| COURTESY OF SCICOP.COM: Searching the Web: Here's a tip to help our net searches become more efficient. When searching for phrases, use quotes around the words to help zero in onthe search. Called "phrase searching," this tells the search engine to search for the exact word combination, rather that each word as a separate identifier. For example, "SciCop's Web" rather than SciCop's Web. Although the larger search engines like GOOGLE or MSN have designed certain phrases to be searched for automatically, without needing the special quotes to identify it as a phrase, this can help in many situations where you may be looking for a less than common site. Some search engines like ASK.COM are great to use if you don't have an actual name of a website, just a category. Let's talk some basic information about what goes on when you are using the Internet. When you log onto your internet service provider, you are basically accessing the Internet. Whether you use AOl, Compuserve, AccessNevada, Cox Expressnet...etc, you are basically there. Now on AOL and Compuserve, you have a lot of content that is proprietary...that is, it's their content, designed for your use. While it may be stored on the Net, it's not really the Internet. To move that next step, you need software such as a browser, newsreader, IRC client, etc, in order to navigate on the Internet and get to where you want to be. Today we'll concentrate on what a browser is, and how it works. The most popular browsers is Internet Explorer and you'll want to update them often as their are new versions you might not have downloaded. The basic concept is as follows: When you type in an URL (that's an Uniform Resource Locator- or more simply, an Internet address) the browser sends a request to the address (URL) you specified, the server that hosts that URL, processes the request, then sends that information back to your browser, creating the images you see on your screen. That information, by the way, is simply HTML code, which is the language the browser uses to interpret how the browser will display the page for you. You do not need to type in the http:// as your browser knows this information. Some people who go to the same websites often will opt to use "autocomplete" for their forms. While it's time saving, it might not be wise to store your personal information/passwords if you share your computer. |
