Internet Surfing Tips

Internet Surfing Tips
From CASI's Using The Internet Section.
By Jesse Ferrell.

The Internet is a wonderful place. I've said this before but I'd like to say it again. It really is. I'd be bored out of my brain if not for the Internet. I've logged an estimated 18,000 hours awake and connected to the Internet (40 hours a week at work and sometimes 40 more at home) including "real" work (3 years of web development); probably just less than half of that time doing non-development work (surfing, emailing, etc). If that sounds nerdy, well, it is, but I've had a lot of fun at it. And I've learned a lot.

Having been on the Internet since 1991, (before the Web even, (see History of Weather and the Internet) I would like to think that I have accrued some efficiency techniques over the years that may help you surf more effectively. Now that the Internet is too big to surf in one lifetime, your time online must be spent effectively. Power users may already know some or most of the information below. If this is you, congratulations. If you are new to the Internet, this page is a must read. For this tutorial I assume that you have successfully connected to the Internet and have your Web Browser open. NOTE: Most of these tips are PC-oriented. If you have a Mac they may work or they may not.

1. Know how to look for information.

First Love : Finding the site you need - via the Web Address

First of all, if you are looking for a particular site, try typing in the company name or key word into your browser's "address" area. You should always keep this address area visible, it will help you out throughout your surfing experience by telling you where you are. If you are using a recent Netscape or Internet Explorer type in www.whatever.000 where 'whatever' is what you're looking for. and '000' is the domain name extension. If you are looking for ford, typing in www.ford.com will get you to the Ford website because 'com' stands for 'company.' But typing www.whitehouse.com won't get you to the Whitehouse of the US Government, in fact I don't even want to tell you where it will go. An enterprising lowlife company purchased that address to get hits from the unsuspecting viewer. But you know better. Why? Because the 'com' doesn't make sense - the US Government is not a company, it is a government. Change '.com' to '.gov' to be taken where you want to go. (www.whitehouse.gov). Same for Educational sites (not www.psu.com but www.psu.edu) and non-profit organizations (not www.weatherwatchers.com but www.weatherwatchers.org). By the way, don't worry about that little http:// that keeps popping up in front of your Address - that is the Internet terminology for "Hypertext Transfer Protocol" which means "this is a web page, not an FTP page or a GOPHER page" to power users. Most modern browsers don't require the http:// to be typed in but will keep slipping it in for you. If you get around to making your own web pages, you'll need to include that code.

Hey! That didn't work! What now?

If your browser gave you an error message (see here for an old page I made with details on Netscape Error Messages, some information may no longer be accurate). That doesn't necessarily mean that the site address doesn't exist (see here for details) but it does mean that you can't get to it, and that's what matters right now, eh? Next step is to try to find the object of your desire with a Search Tool. I'll leave that discussion up to the "Finding What You Need" section.

2. Understand browser 'tricks.'

The power of CNTRL-F.

Did you know that at any time when you have text in your browser window (even the view-source window) that you can search through that for text? That's right. Pick Edit/Find from your browser's menu, or press CNTRL-F, that's "hold down the Control Key then press F then release both." Note: this won't work for images. How can you tell text from images? This might sound easy, but it's easy to make images that look like text, and CNTRL-F won't work through these. Right click (click with your right mouse button, a very powerful tool) over the area containing the text/image. If "View Image" (Netscape) or "Save Picture" (Internet Explorer) appears then it is an image.

More about this Right Mouse Button...

There are loads of things you can do with the Right mouse button (or "hold down only button" on Macs) menu. You should use it frequently. It allows you to interact with the page. Let's say you want to open a link in a new window without making your current web page go away. Right click over the link and pick "Open In New Window." When you're done with that window you can close it by using the menu "File/Close", the keyboard shortcut for that (CNTRL-W) or the Windows 95 "X" button in the upper right hand corner of the window. Clicking on a non-linked portion of a page will give you a menu from which you can pick other useful things without having to navigate the menus at the top of the browser, such as "Add to Bookmarks / Favorites," "Back/Forward," "View Source" (important for learning HTML), and others.

Don't be fooled! Where does this page / image come from?

One of the bad things about the Internet is that it is easy to fool the novice user. You've got to keep in mind when surfing that things aren't always what they seem. Let's take an example. Go to this example page. I'm going to open it in a new window for you so you don't have to close this one. When you are done with this lesson you can close it by using the techniques listed above.

What do you see on that page? Well it looks like this web page, done by me, has a Surface Map of the United States on it. If you wait around another half hour and reload the page, the image will have updated. How neat! I have an updating surface map on my page. I'd better bookmark this right? No. I have fooled you into thinking that this is my image. If you bookmark this page, instead of the real source, you may be disappointed to find the image gone in the future. I am incorporating another web site's image into my web page. How can you be sure? Use the right-hand mouse button trick I described above to "View Image." When you do this, watch the Address window as it changes from http://www.weatherwatchers.org/blahblah to http://www.weather.com/blahblah. The address change means that you have left my website. This image is owned by weather.com, which is the Weather Channel, and I have no rights to it. I won't go much more into the morality or legality of doing this type of thing here but will reserve that for the "Make Your Own Web" section in case you are wondering about that type of thing. [Note: In Internet Explorer, this checking is much harder to do (which is why I don't use MSIE much). You will need to right-mouse click and choose "Image Properties" then compare the address that shows up in that window with the address.] Q: What if you wanted to see what else Weather.com had to offer? I cover this in the "Finding What You Need" section. It is called "Directory Descending." HINT: To find "Directory Descending" in that page, use the CNTRL-F trick I told you about above.

Part II. : More Better Foolin'. There are also more technological ways to fool the user with text instead of images... take this page as an example. Again, it should open in its own new window. Look at the address. This is still at the CASI site, www.weatherwatchers.org. And there is a tremendous list of weather sites which I claim to have compiled. Should you pat me on the back for a job well done? No! In fact I have stolen the entire list from Mike's WeatherNet site. But I didn't have to expend any effort to do this because the information is still on his site. How did I do this? A more technological form of fooling the 'newbie' user can be accomplished by using Frames. There is a frameset document which directs your browser to display first my document at the top then, remotely, bring in Mike's weather list below it. Notice how his list has a second scroll bar which is independent of the whole window. This indicates that it is a frame. To check for originality, you can right-click with the mouse again, and pick "Open Frame in New Window." This will open the frame in a new window and you can check the Address area. Notice that the URL is no longer weatherwatchers.org but the WeatherNet site at http://cirrus.sprl.umich.edu/wxnet. Unfortunately, in Microsoft Internet Explorer (up to version 3 anyway) there is no way to check for originality in frames. All of this said, I don't want to make out frames to be a bad technology. There are many valid uses for frames, including framing your own pages. I even frame outside sites in the CASI Weird Weather section so that all information can be on one page, but I make it clear in the top frame that the bottom frames are not mine.

Backwards and Forwards : Where to get Where You Have Gone Before

OK so you went to a great webpage recently and you didn't use the Bookmarks/Favorites to save it. Now what do you do? Well if you remember much about it, you might be able to find it using Search Engines, but they don't have everything and it might take a while. If it was recent enough, it could be in your "GO" menu. Hit "Go" at the top of your browser. Holy sites, Batman! There are the last dozen or so sites that you went to. If it's not in there, and your cache hasn't expired it, look in your History file. In Netscape, hit CNTRL-H. Holy mega sites Batman, there are the last several hundred sites you visited! Double click on any of them to visit them again. (or use CNTRL-F to Find!) (Tip within a Tip - if you don't want a site to appear in your history highlight it then hit the Delete key on your keyboard). One additional trick (which works in the 4.0 versions of the browsers) is to start typing the front end of the web address into the Address window and see if your browser can guess the address. Don't fear it - it's not reading your mind, it is just looking in your History file for matches. Type http://www.weatherw into the Address window right now if you have a 4.0 browser, it should finish it out with http://www.weatherwatchers.org (unless you've been to www.weatherw followed by anything else recently).

Additional Tricks

Too lazy to keep hitting those BACK and FORWARD buttons? Use ALT<-- (hold down ALT while pressing the left arrow key) and ALT-->. Want a quick way to View the Source of a document? Type view-source:address in the Address area of your Netscape browser, where "address" is a valid web address. For example (Netscape only), view-source:www.weatherwatchers.org will show you the HTML 'guts' of the CASI Front Page. Want a quick Javascript command window for command line input? Type javascript: in your Netscape Address area.

With these simple tips, hopefully you are on your way to surfing successfully. If you have any tips for me or questions, you can email me at netnerd@weatherwatchers.org