In this chapter:
What is the Internet, anyway, and what can I do there?
Connecting Windows NT to the Internet
How the World Wide Web works
Find what you need on the Web--fast!
Keep a list of your favorite Web sites
There are more pages on the World Wide Web than any human can count. To start
exploring, just follow the links...
Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and all
its sequels, said it better than I can: "The Internet is big. Really big. It
gives the idea of infinity much better than infinity itself."
With that kind of introduction, it seems a bit presumptuous to try to explain the Internet in one small chapter of this book. So let's start with a general disclaimer: If you want to know everything about the Internet, you'll have to read several big books (including some excellent ones published by the people who brought you this one). You'll also have to master some hard technical terms, because there's very little plain English to be found when you start talking about the Internet!
Fortunately, it's all worth the effort. Thanks to its best-known destination, the World Wide Web, the Internet is a very cool and useful place, and this chapter can help get you moving in the right direction.
Today, all those original rocket scientists are still using the Internet, but they have to share the space with ordinary people like you and me. And where commercial activity was once strictly forbidden, today it's the single most important force driving the growth of the Net. No one knows exactly how many people use the Internet for business or pleasure each day, but the number is surely in the tens of millions.
TIP: Does your company have an intranet? That's not a typo--instead, it's a way to refer to a new trend in corporate networks, which use the same techniques as the World Wide Web to share information among employees only. If your company has created an intranet, you'll be able to share files and read Web pages using Internet Explorer. The only difference will be that you'll open files on your company network instead of finding them on the World Wide Web.
I'd rather answer a month's worth of Final Jeopardy questions than try to explain the Internet in 50 words or less. But OK, here goes...
On the Internet, every computer is connected to every other computer--directly or indirectly, using a networking protocol called TCP/IP, a "common language" computers use to communicate with each other via the Internet.
Every computer that is connected to the Internet has a unique address (called an IP address) that consists of one long number broken into four groups of up to three digits. Like your Social Security number (if you live in the United States) or your passport number, it's associated with one and only one indi-vidual. For example, the main machine at Macmillan Computer Publishing, the company that produced this book, is called 198.70.48.1.
What's in a name? On the Internet, the answer is: a lot of dots.
Internet names typically consist of two parts: a host name and a domain name. Individual pieces of both the host and domain names are separated by dots, or periods. Internet e-mail addresses usually consist of the host name and the name of a mail server, separated by an at sign (@).
The domain name helps narrow the group of computers and people I'm associated with. If I work for a big company like Macmillan Computer Publishing, for example, my domain name might be mcp.com (pronounced m c p dot com). The com tells other people that this group is a com-pany. If the extension were edu or org or gov, they'd know that mcp was affiliated with an educational institution, a nonprofit organization, or the government, respectively.
Large domains can be broken into subdomains to make life easier on the people who have to keep track of all these computers. So if I ran mcp.com, I might create a subgroup called que.mcp.com (remember, you pronounce each of the periods between the parts of a domain name as dot).
Finally, all the people who have individual access to computers in the organization would get their own unique host name. There's no rule that says you have to use your real name, either: You could call yourself [email protected] if you wanted, and that would be a perfectly legal Internet name. (When you say your Internet address out loud, remember to pronounce the at sign as "at.") Generally, though, your host name will be some combination of your first and last name or initials.
There might be another jean-luc.picard elsewhere on the Net, but the unique combination
of a host name and domain name, separated by an at sign, guarantees that you can
always reach people, as long as you know the name they use on the Internet.
Plain English, please!TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol. IP stands for Internet Protocol. Together, they form the standard language that different computers use to exchange information on the Internet. (Don't worry, there will not be a test on all these acronyms!)
That's all fine and dandy if you're a computer, but human beings are more comfortable with words than with numbers. So all those Internet addresses also have corresponding names. Instead of having to remember my up-to- 12-digit Internet ID number, all you have to know is that my machine's Internet name is ed.bott.com and my Internet e-mail address is [email protected]. Special machines called domain name servers make sure that the computers they work for can translate names to numbers, and vice versa.
The Internet is not a company or organization--when you get on the Net, you're pretty much on your own. However, one way or another, you have to find a set of wires that can carry information between you and all those other computers:
Before you can sample the wide variety of information on the largest network in the known universe, your computer has to be configured to be part of the Internet. And as soon as you start talking about networking, things get just a little...well, complicated.
Even if you understand every technical detail of the process, you'll probably still need to get help from the network administrator, because Windows NT won't let an ordinary user tamper with the networking software (in fact, all the buttons in the Network Control Panel dialog box are grayed out for all but administrators). Regardless of who does it, though, here's what needs to be done:
Fig. 22.1
Check here to see that Windows NT knows about the network adapter inside your PC.
Fig. 22.2
Before your computer can talk to other computers on the Internet, it has to learn to speak TCP/IP, the universal language of the Internet.
Fig. 22.3
Do you speak TCP/IP? Of course you don't, but if you expect your computer to communicate
on the Internet, you'll have to make sure that this dialog box is filled out flawlessly.
When you finish all this clicking and configuring, Windows should remind you
that you'll have to restart your computer before your new software can kick into
gear. Go ahead--restart now. After you've shut down and logged on fresh, your TCP/IP
connection should be ready to go. If you've got a direct Internet connection over
your company network, you'll now be able to go anywhere on the Internet without doing
anything else.
Plain English, please!Occasionally, you'll see a reference to something called Winsock. That's the technical term for the Windows Sockets standard. As the name implies, this is the software that Windows programs use to "plug into" the Internet. There are dozens of different versions of the Winsock software floating around, but the one that comes with Windows NT is the only one you need to be concerned about. If you start getting Winsock error messages, it's time to call for technical support!
You could fill a book with all the great things you can do with an Internet connection. There's an excellent book filled with worthwhile information from the same people who created this one. If you want to know more about the Internet, get Using the Internet, available from Que Corporation.
Meanwhile, here's a sampling of the things you can do once you're connected to the Net.
The hottest of all Internet destinations is the World Wide Web (AKA the WWW or just "the Web"). There are literally more pages of information on the WWW than anyone can count, ranging from the extremely silly to the enormously valuable. Depending on the skill and budget of the designer, Web pages can be dull, one-font lists or visually dramatic presentations with text, graphics, sound, and animation. (See Fig. 22.4 for one of my favorite pages, www.pccomputing.com.) In either case, the thing that makes the Web unlike printed pages and televised images is the presence of hypertext links, where you can click to jump instantly to other related Web pages.
Fig. 22.4
The hottest ticket on the Internet? No doubt about it--the World Wide Web, with its dazzling graphics and sheer volume of information, is the place to see.
If there's a stray fact or figure in the world, it's probably available somewhere on the Internet. I regularly use the Internet to answer questions for business and fun--everything from computer support to TV trivia. And sometimes the Web is literally a lifesaver: When a friend of mine discovered that his son had been diagnosed with a rare disease, he used the Net to track down more information. Within two hours, he had found an exhaustive collection of relevant articles, including detailed descriptions of the symptoms and treatments, plus names of the world's top specialists. (His son's doing just fine now, by the way.)
The Internet is stuffed to bursting with software. Look for FTP servers--those are central storehouses that use the Internet's File Transfer Protocol to exchange files with computers like yours. One of the most useful collections of software--for Windows users, anyway--is the one atwww.microsoft. com. Internet Explorer handles FTP tasks automatically; all you have to do is point and click.
You can drop in on discussions of every imaginable topic, from championship dog breeding to astrophysics, on public bulletin boards called UseNet news-groups. You don't have to say a word; you can just lurk (watch without participating) and learn. Or you can chime in and add your own comments to a news group.
Some people think we'll do all of our shopping on the Internet someday. Of course, those are the same people who said computers would eliminate paper in the office, too, so let's not believe it too quickly. Still, there are an impressive number of products you can buy on the Net today--flowers, movie tickets, CDs, software, and much more. Even if you plan to purchase a new product in person, you can gather information about it in advance, as I did recently when I was in the market for a new car. (Try www.edmunds.com for advice on how to get the best price for new or used cars.)
By its very nature, the Internet is an insecure place. When you fill in a Web form and send data to someone on the Internet, it consists of plain, easy-to-read text, and it's sent from machine to machine in routes that are practically random. So how do you keep hackers from intercepting, reading, and even altering your data as it flashes through cyberspace? Fortunately, a pair of time-tested technologies make it possible for anyone to add the digital equivalent of notarized signatures and sealed envelopes to information exchanges over the Internet.
Authentication provides a way of establishing that you are who you say you are. The simplest form of authentication requires you to enter your user name and password before you can even look at a given Web page. More sophisticated authentication schemes use special pieces of software called digital signatures and certificates to guarantee that your credit card number gets safely from your PC to your favorite Internet florist.
How do you make sure your password isn't captured as it floats across the Internet? With the second security technique, encryption. Like the secret codes that spies use, Internet Explorer and other Web browsers can scramble data so that no one can read it except the intended recipient.
Of course, all Internet security schemes depend on sensible behavior and physical
security as well. Even the best security is useless if your password is written on
a yellow sticky note pasted to your monitor.
The basic building block of the World Wide Web is the HTML page. Like the pages in this book or in a magazine, a typical Web page might include headlines and body text, bulleted lists, photos, drawings, icons, and tables filled with information. Unlike its paper-based cousins, though, Web pages can also include links and buttons that let you jump to other Web pages with a single click. And it's all put together using a special language called HyperText Markup Language, or HTML.
They may look dazzling on your monitor, but each Web page is actually just a simple text file, filled with hidden codes that tell your Web browser--in this case, Internet Explorer--how the screen is supposed to be arranged, which fonts to use, and which graphics files need to be displayed. See Figure 22.5 for a close-up look at the HTML source code for the PC Computing Web page we saw a few pages ago.
Fig. 22.5
HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, looks like plain English (well, mostly), but your Web browser can transform these files into dazzling displays.
You don't need to know what's inside a Web page, as long as you know its full name and address, known as a Universal Resource Locator, or URL. The URL for a file called index.htm in a folder called home on a machine called www.myserver.com would be www.myserver.com/home/index.htm. (By the way, notice that those are slashes, not the backslashes you see elsewhere in Windows.)
If you're interested in the Internet and the World Wide Web, you'll need a program
called a browser. The Internet Explorer was designed especially for Windows. Watch
what happens to the tools on the toolbar as the mouse pointer passes over them!
TIP: Remember, every computer on the Internet has a name and a number. So, for example, the Microsoft Network is www.msn.com as well as 204.255.247.121. If your Web browser shows a number instead of a name, don't be alarmed--it's almost certainly the page you asked for.
Every time you click a link or type in a URL, you're asking your Web browser to go out on the Internet, find the file that goes by that name, and copy the file to your computer using HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP. Even though the entire file may take a while to arrive, Internet Explorer starts displaying the top of the page as soon as it can figure out what goes there.
TIP: You don't need to type http:// to retrieve a Web page. When you type a recognizable Web address and hit Enter, Internet Explorer will automatically fill in the first part.
To get started with Internet Explorer, double-click the icon on the desktop. (If you hook up to the Internet through a dial-up connection and you're not currently connected, Windows will ask you if you want to dial now.) That opens your home page, the launching pad for your Web search. To jump to another page, click a link, or type an Address here and then press Enter. When you click a link, its URL appears in the Address line automatically.
Fig. 22.6
Ready, set, double-click! Internet Explorer includes a collection of buttons that let you manage common activities easily.
TIP: You can rearrange the gizmos at the top of the Internet Explorer window. Grab the left edge of the toolbar, Quick Links, and Address box and move them up or down. If you put two or more items on the same line, use the same handle to make each one wider or narrower.
If you have access to the Internet at work, chances are good that the icon for Internet Explorer is already on your desktop. If it's not, you'll need the system administrator's help to get the Internet Explorer software onto your system.
TIP: On the Internet, software has a life span that's measured in months, or even weeks. When there's a new version of Internet Explorer, it's easy to download the updated file and double-click its icon. So if the version of Internet Explorer on your screen doesn't look exactly like the one here, don't be surprised. A menu or two may have changed, but it should work just about the same as the one I describe in this book.
The basic operation of Internet Explorer is pretty simple: just click and scroll until you find the information you're looking for. For most people, the default settings will work fine. To change the basic look and feel of Internet Explorer, choose View, Options. You'll see a dialog box with tabs like the two shown in Figure 22.7.
Fig. 22.7
These options can make browsing the Web faster, and if your vision is less than 20-20, they can also make Web pages easier to read.
Here are a handful of changes you might want to make to the default Internet Explorer settings:
TIP: Is it just me getting older, or is the world getting fuzzier? Whatever the explanation, I appreciate the Font button on the Internet Explorer toolbar. Each time I click that button, Internet Explorer reformats the text on the page I'm looking at, using a different set of fonts. There are five choices in all, with the largest being big enough to read from across the room. Try it!
These days it seems like you can't go five clicks without stumbling over a Web page that's Java-enabled. Don't worry--this Java won't keep you up late at night. That's the snappy trademark for a programming language that Web developers can use to create programs that let your Web browser do some cool tricks. There's only one thing you need to know about Java: It's built into Internet Explorer, so you should be able to view any page, even a Java-enabled one, if you've installed this browser.
CAUTION: Actually, there's a second thing you should know, but only if you have at least a slight streak of paranoia. In theory, Java applets (the small programs that run on Web servers) can carry viruses or attempt to damage data on a computer. If you're worried about this risk, choose View, Options, click the Security tab, and remove the checkbox from the Enable Java programs box.
The Internet is worldwide, and although many people enforce rules and regulations in their corner of the Net, no one really controls it. As a result, freedom of speech has flourished in cyberspace, bringing in the digital equivalent of dirty magazines and hate mail. Despite the sensational stories you might read in the papers, pornography and extreme politics occupy only a tiny back alley of the Net. In fact, it's unlikely you'll stumble across the ugly side of the Internet unless you go looking for it.
But there's also a way to prevent objectionable material (most of it, anyway) from ever getting to your screen. Internet Explorer lets you turn on a rating system called Content Advisor, which monitors sex, violence, and strong language on the Net and lets you specify what you don't want to see. This feature is intended mainly for households with children, but a business might also find it a useful way to keep employees from peeking at playboy.com during working hours.
To begin using Content Advisor, choose View, Options and then click the Advanced tab. The first time you use Ratings, you'll need to register a supervisor password; later, you'll use that password to turn the feature on or off. Click the Properties button to adjust your preferred ratings (see Fig. 22.8). Slide the levers to the right to make the system less restrictive. Slide all the levers to the left and you'll be lucky to be allowed into disney.com!
Fig. 22.8
These ratings can help screen some (but not all) the objectionable elements on the Web.
Wandering through the World Wide Web sometimes feels a little like channel-surfing on the world's largest cable network. Everything is interconnected, which makes for some fascinating (and potentially frustrating) wrong turns and detours. So how do you cope with 16 million channels when you don't have a TV Guide? If it's after hours, and you're exploring for the sheer pleasure of it, go ahead: Follow those interesting links and see where they take you. But if you have work to do, and you need answers now, here are some strategies for using your online time wisely.
Every time you double-click on the Internet Explorer icon, it goes out on the net and finds your home page. If you find yourself continually navigating to the same spot on the Web, why not make that your home page? With that page showing in your Web browser, choose View, Options, and click the Navigation tab (Fig. 22.9). Make sure Start Page is showing in the drop-down list labeled Page, then click the Use Current button. Now, whenever you start Internet Explorer or click the Home button, you'll jump straight to that page.
Fig. 22.9
Set up your Start Page here. While you're at it, reset the destinations for your search page and the Quick Links, too.
The same dialog box lets you reset the addresses that pop up when you click the Quick Links buttons, too. One of the default links, for example, is a Web tutorial, which you don't need after you've learned your way around. Go ahead and replace it with another favorite page if you prefer (don't forget to give the page a new name, too).
As you browse the Web, you'll run across all sorts of interesting pages. Sometimes they're relevant to your current search, while other times they represent an opportunity to take a time-wasting detour. Either way, the best thing you can do is to make a note of the page and its address, so you can come back to it later.
There's no need to write the address on a sticky note and slap it on your monitor, either. A much better way to keep track of Web sites you want to visit again is with the help of the Favorites folder:
After a while, the Favorites menu has a way of getting stuffed with too many shortcuts. The solution? Organize it! Click the Favorites button again, but this time choose the second menu option, Org_anize Favorites. The Favorites folder will open in a dialog box like the one in Figure 22.10.
Fig. 22.10
When the Favorites folder starts to get too full, reorganize your shortcuts into new folders (like this one for Shopping), and delete the ones you no longer need.
If there are shortcuts you no longer need, delete them. You can also rename Internet shortcuts here. To organize a group of favorite pages into a new folder, first click the Create New Folder button and give your new folder a name. Select one or more shortcuts, then click the Move button to drop them into the folder you just created. Click the Close button to go back to your Web browser. Now, when you look at the Favorites list you'll see the folders on the list as well, with their contents cascading out to the right when you click each one.
Where do you begin searching when you haven't got the slightest idea where the information you're looking for is stored? That's where search pages come in handy. There are dozens of different Web pages that offer to do the searching for you--Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), AltaVista (www.altavista.digital.com), and Excite (www.excite.com) are three popular ones. (See Fig. 22.11 to see what AltaVista looks like.) You enter the word or phrase you're looking for, click a button, and wait (usually only a few seconds) while the search engine chugs away to find links that you might find useful.
Fig. 22.11
To follow the adventures of my favorite comic character, try this search, using Digital's AltaVista page.
Although Internet Explorer is the best place to view Web pages, you can save the data you see there and use it elsewhere as well. Here's how:
Sometimes, when you click a link, Internet Explorer will pop up a dialog box instead of displaying a page. When that happens, it means you've clicked a link for a file rather than a Web page. This will certainly be the case if you're downloading an update to a software program, for example. To save the file so you can work with it later, just give it a name and location on your hard disk.
Q&A: Do I need to worry about computer viruses?
A computer virus is a renegade piece of computer software that does something other than what it's supposed to do, usually without any warning. Like their human counterparts, computer viruses are transmitted through contact, most often by infected disks and programs. If you ever contract a computer virus, the effects can range from mildly annoying to catastrophic.
You don't run any risk of your PC contracting a computer virus through the Internet, as long as you don't download any programs. Follow that rule, and you'll be absolutely safe. What if you do want to download programs? Well, make one of your first downloads a virus-checking and removal program, or bite the bullet and go buy a commercial virus-detection-and-repair program such as Norton Antivirus.
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