Rotary Web Browsing Primer
Subjects included below:
This will be a set of basic lessons on how a web site works. To get the full benefit of the information contained in this site or any other, you need to be aware of a few simple pieces of information. Then you need to get out there on the web and try things. Reading and writing e-mail and surfing the net are safe things to do.
You can find anything, absolutely anything, on the internet. If you are surfing from site to site or a search engine takes you to a site that you find offensive, demeaning, or upsetting, simply back out of it. The internet is not regulated by any governmental body. There is no one to complain to, just move on.
Viruses can be a very serious problem, but there is nothing here to keep you
from enjoying the net. A virus (to a computer) in a malicious program that
installs itself on your computer after being downloaded, usually inadvertently,
and will cause havoc in your system in a variety of ways. Surfing the internet and reading e-mail is safe!
Downloading from a site or opening an attachment on e-mail is potential trouble.
The key is to know your source. If you don’t know who has sent you an attached
file on e-mail, you may not want to open it. They can be enticing, saying,
"I love you" or something alluring. Be careful here. Downloads can be viruses. And note: even a legitimate file to be downloaded can
take a long time, be ready for the time stall. Protect yourself with, either,
Norton AntiVirus or McAfee’s VirusScan programs.
It’s our source of a vast amount of information and entertainment. You are conducting some degree of research just in being at this site. The club’s purpose is to supply information in a convenient way. You can research any topic. You could transfer software or data; market, sell, and support your products or service; or shop or bank with others. You may have the ability to have news services look for key words and report back to you any breaking stories concerning your interests. There is the opportunity to conduct lively discussions through ‘chat’ rooms or Immediate Message systems. [‘Chatting’ usually means a real time conversation through typed words back and forth. Some people have the software to truly talk as in a telephone conversation.] There are a lot of games and entertainment available. And, of course, you can communicate with e-mail.
Some Basics
An e-mail address has some rules and a form just as a postal address has. In the e-mail world, traditional mail is called, ‘snail mail’ due to the time it takes to be received. The key element of an e-mail address is the ‘@’ sign. This is the difference between a web site address and an e-mail address.
To the left of the @ or preceding the @ is the individual’s name. Maybe it would be more correct to use the old CB radio term ‘handle,’ good buddy. The individual’s e-mail name could be any name concocted by the user. It may be their actual name or an obvious abbreviation or it could be a very cryptic series of letters and numbers.
To the right or following the @ will be the web site of the server that is hosting this e-mail customer. This may be a corporate or established personal web site or a service company such as ‘aol.com’ (America On-Line) or ‘yahoo.com’ (Yahoo).
You should have an option to maintain e-mail addresses of the people you communicate with as a part of your e-mail service. Come to understand how to operate your electric address book. Keep track of e-mail addresses you use. It will save time and be avoid manual addressing mistakes.
In
creating e-mail:
2. There will be an area for addresses of those you may want to copy on this message. This area works the same as in #1, above.
3. There will be a 'Subject' line. To leave this blank is, in this writer's opinion, rude. The subject line will show up in the listing of mail to be read. No subject information suggests you really don't have anything to say.
4. Then there is the body of the message. Say what you need to say. You may explore the AutoSignature option. This will allow you to create a uniform closing to your e-mail. It usually contains your name, title (if appropriate), phone numbers, a favorite quote...whatever you would like. But, don't make it too involved.
5. A 'Send' button will send the letter on it's way. Later you may be informed, by e-mail, any addresses that did not get delivered. You may want to check the address and send it again.
You should have three basic options with every e-mail you receive; there are buttons on the screen somewhere.
‘Forward’ will allow you to send the complete message you are currently reading on to someone you feel would benefit from it. After clicking on the button, a new e-mail screen will come up and you should add the new e-mail address(es) of those you would like to send it to. The subject will carry over from the original e-mail proceeded by 'Fw:' or 'Fwd:' and you can include any little introductory message in the body section. You may not see the original message on the screen, but it will be sent.
‘Reply’ woks similar to 'Forward', but sets up a return e-mail screen to the person who sent you the message you are reading. The subject is carried over to the reply proceeded by 'RE:'. Simply put your reply in the body of the letter and click on send.
‘Reply to All’ will send your reply to not only the person who sent you the e-mail, as above, but to anyone who also got the e-mail you received. As an example, this could come into play if you are working on a family reunion. Perhaps details are being worked out and the same e-mail message is being sent to a group of people in the family. Your response, as others, may be relevant to the group as opposed to just one sender. You can send your response to everyone with one click.
You will have the ability to attach files to the e-mail. There will be a button to click somewhere on your screen. Clicking this button will bring up a screen to allow you to input the name of the file you wish to attach to the e-mail. This could be anything from a grandchild’s picture to accounting files to Rotary forms. Very legitimate files are attached to e-mails everyday, it’s a great tool. It is also the way that the unscrupulous send viruses. As stated in the warnings, know the sender. In turn, when you send an attached file, be sure the recipient knows who you are and what they are getting. It would be a shame for them to simply delete your message and file for fear that you could be an unknown and unscrupulous sort.
You e-mail provider may compress your attachment without your knowledge. What’s is happening here is that they will compress your attached file to make it more workable in the mailing process. This sort of squeezes the blank space out of the attachment. I will be converted to a ‘.zip’ or ‘.mim’ format. The receiver will need to have a small piece of software to decompress these file. These programs are available to download for free on the net. You may need them yourself over time. (There was a legitimate use of a download.)
There are a few elements of internet/e-mail etiquette:
TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS YELLING, know this and use it accordingly
Emoticons [emotional icons] are cute little combinations of charters used to project a feeling. Often called ‘smilies’ you need to look at these sideways. Use these wisely (that's politically correct for sparingly). A smile is : ) or :-) A wink is ; ) or ;-) And a frown would be :-( There are dozens of these.
And use abbreviations wisely, also. There are a lot of commonly used abbreviations on the web. They are often used in chat rooms when conversations are moving quickly and typing slows down the process. Some examples are well known like FAQ, frequently asked question(s), or ASAP, as soon as possible. Others are newer like LOL, laugh out loud, or FWIW, for what it’s worth.
A web site, like this one, will be a group of web pages that someone has put together to share their information. Each site is identified by a unique address. It’s called a ULR, a Uniform Resource Locator. Originally, these were a series of numbers and periods such as 12.3454.678.90. These addresses were confusing to many as the internet became a tool to be used by the masses. They still exist in the background, but words and abbreviations have become the norm.
There is a basic format to these addresses. A quick understanding may help you to use them.
http://www.xxxxx.ttt/ooooo.us where:
http:// designates the set of standards that this site was developed with to be compliant with the general standards of the portion of the web you are looking in. Most web sites are developed within the HTTP standards. News services have a different protocol, NNTP.
www. points to the World Wide Web, a collection of sites on the web. This may not be a part of an address you go to, not all sites are in the collection represented by the World Wide Web. Rotary International’s Web Site is a part of the WWW.
xxxxx This is the name of the site, the domain name. Like in e-mail addresses this could be anything from a simple name or obvious abbreviation to a cute or cryptic phrase. Again, RI's address is simply 'rotary'; District 6060 is 'rotary6060'; pretty strait forward.
.ttt This is the domain extension. It will tend to identify the type of site. The most common is the ‘.com’ or a commercial site. RI is a ‘.org’ or organization, typically not-for-profit. There are also ‘.gov’ for US government sites, ‘.edu’ for educational institutions, ‘.mil’ for military sites, and ‘.net’ for networks of sites or groups. The addresses are starting to get crowded, so other extensions are being developed. Also, this extension is an iatrical part of the sites address. Two or more domain names that are identical with different domain extensions will point to different sites. [i.e. Name1.com and Name1.org and Name1.gov could be three very different sites. Know that the sleazy will take advantage of this at times to trick you into visiting a site that you would not otherwise visit.]
/ooooo This optional field will point to a specific page in the web site. Additional '/ooooo' fields could repeat down through a number of levels of the site. This is true of this site.
.us This final optional extension to point out is the country code. Seldom is the ‘.us’ designation used; the United States extension. But, when you leave the US the other countries will often use their code such as ‘.au’ for Australia, ‘.ca’ for Canada, ‘.ch’ for Switzerland, ‘.de’ for Germany, and there are codes for every country.
Now that you have come to the Lambert Airport Rotary Club’s site and have preceded to this primer page you should see the current address of this page at the top of your screen:
http://www.rotary6060.org/lambertrotary/primer.htm
What does it say? The site is compliant with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) on the World Wide Web. The site is named ‘rotary6060’ and it looks like a not-for-profit organization. We are looking at a page on that site named ‘lambertrotary’. In that collection of pages we are looking at the ‘primer’ page, and that page is written in ‘hypertext markup’ language, the ‘.htm’. We are in the USA and as such don’t tend to use the ‘.us’. In other words, it’s the Primer page of the Lambert Airport Rotary Club’s site that piggy-backs on the Rotary District 6060 site in the World Wide Web.
A hyperlink, or more commonly called just a link, is a preprogrammed connection to another point in a document or on the web. By moving your mouse over the link and clicking, once or twice, you will end up somewhere else directly. Often it is more information on the word or graphic designated as the link. Watch you cursor. When it changes from the arrow or I-bar to a hand with its pointer finger up, you have a hyperlink. If you pause with the hand showing, some links will display a message as to where the link will take you. This is optional and may not show, but if it does it can’t always be trusted to be true. Your screen will probably display the link’s destination in one of the lower lines. This could be a ULR or an e-mail address. It’s always good to see where a link will take you before taking it. A link containing a stream of characters including a number of % signs can be a challenge to get out of. Be careful there. In our directory page the links connected to the member's names are to e-mail addresses. The links to their employers are to the company's web site.
Words that act as hyperlinks will typically be a different color than the surrounding text and underlined. Pictures and graphic images can be a link also. They will often have a boarder around them. The color of the boarder will be the same color as any word hyperlinks on the site. On this site we use sky blue for the links. A purple color will show in links that you have already tried. The link is red once you have activated it and the computer is in the process of transferring you to that location. But this color convention may not be followed…watch the cursor, the hand is the real indicator, the color, underline, and border are just clues that are easily seen.
Clicking on the ‘Back’ button near the top of your screen will return you to the origin of the hyperlink. If the ‘Back’ button is gray and not working, the link opened a new window. Clicking the ‘X’ in the upper right corner of the current window should clear that window and return you to the hyperlinks place of origin. [Careful here, don’t close out your entire session, just the active window.]
To click here will return
you to the home page of this site, as will the graphic below.
The picture is what's called a thumbnail. Click on it and it will show you
a larger version of the photo. And if you click here,
you will be returned to the top of the page. In each case the 'Back' button will
return you to this spot.
There are web sites that are dedicated to helping you find web sites. They are called search engines. You will give them a few key words and they will attempt to find web sites that are related to the key words you entered. There are dozens of search engines out there, each has different sites listed. Some of the listings will overlap. Searching the same key word(s) on the same search engine could yield different results each time you try it. Different engines will have different points of view, topics that that engine covers better than another engine. Then there are search engines that search other search engines. Confused?
A few of the better known search engines are AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo, or Google. A search engine that looks at most of these and more would be DogPile. Find the box to type in your key word or words and click on ‘go’ or ‘search’ or ‘fetch’ in the case of DogPile. You will get a list of possible sites to explore. Did you read the first Warning? Remember that back button will bring you home when the time comes.
When you use more than one key word, most engines assume that you have linked them with an ‘OR’. Searching on ‘dog cat’ would default to dog or cat. There are three commonly used logical connectors that can help narrow your search process: AND, OR, and NOT. For best results Capitalize them.
Another helpful point is to keep multiple words that are to be considered as one in single quotes. If you are interested in large vacation and traveling vehicles, a search on recreational vehicles without quotes would yield topics of recreation and/or vehicles, maybe never getting to the sites you were looking for. Looking at ‘recreational vehicles’ in quotes will get to sites more in line with your interest.
Now you know enough to be dangerous. Get out there and explore. Experience is the best teacher. But, be careful, this can be addictive. You could start with our Links page. For more information to help the novice see An Internet Guide of Newcomers to the World Wide Web.
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are any changes or additions that need to be made to this web site,
please contact the web master, Rotarian Fletcher
Wells II
Last Update on
05/28/2003