Absolute web beginners' guide

This is a web page.

You can move down it by clicking the small arrow on the bottom right hand side.

The arrow for moving up the page is at the top on the right.

Between the arrows is a bar for moving up and down the page. This is called the scroll bar.

The scroll bar is part of your browser.

Please try using the arrows or scroll bar now to move down to the next section.

Your browser is probably
Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Does it say Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer at the top of the screen?

Browsers are computer programs that let you read the pages that people have written on the world wide web.

At the moment, you are reading a page on Andrew Roberts' site on the web.

On this site, if you click underlined or coloured words you will move to somewhere else. You did this to get here.

If you click these underlined and coloured words you will to go the bottom of the page.

Somewhere you click to move to another page or elsewhere on the same page is called a link

Sometimes, clicking on small pictures or symbols will take you somewhere else.

If you click the arrow symbol below, it will take you to the top of the page

Coloured words, underlined words, pictures and symbols that take you somewhere else are all called links.

However, a web page can have coloured words and underlined words and pictures that are not links - You just click to find out. On this website all underlined or coloured words (but not all pictures) should be links.

On any site:

Clicking on the Back or Forward buttons, at the top of the page, will move you backwards and forwards between the places you have already been to.

Look at the pictures. Notice that some browsers just have arrow signs (no words) for back, forward and reload.

If you click a link and then want to go back to where you came from, click on the Back button.
Each time you click, you move back one more place.

The Back button is part of your browser.

Click on this coloured word to go back to the definition of a browser. You can then move back to this point by using the Back button and/or the down arrow on the scroll bar.

The pictures above are also links

If you click on them, they will take you to other pages

Click on each of them and use the Back button to return to this page

Finding and remembering web pages

If you clicked on the pictures, you may have wanted to keep a note of the web pages they went to. All web pages have addresses that you can find them again by. You can see the address of this page in a box at the top of the browser. It will look something like this:

This address box is also called the location text field. When you first start the browser it already contains the address of a web page called the home page. When you want to go to another page, you type a new address in the location text field, and press the ENTER key.

Bookmark Pages

When you find a web address you may want to go back to, you do not have to remember its web address. You can bookmark it. This means adding it to a list of pages that your browser remembers for you.

Bookmarks is the name used by Netscape. The same thing in Internet Explorer is called Favorites

At the top of your screen there is a title bar that tells you the the title of the web page you are reading and the name of the browser you are using. It will look something like this:

or this

The bar underneath the title bar is called the menu bar. It usually starts with menus labelled file, edit and view. (Click on them to see what the menu is)

Favorites or bookmarks is also on the menu bar. To see how it works:

click on the one your browser has (not the picture!).
click on Add bookmark or Add to favorites
Now click on the menu again and look at what has happened.
The name of this page (Absolute web beginners' guide) has been added to your menu.
In future, all you have to do to return to this page is to click on its name in the menu

A menu needs several items, so here are some links to web pages I think you will find useful. Click on them to visit. Bookmark them if you want to, and then come back to this page by clicking on it in the menu:

The BBC search engine

One look dictionaries

Andrew Roberts' Home Page

Free books on the web

Free things on the web

ABC Mathematics

Use a search engine to find the pages you want

That has given you a menu of pages I think you might want to visit.

Now find the pages you want by using a search engine.

I think the best to start with (unless you want sex and advertising) is the:

The BBC search engine

If you click on that link you will see a box into which you can type anything you want and then ask the BBC to look for it all over the world by clicking the Search Button

I typed in nutrition. This is a picture of the first part of the result:

The BBC found almost 3,000 web documents. It put these in order with the ones it considered most relevant at the top. The picture just shows the first one. When I clicked on the underlined words, it took me to the page the BBC recommended.

If that was not what I was looking for, I had thousands more to choose from.

Now it is your turn, but remember to bookmark the pages that interest you

NOW THAT YOU KNOW HOW TO MOVE ABOUT A WEB PAGE, HOW TO MOVE FROM PAGE TO PAGE AND HOW TO FIND AND REMEMBER PAGES:

CLICK HERE FOR A CHOICE OF THINGS TO DO NEXT

At the bottom of the page are the coloured words you click on to go to the top of the page. When you get there, you can move back to where you were by using the arrows or the scroll bar.

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