World Wide Web 95

Touring with Mosaic

In this section of World Wide Web 95, you'll be using Mosaic to tour the World Wide Web. "Touring with Mosaic" is divided into two tours: the first tour, Preflight Checklist, introduces you to the basics of using Mosaic. The second tour, Flying Solo, is a hands-on tutorial which demonstrates advanced Mosaic features.

Experienced users: you may not want to take the first tour, Preflight Checklist. Jump to tour 2, Flying Solo, to learn about Mosaic's more advanced features such as hotlists, mail, news, and more.

Tour 1: Preflight Checklist

This tour introduces you to the Mosaic window and controls. You'll also learn how easy it is to travel the Web by pointing and clicking to move back and forth between Web pages.

The Mosaic Window

Like any good pilot, you'll need to get to know your controls before you go anywhere. Unlike a 747 Jumbo Jet, Mosaic's window is clean and easy to learn (I'll bet you're relieved).

Probably the most important features of the window are the Web Page box, the Backward and Forward buttons, the Home button, and the animated logo.

• Web Page box
  
  The Web Page box displays the current Web page's URL (Internet address). Unlike a pilot's navigation display, the Web Page box also stores a list of your most recent Web site visits--by opening the list box, you can instantly return to a site you visited previously (try doing that in an airliner!). To open a URL using the Web Page box, just type the URL in the Web Page box and press ENTER. Or, if you don't feel like taking the time to type the whole URL, you can often just type the company name. Mosaic will auto-expand it and add the necessary information. For instance, to access http://www.spry.com, just type spry and press ENTER. Mosaic will do the rest for you!
• Backward button
  
  Clicking this button allows you to navigate through previous Web pages.
• Forward button
  
  Once you've gone back, you may want to return to the previous Web page. Click Forward to do so.
• Home button
  
  There's no place like home, because Mosaic's default home page includes jumps to the most important Web sites: the Internet Wizard search page, SPRY's home page, a technical support database, user tips and tricks, and more. The Home button puts it all one mouse click away (that's one mouse click, not three heel clicks). And if you find a Web page in your Web travels that you use often, you can tell Mosaic to make that page your default home page.
• Animated logo
  
  It's not a movie, nor a cartoon, but the animated logo can help you troubleshoot your connection. If the logo is moving, you know Mosaic is at work loading or interpreting a file. Use this logo as an indication of what your software is doing.

If you have any questions about the Mosaic window, check the online help--it has the answers!

Hyperlinks

As you learned in Part 1, hyperlinks are the jet stream of the Internet--they keep things moving. You can travel the world just by clicking hyperlinks! These blue bordered or blue underlined features indicate that, by clicking on them, you're going to travel. For instance, click here

And you're back again. By the way, you might notice that, as you mouse over a hyperlink, the cursor changes from an arrow to a hand That's one way to identify a hyperlink. You may have also noticed the hyperlink URL appearing in the status bar at the bottom of your screen. If not, mouse over one of the hyperlinks on this page (don't click on it, though), and watch the status bar. You'll see the hyperlink's URL (Internet address), which could be a location on the Internet or on your local drive. Don't worry about URLs for now; you'll learn more about them in Tour 2, Flying Solo.

Backward and Forward

Mosaic makes your life easier by storing your most recently viewed Web documents in a list. If you click the Backward or Forward buttons, you page through the documents. So when you access a Web page you're not interested in, just click Backward, and you'll return to more comfortable ground. And if you access many Web pages during a session and want to go all the way back home, there's no need to click your heels--just click the Home button; Mosaic will display your default home page just like that!

A few hints...

• Graphics If a Web page contains graphics, it will take a little extra time to download them to your computer. You can track the status of a download by watching the status bar.

  One of the handiest Mosaic features is that, no matter how many graphics a Web page may contain, you can read the text instantly. Mosaic will then load in the images, one at a time, while you're reading the rest of the page. Until a graphic is loaded, Mosaic will display a graphic placeholder that looks like this:

• History lists The Web page bar contains URLs for the last several Web pages you've visited. To quickly return to a site you've already visited, open the list and click on the desired Web page. You can access all the URLs you've used in your current Mosaic session in the History list; choose History from the Navigate menu.
• Wrong URL? If you're loading a Web page, and you decide you don't want to view it after all, click the Stop button and Mosaic will stop the transfer. No time wasted loading unwanted information.

Where to go from here

That's the end of the first tour. You've learned the basics about navigating with Mosaic, including hyperlinks, the Backward and Forward and Home buttons, and a little about the main window. Hopefully you're feeling confident about the Web, and ready to learn about Mosaic's more advanced features. If so, go ahead to the next tour, Flying Solo.