Beginning Internet
A place to find answers for your puzzled mind.
This is a computer
This is a computer with a modem with internet hookup.
This is where you sit.
This is a browser. It is the screen you look at web pages through.
They interpret the HTML in their own sweet way. Some of which are
very different. Browsers are Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet
Explorer, Mosaic, Lynx, Firefox, Opera, Avant and of course, each of the major online providers
have their own browsers, such as, AOL, each with
its own varying ability to show the pages.
This is a search engine. Search Engines are like secretaries
with large filing cabinets that only hold directions to the file(page)
you want. When you use the secretary (search engine), she runs to
check her filing cabinet to see if she can find something like what
you typed. Different search engines file things differently and while
one search engine will come up with 5 entries or matches, another
will come up with some unwieldy number like 725,984 matches. They
both are willing to show you 10-25 matches at once.
Clearly, you want to learn how to trim your search down to the best word(s) to match in order to avoid looking through all 700,000 or more matches. Some search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL Search, WebCrawler, Infoseek, Lycos, Alta Vista, Excite and tons of others. Currently there is approximately 100+ search engines available. This changes daily so I'm just guessing. How to search
You need an internet provider, or more clearly, a server. Unless of course, you want to set up your own server. If you are a very big company, it makes sense to set up your own server. You probably have most of the equipment to do that.
A server is the place where you get on the Internet Highway. Sort
of like an entrance ramp, and definitely the place you park your car
at night. It is the place where your mail collects (email).
It is the place where you do your IRC (Internet Chat - online
immediate talking with other people). It might be a place where you
can store your own web page(s), depending on the cost. They would
also be the place where you can rent some space to call your own,
Your own Domain Name. Then other people can find you by typing in
your name inbetween the www. and the .com.
What are CSS, CGI, JAVA, .NET and all that other stuff? Netscape
Navigator, the newer versions and Microsoft Internet Explorer are
the two browsers at this time who support JAVA, Javascript, and some
of the more fancy plugin (a program that these browsers use to do
other exciting things) to do videos, animation, calculations, 3-D,
virtual reality, and more. JAVA and it's sidekick Javascript (developed
from JAVA) were written exclusively for the internet applications.
CGI is the Common Gateway Interface, which is a fancy way of naming
all the programming languages you can use that will do fancy programming
applications and do it within the context of a web page. These programming
languages, PERL, Visual C++, Visual Basic, Unix, and others, were
not developed for the Internet and are a little harder to learn than
JAVA or Javascript. Basically, because you have to learn to program
effectively to use them.
You may find all of this still to be a
If you do find this still a puzzle, you can email me at anna@apayne.com and I'll try to make things clearer for you.
One of the things about the INTERNET, It takes time. But it definitely is FUN!!!