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Introduction to the Internet with Internet Explorer 6

This page isn't finished. It needs to be updated with proper IE6 images.

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 Internet Explorer 6 (icon pictured to the right). If your icon is a dark blue you probably have Internet Explorer 7.

Starting and Using Your Web Browser

Start Internet Explorer 6 from your start menu or desktop:

Parts of Internet Explorer 6

Okay, let's look at the different parts of Internet Explorer 6:

• Each webpage has an address. This is indicated in the Address Bar (the blue box).
• Most webpages will have titles. You can check the title of the page you are currently on by looking at the 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.

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.

Most of the time you search the internet for information. Let's start by checking the weather. Go ahead and type "www.google.com" in the address bar and hit enter on your keyboard or hit the "go" button. This will bring you to the Google home page, which has a simple search box in the center. Type weather in the search box and hit the enter key on your keyboard or left-click on the search button.

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.

If you ever get lost you can go to www.google.com in the address bar.

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.

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.