Introduction to the Internet with Firefox
Before you can do very much on the internet you have to understand how to get around. Most people "surf" (operate/travel) the internet by using a program called a web browser. Most computers come with web browsers already set up, but you can also add them on later.
This tutorial is for Mozilla Firefox 3 (icon pictured to the right). If you have an older version of Firefox it may look a little bit different, but that's probably okay.
Starting and Using Your Web Browser
You can start Mozilla Firefox much like you would any other program. Go ahead and find it on your start menu or desktop. Take a look at the picture below if you need help.
Parts of Firefox
Okay, let's look at the different parts of Firefox:
- Each webpage has an address. This is indicated in the Address Bar (the red box).
- Most webpages will have titles. You can check the title of the page you are currently on by looking at the webpage title (title bar).
- The actual webpage itself is displayed in the Main Webpage Window (green box). It is cut off in the picture above, but would normally fill most of your screen.
Don't worry about the Back, Forward, Refresh, and Stop buttons right now but remember where they are. You also have a few controls at the bottom of the browser window. You can see the status (what the browser is doing) and in some cases there will be zoom buttons in the lower right.
Navigating Webpages
Like we mentioned before, most webpages are located at an address and connected to one another through links. Let's start by looking at a webpage. Move your mouse cursor to the Address Bar and type www.cnn.com in the box and hit the enter key on your keyboard. A page similar to the one below should come to the screen:
Don't worry if your screen looks different than the one above. CNN changes their webpage continuously throughout the day. This is one of the benefits of websites - they are easy to change and update. Some parts of the page on your screen and the one above should look the same, however. Webpages are connected together with what are called links. The CNN page is full of links. In fact, most sections of underlined blue text are links. Most pictures are links too. Sometimes links are also navigation buttons. See the boxes at the top labeled "Home", "World", "Politics", etc? (green box) If you click on one of these it will bring you to another section of the CNN website. Go ahead and click on one that sounds interesting.
See how a new page loaded? You will also notice the back button is green. Go ahead and click on the back button now. This will bring you to the page you were on previously. If you like you can go forward again to the page you picked a second ago. Try going back and forth a few times by clicking on links. Links will make your mouse cursor turn into a little pointing hand, like the mouse cursor in the picture above in the orange box.
- You can reload a page by hitting the "Refresh" button. This will update it to the latest version.
- If a webpage takes a long time to load you can stop loading it by hitting the "Stop" button.
- Play around with the controls! Go to the BBC website and try to go back and forth between a few pages.
Searching for Websites
You may not always know the address of a webpage you would like to see. In fact, this is probably how you will search the internet most of the time. To search the internet you will need to use a search engine. There are many different search engines. The most popular is Google, which we will start with for this tutorial. Firefox has a built in search box. Make sure the icon is a little "G", this will mean it is set to search Google.
Most of the time you search the internet for information. Let's start by checking the weather. Go ahead and type weather in the search box and click on the magnifier glass picture or hit the enter key on your keyboard
This will bring up a search results page listing a number of websites related to weather. Let's go visit the "National and Local Weather Forecast, Hurricane, Radar and Report" website, it should be near the top of the list. Do this by clicking on it (red box).
This should bring up "The Weather Channel" website. Let's lookup the weather for your local city. Go ahead and type it in the search box at the top and hit search.
This is an example of a form on a website. This form is really easy, but others are more complicated. See the little circle buttons above the search box? You could use this box to search the Weather.com website or web in general, too. Other forms will vary. Review the different ways to use menus, buttons, bars, and boxes (this is the Vista guide but should be similar for Macs and Linux).
Okay, so by now you should have found a webpage displaying the weather. Go ahead and explore this webpage.
 The Weather Channel search box. |
 The built-in Firefox search engines. |
If you ever get lost you can go to www.google.com in the address bar. This will take you to a very minimal webpage that you can use to search the entire internet. Firefox has several search engines already built in. If you click on the arrow next to the "G" you can pull down a menu full of them.
- Yahoo is a lot like Google. Both companies have powerful search engines.
- Amazon.com sells many items. It is a place you can buy things online and have them shipped to your home. See the buying and selling tutorial
- Answers.com is a good place to ask questions. It is a Q&A website.
- Creative Commons is a website to help you share ideas, documents, music, videos and anything else you create over the internet. They help you build a license to do so for free!
- eBay is a place you can sell your own items online. See the buying and selling tutorial
- Wikipedia is an encyclopedia made by everyone on the internet. It is one of the best places to find good information on any topic!
Search Terms and Methods
Google is a very good search engine but it is important to remember that there are alternatives. Some search engines might be better to look for certain things. Start by using the above websites but remember to be willing to try different ways to search the web! It may be a bad idea to always depend on a single search engine or website.
Sometimes searching for information takes several tries. Search engines use keywords to find results that match what you're looking for. Don't look for entire sentences, but instead think about the main ideas behind the information you seek. So for instance, don't type "How cold is it outside?" but instead type "Weather". If you want to see the difference try typing "how cold is it outside and see what comes up. It won't be the temperature, but instead websites that relate to those key words.
Google can sometimes help you, however. You can type math equations in the Google search box and get answers. Try typing "2 * 7362.27" in the Google search box and see what happens. There are other handy tricks too. If you want to convert units (like meters to inches) you can do this to. Just type "10 meters in inches" and see what it gives you.
You can also put quotes around a search query to force Google to search for that exact sequence of words. For example, try typing your name, without any quotes. See what search results come up. Now try typing your name but with " on either end. See what comes up now.
Using Tabs to Open Multiple Web Pages
Firefox supports use of tabs. This means you can open multiple webpages in the same Firefox window. You can only see one at a time, however. You can always open a new tab by going to "File" at the top and then selecting "New Tab" or by pressing "ctrl" and "T" at the same time. You can open a link in a new tab by holding "ctrl" and clicking on it. You can cycle between tabs by clicking on them with the mouse or by pressing "ctrl" and the "tab" key on the keyboard at the same time. You can close a tab by clicking on the little "x" on it or by pressing "ctrl" and "W" at the same time.
One helpful way to browse the internet is to use tabs to store all of the pages you would like to look at. Start by visiting a webpage that might have a lot of links to things you would like to read, like www.cnn.com. Hold down "ctrl" and click on several links. They will all open in new tabs. Now you can continue surfing through the web page and get to those stories storied in other tabs later. Firefox will often give you the option to save your opened tabs when you close it, so you can find them next time. You can also right-click on any given tab to bookmark it for later, or choose to bookmark all open tabs. These are just some of the ways to keep track of all of the different websites you might want to visit on the web!
 How to Bookmark a page. |
 See previous bookmarks and visited webpages. |
Saving Websites with Bookmarks, Webpage History
Sometimes you will visit a website and wish to remember it. Just like you can put a bookmark in a book to remember where you were you can bookmark a website with Firefox. All you have to do is go to the "Bookmarks" menu at the top or press the "ctrl" and "D" key at the same time and you will save the page. You can open up the Bookmarks Toolbar by going to "View" and then "Sidebar" and selecting "Bookmarks" or by pressing "ctrl" and "B" at the same time. You can go to saved webpages by clicking on them in the bookmarks list. You can see a history of all of the webpages you have visited in the recent past in the sidebar as well. Use the same menu interface or hit "ctrl" and "H" to pull up webpage history.
Copying and Printing Information from Webpages
Sometimes you will want to save information you find on the web in a different file. You can drag your mouse over text and pictures and copy them much like you would in a word processing program and then paste it elsewhere. Sometimes this has drawbacks, however. Webpages use special code (invisible formatting that you cannot see) to make information appear in a fancy way. Don't be surprised if you copy part of a web page into Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer and it ends up looking different. Go ahead and try it.
You may also want to print out a website. Usually you will only want to print certain information from a website, not the entire page (this could use up a lot of paper and ink!). To do this select text or an area of the website by holding down the left-mouse button. Now go to "Print" on the menu or press "ctrl" and "p" at the same time. This will bring up a print window that will look something like this:
Make sure to click the selection radio button and you will only print the part of the webpage that you have selected.
Exercises
- Copy a small part of a web page into Writer or Word, see what happens, then copy a large part of a web page in, see what happens. Compare.
- Go to a big and complicated website (try Cnn.com) and print the front page and see what it looks like. Then copy the text of just an article on that website and print it. Compare.