Internet Addresses:

Most Internet addresses use the following syntex:

http//xxxx.yyyy.zzz/aaaa/bbbb/ccc.htm(html)

Where: http:// is standard
xxxx can be anything but most of the time is www
yyyy can be anything
zzz is limited to three characters at this time and signify domain such as government (gov) nonprofit (org) commercial (com) and others.
/aaa/bbb/ccc are the filenames on the server
.htm or html signify the type of file but may not be used in the address.

Search Engines:

These are servers that can be used to search for Internet sites based on "key words" that you tell the search engine to look for. The best search engines are listed on the Internet Launching Pad which is on the Welcome page to NACNET. Note that NACNET also has its own search engine to find topics on NACNET. Search engines are also found in various places within your browser. For example, in Netscape 4.0 you can click on the "Search" icon which will take you to the most popular search engines.

Key words to type into the search engine must be logically related to the topic you are interested in and you may wish to try different key words for a particular topic. For example, if you want a lesson on the program MS Word, try "Word lessons" and try "Word instruction". Note, the search engine is case sensitive and the "W" in word was capitalized because it refers to a specific word processing program.

Setting Bookmarks

"Book Marks" are Internet addresses that you want to save. It is like an address book for Internet sites.

You save the Internet address by clicking on the Book Mark icon on your tool bar, or by clicking on the section of the menu bar where the book marks are located. For example, in Netscape 4.0 the book marks are located under "Communicator" on the menu bar. A drop down menue will show "Save Book Marks". Just click.

Most browsers permit you to organize the book marks into folders and files.

Saving To File:

Once you find a site that you are interested in you may want to save Internet time charges, or look at the details of the site at a later time. You can do this by clicking on "File" (located on the tool bar of your browser) and clicking on "Save As" which will give you a dialog box where you set the data path to the place where you want to save the information. Later, you can use your browser "off line" by clicking on "File" on the tool bar, and clicking on "Open Page" or "Open file" (depending on the browser) which will open a dialog box where you can browse for the file that you have saved on your computer.

You can save images by right clicking on the image and clicking on "Save Image As" which will open a dialog box where you can set your data path for the image that you want to save.

Printing:

Tip: If you choose to use the print capabilities of the browser be sure to change the background color, if any, to white. This can be done by changing the color options in the "preferences" section of the browser.

An alternate method would be to use "Save As" (File menu bar) and save as text (txt). Be sure to change the filename from .html to .txt. The graphics will not be saved.

Note: Some sites have extremely large files with many pages of material when printed out. You must scroll to the bottom of the site page to determine the approximate size of the printout.

 

Copy To Clipboard:

Another method of saving and printing would be to copy the material to the clipboard (as you learned to do in the MS Word class), calling up the "Clipboard Viewer" from "Start\Programs\Accessories\Clipbpard Viewer" and using "Save As" to save the file. The graphics will not be saved.

Sound and Graphics:

If you are not receiving sound and graphics, the "preferences" section of the browser may have to be adjusted. There is normally a check box in the browser section that must be checked for sound and graphics to be enabled.

However, the browser that you have may not have a "plug in" for sound. If you have the appropriate check box checked and still do not received embedded sound, download the sound plug-in from the browser manufacturer such as Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer. NACNET offers a quick way to download a sound plug-in on its home page http://www.nacnet.org

Don't forget to install the plug-ins by running "Start/Run" and browse for the location where you downloaded the program. Normally, you download to the "Plug-In" section where your browser is located. (For example C:\Netscape\Programs\Plug-ins)

You can save sound files by right clicking on the sound source icon and clicking on "Save Sound As" or "Save MIDI" depending on the type of "Plug-In" that you have.