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Copyright © 2003–2008 Donald M MacLean. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license and a link to the FSF are included here. |
Is This Course For You?
This is a crash course in surfing for Web novices.
The rest of you can smirk contemptuously
and press the Back button now.
Do not pass GO. Do not collect $100.
The Unnecessary Parts
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When you see a mortar board in the left margin, it means that the indented text beside it contains technical details that you don't need to know in order to surf the Web. So unless you WANT to know, just ignore these sections. (However, if you aspire to a Gold Star on the course, you will have to read them. They include things that could appear on the final exam.) |
World Wide Web, WWW, 3W, The Web
These terms all mean the same thing,
namely the millions of pages, such as this one,
on computers all over the world,
which can be accessed by you with a "browser".
The rest of this course describes the main components
of the Web that you need to know about in order to "surf" it.
What is a Browser?
(aside from a customer who reads magazines
at the newsagents without buying them)
In the simplest terms,
a Browser is simply "something" on your computer
that knows how to fetch pages from the Web
and present them to you in a "window".
The parts of the window that do not change
when you move from one page to another,
for example the Scroll Bar on the side of the window,
the "Back" button (or left arrow)
and the menus ("File", "Edit", etc) at the top
belong to the browser.
The pictures and text,
such as the words you are reading right now,
which change when you move to another page
(or use the scroll bar),
are not part of the browser.
These things are the "contents" of the browser window.
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Another thing that changes when you move to a different page is the title in the "Title bar" right at the top of the browser window. But isn't the title bar part of the browser (not its contents), asks the astute student. That question shows that you are paying attention and are well on your way to a gold star for the course. Yes, the Title bar is part of the browser itself (not part of its contents). But the title it shows is a little bit of content that "temporarily becomes part of the browser". (It doesn't change when you scroll, for example.) |
The two commonest browsers are Firefox and Internet Explorer. You are using right now to read this page. You can see the browser name right at the top of the window in the "title bar", following the title of this page.
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Getting a bit more technical, a Browser is a graphics program which knows how to format html documents and present them in a window, and understands the http protocol. These things are explained below. |
How Many Pages Make a Page?
Many people and most companies have "home pages",
containing information about themselves.
Something that can be confusing for a beginner
in the sport of web surfing, is that a home "page"
can—and usually does—consist of many pages.
This confusion has arisen because a browser window
has no concept of page breaks.
You just keep "scrolling down" until you reach the end
of what might take 25 pages to print out on paper.
So "home page" means approximately
"all the information
about a person, company or organization
which is accessible at the same place on the web".
That information may be in many different
physical files on a computer,
and might require hundreds of paper pages
to print out. Or it might only consist of one
file, which could be printed on a single piece
of paper.
As an example, the Mount Royal High School Class of 59 (MRHS59) has a "home page" which consists of many pages, containing the year book, pages for each individual class, bios of classmates, etc.
Site
A "site" is sort of a "place" on the Web.
You would have to try very hard to come up with
a definition of "site" which would consistently
allow you distinguish a site from a "home page".
For our purposes we can assume that the two
terms mean the same thing.
For example, all the pages belonging to
the Mount Royal High School Class of '59 home page
collectively constitue a site.
Domain
A Domain is a "registered site".
Examples of domains are amazon.com,
which is a large Internet bookstore,
and macleans.net,
which is where the MRHS Class of 59 site is located.
The last part of the domain name,
com, net, etc
is the top-level domain.
It's like the last line (province or country)
of the address on an envelope.
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All the domains are registered in a "database",
which is very much like a telephone book.
If you want to make a phone call to Archibald Smith
(and if you don't happen to have his phone number in your head),
you need to translate his name into a telephone number
by looking it up in the telephone book,
since the telphone doesn't understand names.
Similary, when your browser wants to talk to
macleans.net
the name gets looked up in a database,
and translated into the number
62.119.28.110,
which is the "telephone number"
(if you want to impress your grandchildren,
just call it the "IP address") of the computer
on which the page you are reading resides.
Once you have got Archibald on the telephone,
you can ask to speak to his daughter Abigail.
But you can't look her up in the telephone book,
unless she has a separate telphone of her own.
Similarly, once your browser has got to
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Server
A "server" is simply a computer on which Web pages reside.
The page you are reading now
actually resides on a server located in Sweden.
Addresses or urls
In the early days, the "address" of a Web page
was always called a "url"
(pronounced you-are-ell),
and even today, if you want to impress people
(for example your grandchildren) with your Web
expertise, you can still use that term.
However, modern usage seems to be shifting towards
plain old "address", or "Web address" (as opposed
to "email address", etc)
The url
for this page is what you see
in the "Address Bar" at the top of this page:
A typical url
is built up this way:
Take Me To your url
If you want to go to a site,
and have the url
for one of its pages,
just write (or copy and paste) the
url
into the Address Bar and then press Return
(the big key on the right of your keyboard
with an arrow that goes down and then turns left).
This always works (unless you've got hold
of an "old" url,
whose page is no longer available).
If the url is underlined,
try just clicking on it.
This sometimes works.
Instead of pressing Return on your keyboard, if you see a "Go" button on the Address Bar, you can left-click on it with the mouse. (Move the mouse until the arrow is over "Go", then press the left button on the mouse—or the only button on the mouse, if there is only one.) This has the same effect: it takes you to the page whose url is in the Address Bar.
Regardless of which method you use, once the page is displayed in your browser, we say that you are "visiting" that page (or site).
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Even though it feels as though that's what you are doing, in fact, you are not. It's the other way around. The page is visiting you! What happens, is that your browser bows deeply, and repectfully requests the server, on which the page (whose url is displayed in the Address Bar) resides, to send (a copy of) that page to your computer. Your browser then formats it and presents it to you. When you scroll the page up and down in your browser, or click on a link, you are doing these things on YOUR computer, and the server that the page came from knows nothing about what you are doing. |
Meaning of "url"
No one really cares what
"url" is an acronym for any more.
You can think of it as an "Unimaginably Recondite Label"
if you want to (which makes about as much sense
as the original term, "Uniform Resource Locator").
But "url" is easier.
Mark-up Languages
A Mark-up language is one in which ordinary text
is interspersed with information as to
what role the text fulfills.
Conceptually, you might have something like
"Here comes a top-level header",
followed by the actual header.
Then you might have
"Here's some ordinary text",
followed by some ordinary text.
And so on.
A Markup Language provides a very flexible and efficient means of storing text and moving it around on the Internet. There is no need to store or transport information about type faces and sizes, margin settings, indentation, page breaks, and the like. The browser, word processor, etc which presents the text to the viewer makes the decisions about these things. This means that the same page can be presented very differently, depending on whether it is being sent to a black-and-white printer, a computer screen, or a mobile phone.
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For example, a short document might be defined in a
(fictitious) mark-up language as follows:
In this mark-up language, all "mark-up" appears on separate lines introduced by exclamation marks. It is up to the browser, printer, etc to decide whether it wants to display the Level 1 header in Times-Roman 24, Arial 18, solid black, or blinking chartreuse. Corresponding remarks apply to the paragraph text. Although the sentences are written on separate lines, they will be "flowed" together, so that the pargraph will fit between the margins of the window, printed page, etc where they are to be presented. |
Hypertext
Hypertext is text that is "more than just text",
in that it contains "connections", or links, to text
(or anything else) located somewhere else.
(Links are explained below.)
html
html
means "Hypertext Mark-up Language".
It is the mark-up language
in which all of the world's millions of web pages
(such as this one) are written.
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In html,
the document shown above under the heading
"Mark-up Languages" could be defined as follows:
<BODY>
<H1>A Short Page</H1>
This is a sentence.
This is another one, slightly longer.
This is the last one.
</BODY>
Unlike our fictitious mark-up language above, html permits mark-up "tags" to be interspersed with "ordinary" text on the same line. The astute student may have noticed that although this html excerpt contains mark-up languge, it does NOT contain any links, and is thus technically not hypertext! Ahem, yes. But it COULD contain links, and that is the criterium which is used in practice. But you get a silver star for diligence! If you are using Firefox, you can see the html in which this page is written by going to the 'View' menu on your browser (top left) and choosing 'Page Source'. The html will then pop up in another window. If you are using Internet Explorer, you may or may not be able to do this. However, even if Explorer deigns to let you see the source, it won't be a great experience. The raw code will all be thrown at you in black and white, exactly as written. Firefox, on the other hand, colour-codes the different html components and italicizes comments, which makes it all much easier to read. |
http
http
means "Hypertext Transport Protocol".
It is the body of rules which defines
how html pages
get moved around the world on the Web.
We don't need to know anything about
http
in order to surf the web.
In fact we wouldn't even need to know about its existence,
if it weren't for the fact that
urls to Web pages
always begin with http://....
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Now why did he say
"urls to Web pages",
wonders the astute student, aspiring to a gold star.
Aren't all urls,
"to Web Pages". Ahem, well, er, no.
A url
can begin with things like ftp://....
But that's in the advanced course.
It is mentioned here only by way of explaining
why we need to write http://...
at the beginning of Web urls.
If all urls began this way,
then the system could insert it for us automatically!
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Hyperlinks
When you see words underlined on a Web page
it means that they are so-called "hyperlinks".
If you "click" on one of these links—i.e.
put the mouse pointer over the link
and press the mouse button
(the left one, if you have more than one)—you
will be whisked away on a magic carpet
to some other place, which could be
somewhere else on the same page,
another page on the same site,
or some site on the other side of the world.
If you want to get back to where you were before you
clicked on the link, press the 'Back' button
(or left arrow) at the top of the page.
Links and Fried Apples
We all learned at our mother's knee
(or possibly our father's elbow)
that a link is something which connects
two things together in some way,
physically or figuratively.
How can underlined words be called a "link"
(hyper or not). What do they connect together?
Isn't this like a magnet with only one pole?
Well, perhaps its more like "pommes frittes", which really means "fried apples". If you were to say "pommes de terres frittes" to a Frenchmen – OK, OK, Frenchperson – (s)he would wonder where you had been for the past century. The underlined words are really "the source of a hyperlink", i.e. the "from" end of the link. But you'll never hear anyone saying so.
The Ubiquitous White Hand
Actually, (the source end of) a hyperlink does not
always consist of underlined words.
Almost anything on a Web page—for
example a picture, or a town on a map—can
be a hyperlink.
(We're going to stop saying 'the source end of ...'
from now on).
Then how can I know what is and what isn't a hyperlink? Aside from underlined words, the only thing you can go by is The White Hand. Whenever the mouse pointer, which is usually an arrow, turns into a white hand, you are over a hyperlink, and pushing the (left) mouse button at that point will start you off on your magic journey.
To watch the arrow turn into a White Hand, move the mouse pointer over these underlined words. The underlined words are a link to the heading of this section. Pressing the mouse button should result in the heading moving to the top of your browser window. That's what a link to another point within the same page does: it moves the target (the "to" end of the link) to the top of the browser window. Go ahead and try it!
| As an example of a link that does not consist of underlined words, the icon on the right is a link to the Table of Contents (TOC) at the top of this page. The TOC consists of underlined links to each of the headings on the course. If you click on the icon, it will take you to the TOC. Once you get there, you can click on the link "The Ubiquitous White Hand" to get back here. Go ahead and try it! |
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Now lets be a bit more adventurous. This link is to another page, where you will be provided with instructions for getting back here. Go ahead and try it!
The Status Bar
The horizontal bar constituting the bottom
of the browser window (the picture frame)
is called the Status Bar.
When you hold the mouse pointer over a link
(so that the pointer turns into a white hand),
the url
of the "to-end" of the link
is usually shown in the Status Bar.
This lets you know where you would be taken,
if you clicked on the link.
Try holding it over one of the (blue) links
in the preceding section.
"The page cannot be found"
The remote site reports
that there is no such page.
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What have you done wrong? Probably nothing! The most likely explanation is that the page owner has simply moved the page to somewhere else on the site, or possibly edited it and renamed it—perhaps totally unaware that someone in the world outside has saved a link to that page
If this is what has happened,
you may be able to find the page by
"walking the hierarchy".
This involves repeatedly chopping off
whatever follows the last slash.
For example, if
http://www.aaa.bbb/ccc/ddd/eee.html
zaps you with 404, try
http://www.aaa.bbb/ccc/ddd.
If that doesn't help, try
http://www.aaa.bbb/ccc, etc.
If the url contains a date, for example http://www.localrag.com/20031223/Xmaspudding.html, it is very likely that the link you have tried to follow is to a newspaper or magazine article, which is no longer available. In this case you could try going to the main page http://www.localrag.com to see if they have a Search function. If they do, you might still be able to find the article in some sort of archive. But then again—you might not!
If you have recently visited the page, it is possible that it has been temporarily removed for maintenance (replacing worn-out letters, oiling the links, etc). In this case, try again later.
"The page cannot be displayed"
The remote site cannot be reached.
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When you get this error, try another site (any other site). If you can't reach that site either, you should begin to suspect that it is your Internet connection which is down. (Perhaps you forgot to connect?)
If you are able to reach another site, probably the site you want is experiencing technical problems, or is down for maintenance. Try once again. If that gives you no joy, do something else for a while and come back later.
The messages shown here are the ones used by Internet Explorer. In general, Firefox will present you with more intellegent messages, for example "Server not found" instead of "The page cannot be displayed".
Window Hide and Seek
"I clicked on the link. But where's the page?"
To save you from being buried under an avalanche of windows,
sites with a lot of links to similar things
often reuse the same "target" window for all links
to the same category of things.
For example there could be a "product page"
for all the links to a company's products.
If you click on such a link,
and the target window happens to be behind some other windows,
it stays behind the other windows,
even though it has received new content.
So you will have to try and find it.
This is a lot easier to do, if you do NOT allow your
browser window to fill the whole screen.
If it does, press the middle symbol
at the top right hand corner of your browser window.
You will then be able to resize the window
by grabbing one of its corners and sliding it
diagonally in or out.
(If you don't know how to do this, ask your local
Guru—or nearest teenager—to show you.)
If you've done this and the target window is still not visible, it may have been collapsed (or "minimized" in the Microsoft jargon), so that it is not on the screen at all. In this case you will have to find it and expand it. If you are using an ordinary PC, click on the Firefox or Internet Explorer button on the "Task Bar" at the bottom of the screen. This will present you with a list of all current windows. Just click on the one you want. (In the likely event that you don't know which one you want, you will just have to click on each one in turn.)
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If you press the right mouse button when the mouse pointer is over the Firefox or Internet Explorer button on the Task Bar, you can choose to "Tile" all the browser windows. This will let you see some of the contents of all the windows at the same time, which should make it easy to find the window you want. The disadvantage with this method, is that all of the browser windows will be made much smaller, so that in order to use them again you will have to resize them manually. |
Junk Windows
Keep popping up all over the place
Unfortunately, when you visit some sites on the Internet,
windows will start popping up all over the place,
perhaps telling you that people are
eavesdropping on your computer,
and that even now someone may be emptying your bank account,
and that your only hope is to order
the Magic Security Wizard for $199.99.
Or something equally horrifying.
Don't pay any attention!
DO NOT press any of the buttons provided in the window,
not even if the button is called "Close" or "Exit".
Instead, press the "X"
in the top right-hand corner of the window which has popped up.
This will cause it to go away.
Sometimes it will come back.
In such cases, first leave the web site you were visiting,
and then press the "X" again.
This ALMOST always works.
Very occasionally you will have to exit all the browser
windows before windows stop popping up.
Then you can restart the browser.
Whatever you do, don't let any of these windows install anything on your computer! Some junk is almost impossible to get rid of without completely reinstalling the Operating System! (If you don't know what an Operating System is, just accept that this is a major job, and that if you have get someone to do it for you, you will probably loose a whole lot of the things that you have installed on your computer in the process.)
Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
Unfortunately, petty (and even some not so petty)
criminals are beginning to discover that stealing
money via the Internet is less stressful,
and potentially more lucrative,
than breaking into houses and shoplifting.
There is absolutely nothing to guarantee that the pop-up window which claims to come from Granny's Home Bakery, and invites you to "click here" in order to recevie a dozen free cinnamon buns delivered straight from the oven to your door, is what it claims to be. On the contrary, it is a safe bet that it is NOT what it claims to be.
I you click on the link, or press on the button—regardless of what it might actually say on the link or button—you could end up intstalling a program on your computer which will spy on you whenever you write a password or credit card number, and send all the information it collects to some address where the cyber-thug can access it.
Or it could install a program that dials a number which costs many $$ per minute (which gets added to your telephone bill). Or it could install a program which causes you—without your intervention— to visit a pornographic site, for which you could then be invoiced. In fact, it could install a program which does anything it wants to!
So remember: whenever a pop-up pops up, press the "X" in the top right-hand corner. If it comes back, first leave the site you were visiting, then press the "X" again.
Firefox can be configured to disallow pop-up windows. What's more, it's flexible, so that you can create a list of sites that you regularly visit and allow those sites (only) to pop up windows.
Don't do it!
If you come to a Web site,
and they ask you to "log on",
or "sign on",
or "become a member",
or "become a gold member"—don't do it!
They are just after your money.
Even if there is no mention of money on the first page,
you will find that before you can do anything interesting,
you will have to pay.
As an example of the sort of thing that can happen, someone recently signed on to a page from which you could obtain free ring signals for your mobile phone. The next month his telephone bill was $1000 more than expected. It turned out that, whilst the ring signals were free, it cost $5 per minute to visit the Web page. His son had spent quit a few minutes trying out the different ring signals on that page.
Even if you only give them your email address, you will very soon end up on one of the mailing lists that the junk mailers use. Just ignore any site that requires you divulge information about yourself and go somewhere else.
The day may come, when you will want to conduct some of your banking over the Internet. Or buy a product from a reliable supplier, such as amazon.com. The best advice in this case is to get your local Guru (see below) to show you how.
Downloading and Installing
Most experienced computer users will
at some time or another
copy a file from another computer on the Internet
to their own computer.
This is called downloading.
The file might contain a photograph,
a document, some music, a program, or something else.
In the case of a program,
it will need to be installed
it on the local computer,
which means roughly telling the computer how to run it.
A good rule of thumb is:
Unless you are absolutely sure
that you know what you are doing,
DON'T DOWNLOAD IT!
If there is something that you think you should have on your computer, ask your local Guru (see below) to help you. It's not a big job when you know how. But installing some things can make a mess of your computer. (An example of such a thing is the program "Gator". DO NOT INSTALL THIS PROGRAM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!)
Plugins
Plugins are programs which are downloaded and
"plugged into" (i.e. installed in) your browser.
There are a few plugins which you will probaby want some day:
| Acrobat Reader | – |
needed to browse sites which contain pages
in proprietary Adobe Acrobat format. Publishing Web pages in proprietary formats goes against the whole spirit of the Web, and having to wait for these pages to be specially formated is a big nuisance. However, there are, unfortunately, a lot of nincompoops out there who don't know any better. |
| Flash | – | needed in order to see flashy animation (usually advertising). Many sites have a Flash intro page, which can usually be skipped by pressing on a link. Most people press this link immediately, since Flash sequences can be painfully slow. However, some of them are well-done and fun to watch—if you've got lots of time. |
| Java | – | needed in order to see Java Applets (small animated coffee cups, etc, which dance around on your screen). This may be pre-installed. |
| QuickTime | – | needed in order to be able to rotate 3-D images with your mouse |
| RealOne Player | – | needed in order to see some video clips and hear some on-line radio programs. (RealOne Player is a competitor to Windows Media Player, which Microsoft has bundled with its Operating System.) |
Your Local Guru
At several points in this course,
you are recommended to ask your local Guru for help.
This is often a case of an advanced operation,
which may only need to be done once,
and where doing it wrong could have disasterous consequences.
Where can you find your Guru? Well, if you don't have any grandsons of your own of high-school age, try opening the window and calling the first male teenager who walks by. Whereas grandsons are usually happy to help in return for a good home-cooked meal or a large piece of chocolate cake, it would probably be a good idea to enter into some sort of business arrangement with the teenager walking by. Probably the same pay scale which applies for teenaged grass-cutters and snow-shovellers would be fine.
There are lots of computer consultants listed in the yellow pages and the help columns of the newspaper, but you don't need anyone that qualified (and expensive!) just to help you get started with Web surfing and email.
Junk Mail
Everyone who uses email has to learn to deal with
junk email, also known as "spam", offering to:
A lot of junk email has subjects such as "hello", "hi", "how are ya", "Re:" etc—or no subject at all. If you want your email to get past the spam filter, give it a relevant subject! Some sites will instruct you to place certain text on the subject line when writing to that site. This will guarantee favouable treatment by that site's spam filters. For example, placing the string "MRHS59" on the subject line, when writing to the webmaster of the Mount Royal High School Class of 59 (MRHS59) site, will guarantee that it gets past the webmaster's spam filters.
Whatever you do, DON'T reply to,
or click on any links in,
the junk mail you receive.
If you do, it will just let the junk mailer know
that his junk has reached a real person.
Junk gets sent to millions of text stings
containing @ signs,
which have been collected automatically from Web pages
by spammers' Web crawlers.
Some of these strings are not email address at all,
and many of the ones that are email addresses,
are no longer valid.
By replying or clicking on a link—even
if is called 'remove me from the mailing list'—you
are telling the junk mailer that he has stuck gold.
Of course, even more important than not clicking on a junk mail link, is not opening a junk mail attachment! Never open any attachment—not even from someone you know—unless you were expecting it. It is common practice for a computer virus to send a copy of itself in an attachment to all the email addresses it finds on an infected computer. That means that Many of the virus-containing emails you receive will probably come from someone you know. If you don't open the attachment, the virus can't infect your computer— unless you are using Microsoft Outlook to read your mail. Unfortunately, Microsoft products allow programs written in the form of so-called "macros" to do pretty well whatever they want to on your computer.
There is probably no more effective step that you can take to improve your security than to stop using Microsoft Outlook for reading email. Get your guru to install Thunderbird on your computer and use it instead. Viruses written in the form of Microsoft macros will not execute in Thunderbird. You can improve your security still further (and have more fun on the Web) by getting your Guru to install Firefox for you and using it instead of Internet Explorer.
Note however, that even if you are not using Outlook to read your email, if you open an attachment which is a Microsoft document (a Word document, an Excel spread-sheet, etc) and it contains a macro, that macro will still be executed. By opening the document, you are giving permission for the macro to do whatever it pleases on your computer. So, once again: Don't open any attachment unless you were expecting it. If in doubt, send an email to, or telephone, the person who sent you the attachment, asking for confirmation before you open it.
Phishing
Cyber-criminals are constantly refining
their techniques for ripping you off.
One of the favourite methods is called "phishing".
A typical phishing expedition
starts out with an email that looks as if
it had been sent by your bank.
It probably contains a link that looks as if
points to the bank's web site.
Closer inspection may reveal
a slight misspelling of the URL.
But that is not necessary.
Sometimes the URL is genuine.
Once you click on the link,
you will be taken to what looks like a genuine
page at your bank, where you will be asked to log in.
Then you might be asked "for security reasons"
to key in your account number.
This information is intercepted by the phishers, who may even use it to log you on properly, so that you will not notice that anything is amiss. But at some time of their choosing, they can then use the information obtained to help themselves to cash from your bank account.
The above is only one of many methods used by phishers. You can read (a lot) more about it in Wikipaedia.
Here are three rules of thumb:
Security Programs
There are a number of companies who have developed
programs for protecting your computer from attack.
There are different types of programs,
for example anti-virus programs, fire-walls
and spy-ware catchers
(your own private counter-intelligence agency).
As a beginner, it would be a good idea to ask your guru
to install a "suite" of such programs
from one of the major security firms,
for example
WWW vs Internet
Most people think that the WWW is the same thing as the Internet.
Most people are wrong.
Long before Tim Berners-Lee almost single-handedly
invented the WWW whilst working at Cern,
the Internet was extensively used for email
and Usenet discussion groups.
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The Internet grew seamlessly out of the older Arpanet, which opened for business in 1969. The first version of WWW was released on the Internet (in a Usenet group) 23 years later, in 1991. The first graphic "browser", called Mosaic, was released in 1993. Netscape, which started the WWW explosion, appeared in 1994. Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon in 1995 by bundling its copy-cat Internet Explorer (IE) with its Win95 operating system. If you go to the Help menu in IE and choose "About Internet Explorer", you will see that IE is "Based on NCSA Mosaic". |
FAQ
This is an abbreviation for
"Frequently Asked Questions".
Many sites on the Web have a document in which
the Questions which get asked most frequently are
collected and provided with answers.
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Before the WWW was even a gleam in Tim Berner-Lee's eye,
there were thousands of Usenet discussion groups
(they were actually called "newsgroups") on just about
every subject under the sun
(and quite a few that were outside the solar system)
on the Internet.
There were groups for model aeroplane enthusiasts,
jazz pianists, atronomers, every shade of politcal
opinion, and much, much more.
It is reported that the students in China organized
the Tiananmen Square protests with a Usenet
group—possibly the one called "soc.culture.china".
In fact, the whole Usenet is still going strong.
A convenient way to read the groups today is with Google,
which has a special
interface
to Usenet.
Newcomers to a group tend to post
the same questions that past newcomers have posted.
This fequently leads to one of the resident experts
taking it upon himself to collect the most frequently
asked questions in a document and provide answers to them.
If you ever want to learn a new subject
(almost any subject) quickly,
the best way is often to go to the appropriate Usenet
group and read the FAQ document.
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Congratulations!
You have just completed the course.
Now YOU can smirk contemptuously at the people
who didn't take the course.
(Try asking them about the difference between
the WWW and the Internet, for example.)
Good luck with your surfing!
Use what you've learned in this course to get back to the page you came from! (Remember? It's called the "Back Button".)
The page cannot be found
Back button
to try another link.
Search
to look for information on the Internet