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Contents:
- Introduction
- How to
search for information about a specific subject
- How to
display several pages at once
- How to
save the page you are viewing on disk
- Beware of
viruses !!
- How to
save a page on disk without displaying it
- How to
save an image from a web page
- How to
download and install software offered in the internet
- Introduction
If you are an experimented
internet user, this page will not contain anything new for you.
But if you are just beginning to explore, you can find useful
hints about how to:
- find faster the information you are looking for
- save and use in your computer information and software from the
internet
- protect your computer from viruses.
In order to follow the instructions below, you need to have at
least some basic knowledge about the use of the operating system
"Windows". For the users of other operating systems,
some of these hints will not apply exactly.
- How to search for information about a specific subject:
There are several
"search engines" on the internet which allow to search
information in the internet by using the keywords you choose. You
enter a search engine in the same way you enter any web page:
clicking the corresponding link from another page, or typing its
address in the address line of your browser.
In continuation we will describe the basic functions which are
almost the same for all search engines:
- Keywords
In the search
line (blank line where you can enter text) you can insert the
keywords you want to search for. The search engine will return
the addresses of all the web pages which contain these keywords.
If you insert for example the word "Christian", you
will see all pages which contain this word. You can imagine that
there will be thousands of pages! Therefore you need to specify
more exactly the subject you are searching for.
- Combination of several keywords
Let's assume
you want to find information about Christian education of
children. So you could search for all pages which contain the
words "Christian", "education", and
"children". In order to be even more specific and to
have a greater chance of finding Bible-based pages, you could
also include the word "Bible" in your search. So you
would type the following list of keywords:
+Christian +education +children +Bible
The plus signs (+) tell the search engine to dispplay only pages
which contain all four keywords. (It is especially
important not to forget the plus sign before the first word!) If
you do not use the plus sign, the engine will return all pages
which contain "Christian" or
"education" or "children" or
"Bible". This does not make much sense, because you
will get all pages which have something to do with Christianity,
plus all pages about any type of education, plus all pages
related to children, plus all pages mentioning the Bible in any
context. Therefore you should combine the words with the plus
sign.
(Some search engines use the word AND instead of the plus sign.)
- Excluding keywords
You
can exclude certain words from the search by preceding them with
a minus sign (-). For example, if you are sure that you do not
want to see any page related to school, you can modify your list
this way:
+Christian +education +children +Bible -school
(Some search engines use the word NOT instead of the minus sign.)
- Literal expressions
Search
engines normally search a keyword in all its grammatical forms.
If you have, for example, the word "Christian" in your
list, the search engine will also search for
"Christians", and possibly even for
"christianize", "Christianity", etc. If you
want the search engine to find only the word as you typed it, or
an expression of several consecutive words, you can put the
expression in quotation marks:
+"Christian education" +children +Bible
This search will not return pages which contain
the words "Christian" and "education"
separately, but only those which contain the two words together.
- Language selection
Most search
engines contain a pulldown list where you can select the language
of the pages. By default, pages in all languages are searched
for. Especially if you are searching for non-English pages, the
search time will be considerably shorter if you specify first the
language in which you want to search pages.
- Start the search
Once you
entered your keywords, click on the button which says
"Search", "Go!", or similar. After some time
you will see the first ten or twenty search results. If there are
more results, you can click on the corresponding link for
displaying page 2, 3, etc. of results.
See below for a convenient way of examining the pages found:
- How to display several pages at once
When you click on a link with the right
hand button of your mouse, a context menu with different
options will appear. One of them is "Open in new
window". When you select this option, a new browser window
will open which shows the new page, while the first window
remains open and can be selected quickly by clicking its icon on
the taskbar (at the bottom of the screen).
You can also change the size of the windows so several windows
will be visible at the same time.
This is very useful, for example if you did a search with a search engine and you want to examine the contents of
the pages found, without loosing the list of results; or if a
page contains several links and you want to see them one by one,
without having to load again and again the original page.
Try with this link: Home Page
If you did it right, you should see now a second browser window
which shows the home page of "Hijos del Altisimo",
without closing this current window.
- How to save the page you are viewing on disk:
You might find it useful saving
web pages on your own computer, for example:
- If you frequently use the information on certain pages and want
to see them faster, without having to load them every time from
the internet.
- If you do not have access to the Internet on your own computer,
you can transfer web pages on diskettes from another computer
(for example a public internet cabin). In Windows 98, you can
view the page by simply double-clicking the file name (*.HTM),
Internet Explorer will open and show the page as if you were
connected to the Internet.
1. On the browser's menu bar,
click on "File".
2. On the appearing pull-down menu, select "Save as".
3. A dialog box will appear where you can select the folder in
which you want to save the page. You can also change the file
name if you want. (The diskette has normally the drive letter
"A:", and the hard disk has normally the drive letter
"C:".)
Some versions of "Internet Explorer" let you choose
between different file types. "Web page (HTML only)"
will save only the text. "Web page, complete" will save
also all the graphics and images contained in the page. (In this
case, the graphics will be saved in a new subfolder which has the
same name as the .htm file.)
Try with this page! - If you did it right, you should now have
the file "netPautasE.htm" on your hard disk or
diskette.
Beware of viruses !!
Even if the original web pages and
software are virus free, you might get them infected for
different reasons:
- The author might have them uploaded from an infected computer.
- They might have been copied inside an infected computer.
- They might have been sent by e-mail from or to an infected
computer.
- The computer where you download them might be infected.
So if you download information for use in your own computer, take
some security measures against viruses:
- Scan all the downloaded files with an up-to-date antivirus
program before opening resp. executing them. A virus
cannot be activated by only copying a file, but it will be
activated when the file is opened.
- Do not use illegal copies of commercial programs. There is a
high risk for illegal copies to contain viruses.
- Update your antivirus software frequently. New viruses are
created every day, so an antivirus older than three months is no
longer safe because it will no longer detect the latest viruses.
- Some producers of antivirus software offer free (time-limited)
trial versions or online scans on their web sites. So if you need
to scan your computer only once, you can do it with a trial
version without any need to buy the program.
- How to save a web page (or another resource offered in internet) without having to display it first:
It is possible to save a web page
from a link, without having to load it into the browser window:
(The same applies to other resources offered from a link for
download: Software, graphics, music files, etc.)
1. Click with the right hand mouse button on the link
text.
2. In the appearing context menu, choose "Save Link"
resp. "Save Target".
3. A dialog box will appear in which you can choose the folder
where to save the file.
(If the target page contains graphics, they will not be saved, only the text.)
Try with this link: Test Page
If you did it right, you should now have on your hard disk or
diskette the file "test.htm". (When you view this file
in the browser, the graphics will appear as little empty boxes
with an x in them, because you saved only the text.)
- How to save an image from a web page:
1. Click on the image you want to
save with the right hand mouse button.
2. In the appearing context menu, select "Save Image".
3. A dialog box will appear where you can select the folder where
you want to save the image file.
The graphics and images are
normally in GIF or JPEG/JPG format (pay attention to the file
name extension). These files can be opened and printed with most
graphics editors, for example "Imaging" which is
included in Windows.
Try with this image:
If you did it right, you should
now have the file "estrella.gif" on your hard disk or
diskette. Open it with a graphics editor to verify. - If you
saved it in the same folder as "test.htm", this image
should now appear in the page when you view it again in your
browser.
An important detail:
Many web pages have their graphics stored in a different folder.
For example, most pages from "Hijos del Altisimo" have
their graphics stored in a subfolder named "Pic". In
order to view these pages correctly after saving them, you would
have to reconstruct the same folder structure; this means
creating a subfolder, naming it "Pic" and saving the
graphics there.
- How to download and install software offered in the Internet:
Some web pages have links
indicating that there is a program or other software for
download. For most of these links you can apply the same
procedure as for saving a web page without displaying it.
You can also enter the link directly (click on it with the left
mouse button). Some browsers will then display two options:
"Open from location" or "Save to disk". For
safety reasons, choose ALWAYS "Save to disk". (See Beware of viruses!)
Some of the downloaded programs come in EXE format (executable). Normally these are installation programs. So (if you work under Windows), you can just double-click on the file name. The program will install itself automatically while you follow the instructions displayed on screen.
There are a few programs which do not need any installation because they consist of one single file; when you execute it, the program executes directly.
Other programs come in ZIP format
(compressed archive). In order to install them, you need an
uncompressing utility. One of them which is offered for free is
PowerArchiver (http://www.powerarchiver.com). Also the following page offers such
programs: http://www.davecentral.com/12004.html
Then you have to install the program manually:
1. Open the ZIP file from the uncompression program. A list of
the compressed files contained in it will appear.
2. Select "Extract". - If you have to choose between
the entire archive or individual files, choose the complete
archive.
3. A dialog box will appear where you can
select the folder where the files will be copied. (It is strongly
recommended to create a new folder for every program you
install.)
4. After copying resp. uncompressing the files, open the folder
where these files are located. Look first for text files which
contain information about the use of the program, and read them.
(These files normally have names like README.TXT or README.DOC.
You can also look for Help Files with the extension .HLP). Most
important, find out which file is the executable that starts the
program. (Normally this is an .EXE file, in some cases a .BAT
file.)
5. If you are using Windows: Create a shortcut to that executable
and copy the shortcut to the desktop or to the Start menu.
Some programs come also in "self-extracting" format. This is an intermediate between the two described above: they are compressed archives like the .ZIP files, but you do not need an uncompression utility for opening them. They have the extension .EXE. When you execute them (double click on the file name), a dialog box will appear where you are asked to select a folder where the files are to be extracted. Then you proceed in the same way as for ZIP files, starting at Step 3.
