.
To change the way this works (for example, start Netscape Navigator without connecting to your service provider), use your dialer software. See Chapter 2 for more information.
This chapter describes how to get started using Netscape Navigator. First you learn how to connect to your service provider and start Navigator. Secondly, you get a tour of the Navigator window and learn how to work with pages. Finally, you learn some basic tasks such as sending and receiving email, and participating in newsgroups.
If you want basic information on the Internet and World Wide Web before you continue, read "How does Netscape Navigator Dial-Up Edition connect me to the Internet?"
Then read this chapter to get an overview of how
to explore with Netscape Navigator.
While this chapter provides basic information
on exploring the Internet with Netscape Navigator, you can find detailed
information in the following sources:
Netscape Navigator will automatically connect
you to your service provider as described in the following sections.
Windows 95 users will find Netscape Navigator
icons on their desktops and in the Netscape submenu (on the Start|Programs
menu). Use the following two-step process to start Navigator and connect
to your service provider.
.
To change the way this works (for example, start
Netscape Navigator without connecting to your service provider), use your
dialer software. See Chapter 2 for more
information.
Windows 3.1 users will find a Netscape Navigator
icon in their Netscape Navigator Dial-Up Edition program group.
To change the way this works (for example, start
Netscape Navigator without connecting to your service provider), use your
Netscape Dialer software. See Chapter 2
for more information.
When you first start Netscape Navigator, you see
a home page--the page you view each time you start Navigator. Often, Netscape
Navigator Dial-Up Edition is preset to display the Netscape home page or
your ISP's home page, but you can change this to any page you want. You'll
learn how to do this later, on page 22.
Most of the information on the Internet is organized
in pages that are linked to one another. Pages are located on different
computers throughout the Internet. (Remember, that's all the Internet is--a
vast collection of linked computers.)
Near the top of the window, notice the URL (Uniform
Resource Locator) in the location field. Each page on the Internet has
its own unique URL to identify it. Like an address, the URL tells Navigator
the location of a page. Once Navigator knows the URL, it can find the page
and display it for you. For more information, see page
24.
You can open multiple Navigator windows to view multiple
pages at once. In Navigator, click File|New Web Browser to open
a new Navigator window.
To bring other Internet pages to your screen,
do the following:
In the location field, you can type the URL of
a page you want to see. Usually, you won't need to know a page's URL because
it's included as part of a link. Behind the scenes, Navigator already knows
a page's URL when you click on highlighted text, click a button, or select
a menu item. But increasingly, URLs are included on business cards, in
magazine and newspaper articles, and in correspondence. Consequently, you
might often have the specific URL of a page you want to view. For more
information on URLs, see "Addresses
on the World Wide Web."
When you bring another page to your screen, Navigator
loads or transfers the page to your computer. The page itself doesn't actually
move to your computer, but Navigator loads the page's information on your
screen and maintains a link to it. This way, you can see page information
change on your screen when it changes in the actual page. Some pages are
constantly changing, such as a page with a "live cam" (a camera
that continually transmits its images to a page, and the page then transmits
the images on the Internet).
How quickly a page loads depends on the speed of
your modem, the length of a page, and how many graphics, sounds, or movies
the page contains. You can improve a page's loading time by telling Navigator
to load just text and skip the graphics: Click Options|Auto Load Images.
If you decide to see images after the page has loaded, click the Images
button on the Toolbar.
The Navigator window has several items to help you
see page information:
Browsing the Web will take you to many exciting
and useful pages. To keep track of these pages and find them again, you
can use Navigator's automatic lists or create bookmarks.
Netscape automatically keeps track of which pages
you've recently viewed in the following ways:
Important: When you
exit Navigator, your history list is discarded.
You can also add bookmarks to your favorite pages.
Bookmarks are more permanent ways to mark your pages--they stay on the
bookmark list until you remove them. The easiest way to create a bookmark
is to go to the page you want to mark, and then click Bookmarks|Add
Bookmark.
After you add bookmarks, you can view a list of
them on the Bookmarks menu. Just open the Bookmarks menu,
then click the bookmark of a page you want to see.
You can also use the Bookmarks window to arrange
and organize your bookmarks. To open this window, click Window|Bookmarks.
Because bookmarks are such a powerful feature, Navigator
offers many ways to create and organize a bookmark list. For more on bookmarks,
see "Using history and bookmarks lists" and "Bookmarks window"
in the Navigator Handbook.
| Button | Action |
| Back | Displays the previous page in the history list. A history list contains pages you've viewed since you opened a Navigator window; when you close the window, the history list is discarded. |
| Forward | Displays the next page in the history list. Forward is only available after you click Back or click a page in the history list |
| Home | Displays your home page. |
| Reload | Redisplays the current page. Netscape Navigator checks the network server to see if any change to the page has occurred since you first loaded it. If there's no change, the same page is loaded again. If there has been a change, the updated page is loaded. |
| Images | Loads images into pages. Available when the Options|Auto Load Images menu item is unchecked (which indicates you've opted to load just a page's text and skip the graphics). If you decide to see images after the page has loaded, click Images. |
| Open | Lets you enter a URL to display the specified page in the content area. |
| Displays a dialog box so you can print the content area of the current Navigator window. | |
| Find | Lets you search for a word or phrase in the current page. |
| Stop | Halts any ongoing transfer of page information. |
| Button | Action |
| What's New? | Displays a page of links to new pages on the Internet. |
| What's Cool? | Displays a page of links to cool pages on the Internet. |
| Destinations | Displays an introductory page that leads you to Internet directories and tools. |
| Net Search | Displays a directory of Internet search engines. |
| Software | Displays information on Netscape Navigator software upgrades. |
To look for information on a specific subject,
or for a specific page, you can use a search engine (sometimes called a
search utility). Click the Net Search directory button to see a
page of available search engines. You can read descriptions of how they
search (some search just page titles, headers or indexes, while others
search entire pages). When you select a search engine, you can immediately
link to it. Most search engines give you instructions and advice on how
to perform an effective search.
Before you can use email, you have to set up Netscape
Navigator Dial-Up Edition to work with your service provider's mail server.
Most likely, you've already done this in Account Setup Wizard. But for
more information, see "Setting up email and news" in the Navigator
Handbook.
The mail icon in the lower-right corner of the Netscape
window indicates the status of your mail:
To use email, first click the mail icon to open
the Mail window. You can also open the Mail window by clicking Window|Netscape
Mail.
As with other windows, you can resize the Mail window. You can also resize the panes within the window.
For more on the Mail window, see "Receiving
and sending email" and "Using the Mail window" in the Navigator
Handbook.
To display the Message Composition window, click File|New Mail Message or File|Mail Document, or one of several Toolbar buttons and menu items in the Mail and News windows. In a page, you can also display the Message Composition window by clicking on a page link or a button designed to initiate email.
For more information, see "Using the Message
Composition window" and "Message Composition window" in
the Navigator Handbook.
Many service providers automatically provide access
to newsgroups on their news servers. Newsgroups are online discussions
about an amazing range of topics. In fact, the range is so wide that you
can probably find a newsgroup on any subject that has ever interested you.
The discussions aren't necessarily "news;" they are participants'
opinions, focused information, or some combination of both. Often this
enormous collection of newsgroups is referred to as Usenet.
Before you can access newsgroups, you have to set
up Netscape Navigator Dial-Up Edition to work with your service provider's
news server. Most likely, you've already done this in Account Setup Wizard.
But for more information, see "Setting up email and news" in
the Navigator Handbook.
Sometimes you'll know the exact name of a newsgroup
you want to see, and other times you'll want to browse a list. If you know
an exact name:
To easily find and display this newsgroup again,
you can subscribe to it. For more information, see "Exploring Usenet
news" and "News Window" in the Navigator
Handbook.
If you don't know the exact name of a newsgroup,
or if you want to browse a list, you can use the News window. To display
the News window, click Window|Netscape News.
For more information, see "Receiving and sending
news" and "Using the News window" in the Navigator
Handbook.
Subscribing to newsgroups lets you limit the newsgroups
visible in the News window. For more information, see "Exploring Usenet
news" and "News Window" in the Navigator
Handbook.
You create and send newsgroup messages (also called
"postings" or "articles") in the same window you use
for email--the Message Composition window. See page
19 for more information. You can also see "Message Composition
window" in the Navigator Handbook.
Although Netscape Navigator is preconfigured for
easy use, you can customize it. Commands in the Options menu allow you
to control these items:
For more information, see "Changing styles,
fonts, and colors" and "Preferences Panels" in the Navigator
Handbook.
You can designate your own home page (the page you view each time you start Netscape Navigator). Commonly, the home page initially designated in Netscape Navigator (the default) has this URL:
You can designate a page from a remote computer
on the Internet (for example, a page of stock quotes), or a local page
on your hard disk (for example, your bookmarks file is a page stored on
your hard disk). To change your home page (or change back to the default),
follow these steps:
You can access the Navigator
Handbook in two basic ways:
Using your local copy of the Handbook
has advantages over a remote connection. A local copy is much faster because
you don't have to wait for the Handbook to transmit over the Internet.
You can also add bookmarks to your local Handbook. After you open
your local copy and see a place you want to mark, click Bookmarks|Add
Bookmark. Then use the Bookmarks window to view and organize your bookmarks.
See page 14 for more information.
Internet, Usenet, and World Wide Web addresses
are slightly different. A simple Internet address is username@domainname
where username can be your name, and domainname is the name of your service
provider. Domain names can be quite long and usually refer to subgroups
or departments in an organization. Typically, a domain falls into one of
the following categories:
Usenet addresses look similar to Internet addresses,
but the most general category appears first instead of last (for example,
rec.pets.cats is about cats, but the general category is recreational).
Newsgroups are organized into broad categories:
Web addresses are hypertext links to documents.
Each page has a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in the format protocol://computer/directory/file.
A Web address begins with a protocol for the link, typically http (hypertext
transport protocol) but also file, gopher, or FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
The second part of the URL (after the //) is the computer address, a directory
path for the computer, and a file name (.html or .htm extensions mean the
document is a hypertext markup language document that contains links to
other pages). Here are some sample URLs:
http://home.netscape.com/index.html
ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/
news:news.announce.newusers
