f r e q u e n t l y  a s k e d  q u e s t i o n s

What is a browser?

A browser is a program that lets you computer download & display documents from the World Wide Web.. Although Netscape's Navigator & Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) are now the two main browsers in use, browser technology has been around for almost twenty years. It wasn't until the early 'nineties that a research team at the National Centre for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) in the US developed the mother of all modern browsers. It's name was Mosaic, & it's still around today. One member of that team was Marc Andreessen, who went on to form Netscape, the company that developed Navigator. After initially pooh-poohing the idea of the Internet, Microsoft realised that the Net was worth looking at & developed its own browser, Internet Explorer. The rest, as they say, is history.

How do I use a browser?

To understand browsers, you need a rudimentary knowledge of what happens when you use one. Think of the browser as a train carrying you from destination to destination The stations on this journey are the Web pages that you visit. Both IE & Navigator have navigation buttons on their toolbars that improve your journey by letting you take shortcuts. Once you have started browsing, the Back button lets you go back, one at a time, to any of the previous stops you've made. Similarly, the Forward button will return you, one stop at a time, to the farthest stop you'd reached before deciding to return to a previously visited site.. The Stop button is like the emergency brake, & stops a site from loading . You can use this button if you've clicked on the wrong link, or clicked before finding out whether the information you were after was there or not. The Reload or Refresh button lets you restart if you've stalled, or update a page if it's changed since your arrival. Finally, The Home button will take you to the page set up in your browser as the first one you're taken to when your browser is launched. This is also known as your start page. In all cases, the default setting will be the home page of either the browser developer or your Internet Service Provider (ISP), if you want a different page to start from - perhaps a favourite site or a search engine - do the following, depending on which browser you're using. For IE , select View / Internet Options / General & fill in the URL of the site you want to start from in the Address field. For Netscape Navigator, select Edit / Preferences / Navigator & fill in the URL in the Location field.

Must I have the very latest browser to surf the Internet?

No.The very latest version of Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator is not absolutely necessary. However, fewer features are enabled in earlier versions and may result in losing out on web sites designed to make use of features such as frames, Shockwave flash, DHTML, XML, JavaScript etc. You can download the latest browser versions by following the, 'Resources' link in this area. The latest browsers are also usually available on cover CD ROM's of computer or Internet based magazines.

What are newsgroups?

Newsgroups are in effect, notice boards and forums for discussion. They are a very rich source of information covering almost every imaginable subject. The groups number tens of thousands, (depending on your service provider). To view the newsgroups you can use dedicated news reading software, (see the resources section, from where you can download a free version of Agent. Alternatively both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer can be configured to read the Newsgroups.