Introduction
Back/Forward: Buttons in most browsers’ Tool Button Bar, upper left. BACK returns you to the document previously viewed. FORWARD goes to the next document, after you go BACK.
Bookmarks/Favorites: The Bookmarks/Favorites option allows you to record web pages that you found useful and or that you visit regularly. You can then go directly to the chosen site next time you use the Internet, by clicking on the Bookmarks/Favorites button and choosing the relevant site. This serves as a shortcut, as it saves you having to enter the website address everytime you wish to visit that site.
Browser: A computer program, running on the human user’s PC, which gets information from Web servers and displays it on the screen. These instructions are usually in the computer language HTML.
Download: The process of copying a computer file from the Internet onto your own PC is called downloading. A file such as a music (MP3) file or a document is made available to the Internet by storing it on a server. To download the file, you usually click on a link to it, or else right-click and choose ‘Save target as’ (in Internet Explorer) or ‘Save link as’ (Mozilla Firefox). A box pops up asking you where on your hard disk you want to store the file; you choose the location for storage, click the button and file is copied onto your hard disk (or downloaded).
Homepage: The main or introductory page of a website.
Interactive: (e.g. Discussion Boards, Nurse 24/7)
Services that the user can respond to or change.
Internet: A large collection of computers, connected together to allow them to share information with one another.
Keywords: A word or words used by a search engine in its search for relevant Web pages. The user must try to identify the words most likely to produce relevant Web pages; these become the keywords when typed into the search engine.
Links: A link, or hyperlink, is a part of a web page that, if clicked with a mouse, opens a different web page. Links are usually shown in blue and underlined on a web page.
Online: A word used as shorthand for ‘on the Internet’ or ‘connected to the Internet’.
PDF Format: (Portable Document Format)
A PDF is a type of computer file (in the same way that an MP3 or a Microsoft Word file is a type of file), which is commonly used on the Internet for presenting documents. PDFs are excellent for printing out – a printed PDF generally looks much better than a printed (HTML) Web page. PDFs are thus mainly used for material which the user is expected to print out (such as Government forms, brochures, reports), rather than material which is meant to be viewed online. PDFs require a specific piece of software, a PDF viewer, to be viewed and printed out. By far the most common PDF viewer is Adobe Acrobat, which is available for free online.
Plug-in: A (usually small) piece of software that adds features to a larger piece of software. Common examples are Flash player and Shockwave, used to view video files
Results Page: This is the page of results displayed by your search engine in response to the keywords you have typed in.
Search Engine: A program running on a web server computer which creates and maintains a directory of web pages on the Internet. The engine has a web page with a form; you type in words describing what you are looking for; the engine looks up its directory and sends back a list of web pages that it thinks will fit your search criteria.
Web: Also called the WWW or the World Wide Web. A service that sends information over the Internet from web server programs to web browser programs. The browser then displays this information to the user on his computer screen.
Website: A website is a collection of web pages that displays information on a particular topic. Common types of websites include company websites (information about the company), online shops (where you buy goods and services and pay by credit card) and personal websites (where individuals share their interests). A website may consist of just one page of information, but will usually contain several pages, all linked together. All the pages in a website usually share the same ‘domain’ name. For example, all the pages in the large online shop Amazon have an address (URL) that starts with ‘www.amazon.com’.
