Internet 101

1. What is the Internet?
2. What do I need to access the Internet?
3. Internet Services
4. The World Wide Web
1. Client/Server Computing
2. Using the Web Browser
   • The two products that account for the vast majority of the browser market are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Both Netscape and Microsoft have recently released version 3.0 of their browsers, providing a more unified array of support and features than has been available before in these products.
   • Customizing Browser Settings using the Options dialog Box
     
   • Text, Background and Link colors
     • Adjust the settings in the Colors and Links boxes on the General page
     • Colors set in this dialog box become the default colors for the browser. They can be overridden by HTML codes in specific documents.
   • Changing the default browser font
     • Click the Font Settings button on the General page to modify the browsers default fonts. You can use any font that is currently installed on your system as the default for your browser.
     • Browsers define two fonts, one propertional and one of fixed width. A fixed-width (or monospaced) font is one in which every letter is the same width, such as Courier. A proportional font is one in which the letters can be different widths, like the Arial text used on this page.
     • As with colors, the fonts specified in this dialog box can be overridden by HTML codes.
   • Modifying the toolbar's appearance
   • You can control the appearance of Internet Explorer's toolbar with the settings in the Toolbar box of the General page in the Options dialog box.
   • Click on the navigation tab to modify the URL of the Start Page (the page that is displayed automatically when you launch the browser), as well as the URLs of the Links buttons.
   • You can also modify the appearance of the tool bar directly by dragging, dropping and sizing elements elements with the mouse.
   • Changing cache settings
     • Web browsers use a cache on your local hard drive to store your most recently accessed HTML and image files. If you return to a page that you have recently visited, the browser will access the files from the cache rather than from the site itself. This conserves bandwidth and increases the speed of the display. You can configure the amount of disk space used by the cache on the Advanced page of Internet Explorer's Options dialog box. The default cache settings in the Internet Explorer allow it to use up to 5% of your hard drive for storing cached files. In most cases, this is far too much. If you at all short of disk space, reduce this setting.
       
     • The Netscape Navigator uses an absolute value for the size of its cache, which is far more efficient than the percentage used by Internet Explorer.
     • If you ever find yourself seriously short of disk space, flushing the browser cache is a good way to immediately reclaim space. This can be done (in both Netscape and Microsoft browsers) through the cache configuration screen, or by simply deleting the files from the cache directory.
   • Security
     • The increasing use of client-side applets (to be covered later) creates potential security problems for web users. The Security page in the Internet Explorer Options dialog box enables you to control whether or not applets accessed over the web should be allowed to run, or whether warning messages should be presented.
       
3. Surfing Techniques
4. Plug-ins
5. Web Trends
6. Web Resources