|font:Times Roman New||B:0||size:10||CR| Just past the commercial services lies the World Wide Web. The Web isn't really a place of its own, distinct from the rest of the Internet-- it's a more modern way of graphically organizing and representing a portion of the Net. Think of it as a template that overlays some parts of the Internet, and makes it easier to get to and to view information graphically. Aside from its colorful presentation, the World Wide WebÆs main attraction is its home pages. |CR||CR||CR|1/?^ |font:Times Roman New||B:0||size:10|Some of these are nothing but empty research calories. Others are the ultimate repository of knowledge on a subject, the culmination of someone's fascination with frogs, rubber stamps, or Balinese gamelan music. Home pages are not only useful for their contents but also for their links to other pages. Some commercial providers also offer a built-in Web browser, which lets you out of the confines of their members-only service and onto the Internet. A Web browser is a piece of software that automatically decodes the information at a Web site, so you can view it complete with graphics and sound.|CR||CR| 2/?^ |font:Times Roman New||B:0||size:10|If you arenÆt signed up with one of the big commercial services that offers a Web access, youÆll need a separate Internet connection and Web browser. (For instructions on set-up and products, see Computer Life, March 1995, p. 74). |CR||CR|There are plenty of tools for searching the Web, and more arriving, it seems, every day. As soon as you fire up your Web browser, you'll usually get a list of search options or a "search" or "net directory" button, which takes you to search tools, such as Lycos, WebCrawler,|CR||CR|3/?^ |font:Times Roman New||B:0||size:10||CR|and Yahoo. One promising commercial search engine is called InfoSeek. It returns good results, blazingly fast. YouÆll pay a fee for InfoSeek searches, though. When youÆre searching the Web, be aware that Web sites are notoriously changeable: An address that works fine today may be gone tomorrow, and then back the day after. |CR||CR||CR||CR||CR|4/4
