Q

Is the Web the same as the Internet?

A

Not exactly. The World Wide Web is the most well-known and visible part of the Internet, the part that you see through your Web browser. It's a global series of interconnected pages (hence the word "web") containing text, graphics, and multimedia (sound, movies, pictures).

Q

How do I get to Web sites I read about?

A

Simply type the site's address (known as the URL) into the address blank on your Web browser and hit the Return or Enter key on your keyboard. (you can usually leave off the "http://" portion of a URL when you type it in).

Q

What is a URL?

A

URL stands for Universal Resource Locator.

A URL is the equivalent of a Web address; it tells you "where" a Web page is located, just as a street address in the real world tells you where a house or business is located. Every page on the Web has a unique URL, so the URL is all you need to find any page.

Type the URL into your Web browser's Location or Address blank (depending on which browser you use), hit the Return or Enter key on your keyboard, and your browser will find that page for you. (You can also get to a page without knowing its URL by clicking to it from a link on another page.) These links are the type that is in blue type.

With a little experience, you can learn to read URLs just as easily as you read street addresses.

Q

What do URLs look like?

A

Most URLs look something like this: http://www.dairytown.net/urls/faq/html The first part, http:// (which stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol) indicates that this address points to a standard Web page. Some publications omit this section of Web addresses.

The second part, www.seidesigns.com is the Web page's hostname - the name of the computer that houses this page. It consists of a prefix, a domain name, and a suffix. Most host addresses begin with www, which stands for World Wide Web, but you will also see home (your personal Web space), start (your Personal Start Page), or any number of other words. The next part, urls/faq/html, tells your browser where the Web page is stored on its host computer. The final part of the URL is the actual name of the Web page file. In this case, the page is named urls.html and it is stored inside a folder named faq. Which is short for Frequently Asked Questions

Q

Will I be charged extra for using some Web sites?

A

Not without your consent. Some Web sites require you to pay a fee to access some or all of the site's content. The site will tell you whether you need to pay, and you can agree or simply decline and leave the site.

Q

How come some Web pages take a long time to see?

A

A number of factors affect the loading speed of Web pages: the amount of text and graphics on the page, the quality of your connection, the traffic on the Internet and at the site your visiting, and so on.

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