World Wide Web is a collection of millions of computers around the world

These computers make information of all kinds available to anyone that wants it

What is the Web?

Most of the information is free, though there are some websites that you must pay to use

Other websites offer goods and services for sale

The free information is growing explosively

What is the Web?

General InformationHobby InformationTravel InformationServicesBad Guys!!!

What kinds of things can I find on the Web?

EncyclopediasNewspapers and MagazinesMaps

General Information

Some encyclopedias are the same as their print versions (except a lot lighter!)

Others provide only overview articles

Encyclopedias

“Wikipedias” allow general public to contribute to the content, so should be taken as the “conventional wisdom” rather than final authority.

Because they are electronic, you can use software to make them easier to read

Encyclopedias

Many newspapers and magazines provide their content on-line.

This makes it possible to keep up with local news in your home town, even when you now live across the country.

Newspapers and Magazines

Some magazines offer “enhanced” articles (more content) on-line than in print

Sometimes, the information is available only to subscribers, but in most cases, the content is free

Newspapers and Magazines

MSN Maps allows you to see maps of the entire country in high detail

MSN Maps provides driving instructions from one place to another (similar to AAA)

Maps

When traveling, MSN Maps can also show nearby points of interest

Maps

Local◦Weather service add-ins can show you

current weather conditions, and storm warnings ◦You can get forecasts for the day

(hourly) or the week

Weather

Anyplace Else◦You can ask for the current weather

from any location that the service is available for, delivered to your computer

Weather

Unless you are the only person in the world who pursues a particular hobby, it’s likely that information about it is available on the web

Some of this information is provided by businesses selling supplies for your hobby

Hobby Information

Other sites are created by enthusiasts who share your interests

Discussion groups allow you to share stories or ask for help from others with similar interests

Hobby Information

Salt and Pepper Shaker Collecting

Salt and Pepper Shaker Collecting

Salt and Pepper Shaker Collecting

When traveling, you can plan your trip, make reservations, and even buy your tickets on-line

You can use the on-line maps to locate hotels near your destination

Travel Information

You can often see a typical room, and learn what facilities are available at the hotel

For major hotel chains, you can make reservations, including for specific room features, for the dates of your planned stay

Compare flight schedules and costs, including discount services

Travel Information

Purchase tickets for your desired flight, and select preferred seating

Rent a car at the destination, to be picked up on arrival

Travel Information

Government services◦Social Security ◦Taxes◦Medicare

Services

On-line government services include◦Providing information about services

and responsibilities◦Obtaining forms and assistance◦Making appointments for individual

meetings

Services

Private services◦Medical information – Make

appointments, get reports, etc.◦Pharmacy – Order refills, check

information about prescriptions

Services

◦Home – Locate local contractors, check contractors◦Music and/or movie purchase and

rentals

Services

Not all information on the web is trustworthy, and not all websites are safe

Bad Guys!

Some sites will try to get you to provide personal information that can be used for identity theft◦As a rule, unless you know who you are

communicating with, you should only confirm, never supply personal information on-line

Bad Guys!

Some websites will attempt to place programs on your computer that will use it for criminal activities◦You should have, and maintain,

antivirus and anti-spyware software on your computer

Bad Guys!

In general, the web is neither more nor less dangerous than telephone or mail business◦Be similarly cautious, and you’ll be fine◦Remember, if it sounds to good to be

true, it probably is!

Bad Guys!

Let’s Get Online!

A ComputerA connection to the internet◦This will be provided by a local

“Internet Service Provider”◦Your ISP will probably work either

through your telephone service or your cable television provider

What Do I Need?

Dial-Up◦Your computer uses your telephone line to

connect to the internet◦When on-line, you cannot make or receive

telephone calls◦Available anywhere there is a telephone (but

may be long-distance in some cases)◦Relatively slow (fast enough for email, not fast

enough for watching on-line video)

Types of Internet Connection

“Broadband”◦Can be many times faster than dial-up

connections◦Can be either through your telephone

or cable television provider◦Does not interfere with your telephone◦Always connected

Types of Internet Connection

A “web browser”A web browser is the program that

converts the computer language messages received from the internet into text, pictures, and sounds that you can interpret

What else do I need?

Internet Explorer comes with Windows Vista, and will be used for this training

What else do I need?

Open the Start Menu

Start Your Browser!

At the top of the left side, locate “Internet” ◦Below this, it says

“Internet Explorer” unless you have selected an alternate browser

Start Your Browser!

Move the mouse cursor over the “Internet Explorer” icon

Start Your Browser!

Click the left mouse button once

The browser will start

Start Your Browser!

What am I looking at?

When you first connect to the web, there must be somewhere that you connect to

This is called the “home page”

Your Browser’s Home Page

The home page is one that your browser shows unless you tell it to show you something else

In addition, your browser shows some controls and information

Your Browser’s Home Page

In the upper left of the browser window you will see two circles with arrows

These are the “Back” and “Next” buttons

The Browser Controls

Clicking the “Back” button will return you to the page you came from

If you have just pressed the back button, the “Next” button will take you forward to the place you started

The Browser Controls

Just to the right of the “Next” button you’ll see a long “box” with an odd string of letters

This is the Address Box◦We’ll talk about this more later

The Browser Controls

Just below “Back” and “Next” buttons are a small “star” and a second star with a “+” covering part of it

The star shows a list of “favorites”

The Browser Controls

◦In the beginning, it shows a list of sites that Microsoft’s developers hope will be favorites

The “Plus Star” lets you add new locations to your favorites◦We’ll also discuss this in more detail

The Browser Controls

Just to the right of the “Address Bar” you will see a pair of arrows, one pointing up and one pointing down◦This is the “reload” button

Browser Controls

Next to the “reload” button is a red “X” in a box, called the Stop button◦This forces to browser to stop trying to

get a page that is taking a long time to arrive

Browser Controls

To the right of the Stop Button is a box with a gray label reading “Live Search” on the left, and with a magnifying glass symbol on the right

Browser Controls

This is the “Search” box, and is one of the ways to find what you are looking for on the World Wide Web◦We’ll be discussing “Search” in detail

Browser Controls

Below the Search Box you’ll see a row of small icons◦We’ll discuss three of these in some

detail

Browser Controls

At the left, there is a small “house” icon◦This is the “Home” control

Browser Controls

◦Where ever you are, clicking the Home control will return you to your home page

Browser Controls

In about the middle of the row, there is an icon that, if you have a good imagination, looks something like a printer◦Clicking this button will print the current page

to paper

Browser Controls

Next over is a “Page” button (menu)This is a very important button when

you find a page that is hard to read because it is too small

Browser Controls

If you click the “Page” button, you’ll see a menu

Browser Controls

There are two controls on this menu that are of particular importance to elders◦Zoom◦Text Size

Browser Controls

The Zoom sub-menu will allow you to make the entire page up to four times larger

Browser Controls

This makes the text and the pictures larger

Browser Controls

The “Text Size” menu allows you to make just the text larger, leaving the pictures the same size

Browser Controls

There are four ways to navigate the web, which we’ll try in order◦Web Addresses◦Links◦Favorites◦Search

How do I find things?

Every “page” on the World Wide Web has a unique address, just as every building in a city has its own address

A web address will often look something like: ◦http://www.microsoft.com

Let’s look at this in parts

Web Addresses

This part of the address tells the browser that you are looking at a web page

http://

When you are typing a web address into your browser, you can generally skip this part◦This is like adding “The postal address

is” above the address on an envelope you mail

http://

This is short for “World Wide Web”Again, you can generally skip this

part, because your browser will assume it

If you type www. as part of an address that doesn’t have it, you will not get where you want to go

www.

This part of the address is similar to the city part of a postal address◦Large organizations like Microsoft or

IBM might have thousands of individual addresses within the “city”◦Small groups, like the Salt and Pepper

Shaker collectors might have only a few

Microsoft.

This portion of the address indicates what kind of organization this is◦.com = business or general◦.net = general ◦.gov = government◦.edu = school or other educational

institution

.com

After the main part of an address, you may find a long and complex bunch of letters and symbols◦http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/

details.aspx?FamilyID=46f72df1-e46a-4a5f-a791-09f07aaa1914&DisplayLang=en

The “street address”

This tells the computer that is sending you information the exact location of the information you want◦In examples like this one, you should

not even try to type that address!

The “street address”

In some cases, the path makes more sense◦http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/t

In this case, I want to go to the Project Gutenberg site, and browse authors that start with “t”

The “street address”

The World Wide Web is called a “web” because pages can have connections to lots of other pages

The entire web is tied together like a spider’s web

The connections between pages are called “links”

Links

In many cases (unless they are changed deliberately), links look like blue, underlined text

Links

If you click on a link, you will “go” to a new page

Links

Clicking on links on this page can take you to yet another page

Sometimes you find yourself somewhere that you didn’t want to go

In those cases, you can return using the “back” button of the browser

Links

To use the back button, place the point of the mouse cursor over the “left” pointing arrow at the top of the browser window

Links

Click the left mouse button once This will take you “back” to the page

that linked to this oneOf course, once you find an exciting

place, you may not remember how you got there

Fortunately, you don’t have to

Links

Once you locate a page that you’d like to visit again, you can add it to your list of “Favorites”◦These are also called “bookmarks”

Favorites

Putting a page in your “Favorites” is exactly like adding a friend to your address book (except that the computer does all the hard work)

To add an address to your “Favorites,” you first find the page whether by following links or typing in the address

Favorites

While the page is showing, move the mouse pointer over the “Plus-Star” icon in the top left cluster of controls

Click the left button once

Favorites

This should cause a new window to appear asking where the “Favorite” should be stored

Favorites

If the name in the blue area makes sense to you, just click “Add”

Favorites

If you’d prefer this page to have a different name, just type it on the keyboard, then click “Add”

Favorites

Once a page has been added to your favorites, you can return to it at any time

To see your favorites, move the tip of the mouse pointer over the “Star” control

Favorites

Click the left mouse button once◦This will open your

list of favorites

Favorites

Move the tip of the mouse pointer over the name of the page you want to visit

Favorites

Click the left button onceThis will take you directly to the page

you chose

Favorites

But what if you don’t know where the information you want is?

The Power of Search!

The World Wide Web started as a way for a few college professors to share ideas

Searching the Web

In Feb. 2007, there were an estimated 30 billion web pages, in 108 million distinct websites!

No one can keep track of them, or find all of the important information just by looking through them

Searching the Web

But, this is something that computers (great big ones!) are good at

Those big computers are called “search engines”

You can use search engines as much as you want, and they are free!

Searching the Web

Remember that your browser controls included a “Live Search” box?

How Do I Search?

This is your quickest way to use a search engine

How Do I Search?

Move your mouse pointer over the search box and click once◦This tells your computer that when you

type, it should send the text “here”

How Do I Search?

◦You should see a blinking vertical line at the edge of the search box◦So long as the blinking line is in the box,

it doesn’t matter where the mouse cursor goes

How Do I Search?

Type what you are looking for into the search box◦Chocolate cake recipe (25,000,000)◦Deer hunting in Pennsylvania

(2,000,000)◦Musical saw (24,000,000)

How Do I Search?

The “best” sites are usually among the first found

You will also find sites that use most of the words you searched for, but not together

How Do I Search?

One use of the World Wide Web is to shop for things that are not available locally◦Products of small companies that

you’ve moved away from◦Specialty products that have limited

local demand

Shopping on the Web

You can locate and purchase products through “e-tailers” (on-line stores) using your credit card

Your purchases are shipped to you, and generally arrive within a week

Shopping on the Web

You will be sending your credit card number over the internet, which might be overheard

But Is It Safe?

Most reputable dealers have protections in place, through “secure” settings◦(If a dealer doesn’t have a secure

purchase option, they probably are not reputable)

But Is It Safe?

Usually, when entering a secure page, you will see a window announcing the fact◦This window only appears when your

browser starts communicating safely

How Do I Know If Its Secure?

You will remember that web addresses start with the code http://

A secure page will start with https://◦The “s” in that code means that your

computer is talking to the other computer is a special code that can’t be read by anyone else

How Do I Know If It’s Secure?

The World Wide Web is a huge collection of computers around the world that will send you information◦Pictures◦Text (words)◦Movies◦Music

Review/Summary

To access the Web, you need a computer with a connection to the “Internet”

You access the Web through a program on your computer called a “browser”

Review/Summary

You can find information by ◦Knowing its address◦Following a link to it◦Returning to your “favorites”◦Searching with a search engine

Review/Summary

Some web sites will sell you things◦In general, don’t give your credit card

number to a website that doesn’t have a “secure” purchasing system◦These start with “https://”

Review/Summary