WWW Workshop - Exercise Two

Yale University Library/WWW Workshop

Exercise 2: Navigating with Netscape

Getting Around: the basics

There are many ways to move around in Netscape. The Go Menu in the top menu bar will let you jump back and forth among pages you've viewed during this Netscape session. Use Go to get back to this page when you are through with the exercises on this page.

Look at the top of the Netscape screen. There are a number of navigational buttons across the top-- Back, Forward, Home, Reload, Images, Open, Print, Find, Stop. Click on these buttons and see what happens. Only the functional buttons are highlighted.

Navigation Buttons

Back takes you to the previous page
Forward takes you forward one page
Home takes you to the default homepage on your computer
Reload will fetch the most current version of a page off the server
Images will load images if "auto load images" has been turned off in the Options Menu
Open lets you open a connection to any internet resource
Print prints the current page to the attached printer
Find searches this page for a word or phrase
Stop cancels a page in the middle of loading

Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

The second box underneath the navigational buttons says Location:. This is the address of the page you are viewing. This address is called a URL or Uniform Resource Locator. Every resource on internet has a URL. The address for this page is http://www.library.yale.edu/ref/internet-www/navigating.html.

Sample URLS:

http://www.yale.edu
telnet://umpg.cis.yale.edu:26600 - * note the port number, 26600
tn3270://orbis.yale.edu
gopher://yaleinfo.yale.edu:7001 - * note the port number, 7001

Try opening a direct connection to one of these URLs. From the File menu, choose Open Location. Type the URL in the box.

URL Shortcuts

A couple of useful shortcuts for entering URLs.

Type the URL directly into the Location box in Netscape.
If the URL is "http://www.[WORD].com", just type in the [WORD]. For example, http://www.yahoo.com can be shortened to yahoo.

Navigating in Frames

Frames are a layout device used by Netscape 2.0 and higher. Frames divide the Netscape screen into different horizontal and vertical scrollable windows. One frame will stay the same, and another frame will link to another page.

Here is a web page from the Divinity Library that uses frames

Depending on which version of Netscape you are using, navigating in frames is easy or a pain in the neck. If you are using Netscape 3.0 or better, simply use the back button at the top of the screen to retrace your path. Going backwards in frames is much trickier in Netscape 2.0. If you use the back button, it will take you to the page you were viewing before you looked at the frames page. What you need to do is go Back in Frame.

To go Back in Frame on a Macintosh, hold the mouse button down anywhere in the frame screen, and a dialog box will appear asking if you want to go back in frame.
To go Back in Frame on a PC, hold the right mouse button down anywhere in the frame screen, and a similiar dialog box will appear.

The Back in Frame dialog box:

New Window With This Frame

Another feature of Frames in Netscape 3.0 is opening a new Netscape window containing a particular frame. Hold down the mouse button, just like going "Back in Frame," and highlight New Window with this Frame. A second Netscape window will open with the frame shown at full size.

On to Exercise Three: Exploring the World Wide Web.

Yale University Library. WWW Introduction. Prepared February 1996 by Sarah Prown. Last updated 9/97. Please send us your suggestions Copyright (C) 1995, Yale University. All rights reserved. http://www.library.yale.edu/ref/internet-www/navigating.html