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CSCI 101: Intro to Computer Science

Lab 1.1:   Some basics of Internet browsing

It is assumed that your computer has at least one browser installed. There are two most widely used Internet browsers: Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. They are very similar in usage, however may have slightly different behavior on some Internet sites.

This lab, as well as most of the others, can be done by using any of the browsers. As soon as you will get more experienced in browsing the Internet, you will be asked in Lab 1.3 to install Mozilla browser on your computer (if it is not installed).

To deal with the history of computing you will use one of the modern hardware and software components: the World Wide Web (WWW) and a browser. The WWW is essentially a combination of computers, links or communication channels between them, and information or software stored in these computers. If you see this page then there is some browser installed on your computer and you have an Internet access.

  1. The most direct way to access a webpage is to type its address (or more exactly URL - Uniform Resource Locator) into the browser's navigation bar. This bar is a narrow input field at the top part of your browser window and can fit only one line of text, the URL. Type in the URL
    http://www.mozilla.org to go to the Mozilla site.

  2. Bookmark this page. Your browser should be equipped with a Bookmarks button (as in Mozilla browser) or something similar. To bookmark the page just click on this button with your left mouse button and in the popping-up menu choose "Add bookmark". This will force the system to remember the URL of the page. Later you can select this URL from the bookmarks list and, thus, access it quickly without a retyping the address again.

  3. Notice how certain text and icons are highlighted, specially-colored, or underlined. This usually indicates that they are clickable, i.e. clicking on them will cause a new page to be displayed. In many cases you can check whether a part of webpage is clickable by dragging (and not clicking) the mouse over it. Move the mouse over the Netscape site window and watch the bottom line of your browser window. You will see the URSs of those sites.

  4. Walk through the links on the displayed site. Try to figure out for which operating systems does Mozilla have a version of their browser.