The Internet an Introduction
What is a Browser and which should I choose?
Browser: Short for Web Browser, a software application used to locate and display Web pages. The most popular browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Apple's Safari and Opera. These are graphical browsers, which means that they can display graphics as well as text. In addition, most modern browsers can present multimedia information, including sound and video, though they may require plug-ins (small additional programmes) for some formats.
Your choice of Browser is often governed by your organisation, most novice users work with Microsoft's Internet Explorer as this is the default on a Windows computer.
As to which Browser you should choose is really a matter of personal taste and the sites that you visit. Microsoft's dominance means that some developer's have written web sites specifically for the Explorer system and therefore their pages may not work as effectively in other Browsers.
On my my machine I have three browsers installed: Mozilla is my default browser and the one that I use most often. Opera I use because of its accessibility options and I have the security options tied down. And I have Microsoft Explorer 7 installed because some e-learning management functions were written for IE7.
To find an alternate Browser type any of the above names into a search engine and you will be able to find a page with full download and installation instructions. HOWEVER, do not install software onto any machine without agreement from the organisation who owns the computer.
If you have any questions please post a comment.
Search engines (source wikipedia)
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system, such as on the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network, or in a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a list of items that match those criteria. This list is often sorted with respect to some measure of relevance of the results. Search engines use regularly updated indexes to operate quickly and efficiently.
Without further qualification, search engine usually refers to a Web search engine, which searches for information on the public Web. Other kinds of search engine are enterprise search engines, which search on intranets, personal search engines, and mobile search engines. Different selection and relevance criteria may apply in different environments, or for different uses.
Some search engines also mine data available in newsgroups, databases, or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorthmic and human input.
Most common search engines
No One Knows
Beware of the Answers
The web has very little review of its content, any one with browser access can add content and create pages to highlight their views and opinons. (for example you can easily add content to this web site and comment on this page by using the comment button at the bottom)
This means that you need to consider the quality of the information you are reading. Consider, why the author has published the information, is the site reputable, is the content or author biased.
If we consider the publication of the news. I would suggest that the Guardian web site may have a different view of an event to the Daily Mail.
What is the internet?
The internet is a term which refers to the manner in which computers are linked across the world.
When you plug your modem into your computer and connect your are joining a network of millions of computers. To enable you to join and access this network you forstly connect to your ISP (internet Service Provider).
The ISP provides you with an easy way of connecting and provides you with a degree of security. i.e. you need to enter your name and password to log on.
Having logged on to the internet your browser will then display your home page (a home page is the page you have chosen to be the first page you see when you log on)
Once connected you can visit millions of pages on the world wide web. It is called a web because in same way that a spiders web has multiple ways to move from one point to another (e.g. each strand of the web meets many intersections, any intersection allows the path to be changed to reach the destination, so if a strand is broken the link can be maintained.
Every computer has its own address on the web (yours is managed by your ISP) and given the address people can access any computer.
People who own web sites have purchased a URL (unique reference locator) or Domain Name. The use of Domain names e.g. www.growingupinthewestmidlands.info has been created to make web addresses more memorable. behind the scenes a web address is a set of numbers e.g. 82.94.217.139