simply start typing in C-R-I will bring up a dropdown list of all the
previous addresses that this PC has visited that begin with those letters.
This is called AutoComplete - we will look at that in a separate lesson.
Hitting F4 will bring up a dropdown menu for every address that has been visited by that browser.
Click on the required site in the list, or you can also use the up and down cursor arrows to select it.
Once the required address is in the address bar, the browser will not
start to look for it until you:
Hit Return or Enter on your keyboard
Hit Tab on your keyboard
Hit the Go button to the right of the address bar.The Go button has a
little green curly arrow (normally). We will discuss why it is like this
in more detail when we look at how the internet works and what Refresh
does.
Most addresses are a combination of words and letters.
There is a format to them and a lot of information can be gained from
reading them.
The address is also called the URL.
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator
They usually start with:
http://
This stands for Hyper Text Title Page. We will look at what this means
in more detail next week.
If you forget the : or // then it won't find the page.
You will also see https:// the s here stands for secure.Next you have
www
This stands for World Wide Web, also called W3.
The World Wide Web and the internet are technically different things
(if you can describe them like that), but in practice we mean exactly
the same thing when we talk about them.Then you will have a word like
"crisis" or "thesun" or "google".
This part is sometimes called the Domain Name (although the whole thing
is really).
This is the part of the name that really distinguishes it from other names.
There are some rules - you have to have a minimum of 3 characters.
Somehow the Financial Times got hold of ft.com before it became regulated,
so they are the only site with just 2 characters. You can use a hyphen
in the name, but I have never seen other characters like @, £, $,
" etc. etc. Maybe some are allowed. Some names have many words with
hyphens or dots between them. Only one word will be the actual domain
name.
Finally you will have the extension. Typically in the UK it is .co.uk
or .org.uk.
Why don't you have .co.usa?
You may have noticed that postal stamps in the UK don't have UK on them.
All other countries put on USA, Brazil, France etc.
Why don't UK stamps have UK on them?The same principle applies to web
addresses. The US were the first to do it, to they didn't think to put
on USA. When the second wave happened and the internet went international,
then the next counties like
France (.fr)
Italy (.it)
Russian (.ru)
UK (.uk)
Irelend (.ie)
Germany (.de)
had to then invent their own country extension.
There is also .co.uk or .org.uk
.com or .co.uk means that it is a commercial site.
.org or .org.uk means that it is a not-for-profit organisation like a
political party or charity.
This is why Crisis is crisis.org.uk and not crisis.co.uk
.gov.uk is also used for government-run orgnaistions, for example Transport
for London is www.tfl.gov.ukThere are now many other offfical (and unofficial)
extentions, others are:
.biz
.net
.ltd
.aero
.info
You can look up what these mean on the internet or I will produce a full
list for you some time.So after you hit go, your browser "goes on
the internet and finds that page."
It isn't as simple as that, for various reasons. I will try and expand
all of this into a full lesson on the technology of how the internet works.
My web address is a load of numbers.
When we look at this in more detail, we will see how your browser, such
as Internet Explorer or Firefox goes about locating a page on the internet,
but for now I will quickly tell you what an IP address is.
IP Addresses look something like http://192.54.23.543IP stands for Internet
Protocol - it is the system for sending information around the internet.
A browser actually converts your words that you type in into an IP address
and goes and looks for it. I'm just saying this in case you have a web
address that is only numbers, or if you type in an address and then when
it loads it becomes a load of numbers.
The other thing is that I think (but am not sure) that the numbers are
broken down roughly into regions, countries, area and then networks. This
gives the servers out there an idea of where the users are located. It
is possible to go to alias websites and surf the web from there anonymously.The
other reason this is useful is that if you are using an Italian IP address,
you will be given Google Italy when you type in Google.com. If you are
in Japan you will be given Google Japan when you type in Google.com.