The Internet is a collection of computers throughout the world, which are connected mostly using telephone lines for the purpose of sharing information. In the past, mainly governments and educational institutions used the Internet. Today, the Internet is used by millions of people including individuals, small and large businesses, associations, schools, universities and governments. The most popular part of the Internet is the World Wide Web. The Internet is a public network, which means no one actually "owns" it. Various organizations own pieces of it, but not one entity or central computer "controls" it. The pieces are linked together in a cooperative way to form the global Internet.

The World Wide Web is a part of the Internet, and you are on the World Wide Web now! The Web is the most popular part of the Internet because it provides a way for members to access information in the form of text, pictures, and even sound and video. The Web is sometimes called the multimedia part of the Internet.

To use the Web, a Web browser (such as Microsoft Explorer or Netscape) is required. Your Web browser is an application that runs on your computer and retrieves information on the Web, allowing you to see Web pages (such as this one) on your computer screen.

The Internet is a collection of computers located all over the world and usually connected together by telephone lines. The World Wide Web is a large subset of these computers, which are linked together in a web-like fashion. Each of these computers is a Web site.

When you see a page on your screen, it came from a Web site that could be anywhere in the world. It might have come from a Web site located in Vancouver, Québec City, Hong Kong or Sydney.

When you click on a link and receive a page, you do not need to know where that page came from or where the Web site is located. You can get Web pages from all over the world simply by clicking on the links you see on your screen.

Each window of information you get from the Internet’s Web is called a Web page.

A page might be longer (or wider) than the viewing area of your computer screen. In this case, use the scroll bar at the side and/or bottom of your window to move up and down and sideways to see a whole page. 

A home page is the first screen you see when you connect to a Web site address. When you entered Career Edge’s web site address, the first page that appeared on your screen was Career Edge’s home page.

You can easily go back and forth between the pages you’ve already seen by clicking the forward arrow or back arrow on your browser’s (Netscape or Explorer) toolbar.

Words on a page may be underlined or appear in a different colour than the surrounding text. When you point and click on the underlined or coloured text, your browser will take you to another page that relates to the word that you clicked on. Underlined or coloured words are called "hyperlinks," because they link you to another page on the World Wide Web. When you point at a hyperlink with your mouse, the pointer turns into a hand.

Once you have clicked on a hyperlink, the colour of the text changes to remind you that you have already clicked on it at least once.

The "N" or "e" at the top-right of your screen sometimes appears animated, and at other times, it is static. When the "N" or "e" is animated, it means that a Web page is in the process of being sent to your computer. Wait for it. If you find the wait too long, you may wish to interrupt or stop the page being sent to your computer. You can do this by clicking on the Stop sign button on your browser’s toolbar. Click on the Reload or Refresh button to try to retrieve the page again. Otherwise, click on the Back button on your browser’s toolbar to go back to the previous page.

There are several ways of finding things on the Internet. If you have a topic in mind, click on "Search" on your browser’s toolbar and then use one of the search options presented to you. You will see a choice of Internet directories to search. It is impossible to say which one is best or where you will find Web sites on your topic.

Several factors affect how fast pages appear on your screen. Some of these factors are under your control and some are not.

The factors under your control are: the speed of your modem and the speed of your computer. The faster the modem, the faster the pages will be displayed. The recommended modem speed is 14.4 kilobits and the most commonly used modem is now up to 28.8 kilobits.

The speed of your computer depends on how fast your computer processor is, how much memory it has, and how much disk space it has. The faster your computer, the faster the pages will be displayed.

The main factor not under your control is the amount of traffic on the Internet. The amount of people accessing the same Web site as you will affect the time it takes for you to receive the Web pages. It also depends on how much traffic is on the Internet between you and the Web site you are accessing.

If you feel you are waiting too long for ../images to appear on your screen, you can display text only, by selecting Options (Netscape only) on the menu toolbar and choosing Auto Load ../images. When you want to see ../images for that page, click on the ../images button on your Netscape toolbar.

A bookmark is a shortcut to a page you’ve seen before. When you are looking at a page you would like to come back to days or weeks later (Career Edge’s internship positions is a good one to bookmark), you can have your browser "save" the location of that page for you. Select Bookmarks from the menu bar and choose Add Bookmark. You can now go directly to that page whenever you want simply by choosing its name from the list under the Bookmarks menu.

Yes. If you have a printer connected to your computer, most printers can print exactly what you see on your screen, including text, pictures and graphics. Click on the printer icon on your browser’s toolbar or select File from the menu bar and choose Print. Keep in mind that a black and white printer will not print colours, but will print the page in black and white. Some printers may not be able to print pages from the Web. The best thing to do is to try and see if it works.

There are some pages that some printers cannot print. The best way to find out if your printer can print a certain Web page is to try it. If your printer will not print the page as you see it on the screen, there is a way to print just the text of the page. Select File from your menu bar, and choose Save As. In the Save As dialogue box, select "Plain Text" as your file type and choose a temporary file name to save it. You can now open and print the file using your word processor.

Saving the contents of a page to your hard disk will allow you to view the page again without having to connect to the Internet. Choose File from the menu bar and select Save As. In the dialogue box, choose text (to open file in word processor) or source (to open file within your browser) format. Name the file and select the directory you want to save it to.

To send a message over the Internet to a particular person or people, use the e-mail feature that came with your browser or that you installed as a separate application. To share your thoughts and ideas on specific topics with other people, you can send a message to one of the many discussion forums or to a Newsgroup on the Internet.

E-mail or electronic mail is a way to send messages to others via the Internet in electronic form. You write e-mail as you would write a letter using a word processor such as Word or Wordperfect. Instead of printing out your message you simply click "Send." The e-mail should arrive at its destination within minutes, depending on where it was sent. Sending e-mail is simple. All you need to know is the recipient’s e-mail address. To receive e-mail from others you must give them your e-mail address that was provided to you when you purchased an Internet service.

Newsgroups are discussion groups that work like e-mail except that they are not addressed to any specific individual; anyone can read the messages sent to the Newsgroups. Most Newsgroups are divided into subject categories.

Newsgroups are an excellent way to share information, to get answers and to give your opinion on thousands of subjects. People from all over the world participate in Newsgroups.

You can access newsgroups by clicking on a link to one from a web page or by linking through your browser. You can also search for Newsgroups through Search Engines such as Yahoo! or Altavista.

FTP is short for File Transfer Protocol. It is used to retrieve individual files from sites on the Internet. You can access files by FTP the same way you would access a Web site. You would enter the site address as FTP://(addressname) and press enter.

Because communication on the Internet is always done through typed words, it is both easy to misinterpret someone’s words and hard to convey your own. "Netiquette" is the way the Internet community describes politeness when using newsgroups and e-mail.

For example, typing in capitals means that you are shouting.

When first joining a Newsgroup, check the FAQ for that newsgroup before asking questions that are old news to the existing participants. Remember your "Netiquette" when you participate in newsgroups. Be polite and remember that newsgroups attract all kinds of different people, from all over the world, with different opinions and world-views. Just remember that Newsgroups are a place where people can post whatever they want.

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is the address of the site on the World Wide Web. It is usually located in a window near the top of your Web browser. Career Edge’s URL is www.careeredge.org.

To transfer information over the Internet, every computer on the Internet has to have a unique address (like having a unique postal address). Assigning addresses are functions that are handled by the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol.

The IP converts data into packets and provides an address for each site on the Internet. Packets are like pages in a book. Information is gathered and divided into packets (pages) that can be handle more easily by the network. Each computer connected to the Internet needs an IP address, a group of four decimal numbers that provides a unique address for the computer. To set up a Web server, you need to get an IP address from your Internet service provider (ISP).

The Transmission Control Protocol ensures that all the packets reach their destination and that they arrive in the proper order. Assume that you want to send a book to someone and you have to mail it one page (or packet) at a time. Also assume that there are no page numbers in the book. As each packet is sent the TCP assigns it a number. When the packets are received the numbers are checked for sequence. TCP makes sure the information arrives in the same condition as it was sent.

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the heart of the World Wide Web. HTTP composes the messages and handles the information that is sent between computers on the Internet using TCP/IP. To understand how HTTP works, you first need to understand the nature of client/server relationships. The basic function of the Internet is to provide a means for transferring information between computers. To do this, one computer (the server) will contain information and another (the client) will request it. The server will process a client’s request and transfer the information.

The passing of information between the client and the server has four basic steps:

1. A connection is made between the client and the server. This is handled by TCP/IP.
2. The client sends a request to the server. The request is in the form of an HTTP message.
3. The server processes the request and responds to the client. Again, this is in the form of an HTTP message.
4. The connection between the client and server is terminated.