Exercise
UNIT 12: Netscape Browser — Bookmark, History and Web Browsing Table of Contents
UNIT 12: Netscape Browser — Bookmark, History and Web Browsing
1.0 Introduction
You can choose any page on the web to use as your home page which is the first page you see when you start Netscape Navigator. The History window is helpful and detailed, but it tracks all the sites you have typed in, not just the ones you like. Bookmarks and bookmark folders are arranged like folders and files on your hard drive containing the location of your favorite web page. The Netcenter home page contains a handy search box for locating information on the WWW.
2.0 Objectives
At the end of this unit you should be able to use the Netscape browser to:
Set your home page
Use t he Hist or y List
Create and manage your Bookmark
Use Netscape's Search Engine
Speed Up Web Browsing
3.1 Setting a Home Page
The first page you see when you start Netscape Navigator or Communicator is called the home page. Your home page is probably Netscape's home page, your Internet service provider's home page, or your company's home page. You can choose any page on the web to use as your home page.
Go to the page you want to use as your home page.
From the Navigator menu bar, select Edit, Preferences. The Preferences dialog box will appear.
In the Preferences dialog box, click Navigator in the Category list. That panel will move to the front.
In the Navigator panel, click the Use Current Pagebutton to set the page you just visited as the home page
Or
Type (or paste) the page's URL into the Home Page Location text box.
1. Click OK to close the Preferences dialog box.
2. Click the Home button on the Navigation toolbar to load your new home page.
Fig. 12.1
3.2 Using the History List
You can quickly return to the web pages you have visited since you opened and started using Navigator.
On Navigator's menu bar, click the Go menu to see a partial history list, which displays titles of the
pages you have visited recently. You'll see a checlunark beside the title of the web page you're currently viewing. To return to a page you visited earlier, simply select it from the menu.
Fig. 12.2
To display complete history information, select Communicator, Tools, History from the Navigator menu bar. On Windows systems, the History window will show information about pages you have visited during your current and previous browsing sessions.
You can hold down the Back or Foward buttons on the Navigation bar to see a list of the pages you can go back or forward to.
3.3 Bookmarking Your Favorite Sites
If you want to save the location of a favorite page or if you want to visit certain pages often, you'll want to create bookmarks for those pages. Bookmarks are saved on the Bookmark list until you decide to delete them.
Exercise 1
What is the important of History list?
You can quickly return to the web pages you have visited since you opened and started using Navigator using the History list.
Fig. 12.3 71
The easiest way to access bookmarks is by using the Bookmarks menu.
Bookm Netsite
I Bookmark QuickFile'
Fig. 12.5
On Windows systems, hold down the Bookmarks button on the Location toolbar to view the list of bookmarks.
You can then select any bookmark from the list to visit that web page.
3.3.1 Creating a Bookmark
Go to the page you want to bookmark (for example, www.nasa.gov). You can bookmark a page for which you typed the URL into the Location field, or you can bookmark a page you visited by clicking a link.
Hold down the Bookmarks button on the location toolbar and select Add Bookmark to add a bookmark for the current page to the bottom of the Bookmarks menu.
Communicator comes with a set of handy, preinstalled bookmarks sorted into categories like Entertainment, Shopping, and Sports. Explore these sites to learn your way around and web.
3.3.2 Organizing Your Bookmarks
You can organize your bookmarks using the handy Bookmarks window. Besides adding new bookmarks, you can rename them, file them into folders, and delete them. When you use the Bookmarks window to organize your bookmarks, Netscape Navigator updates the Bookmarks menu automatically.
3.3.3 Organizing Your Bookmarks in the Bookmarks Window
To create a new folder for bookmarks, select File, New Folder from the Bookmarks menu bar.
Fig. 12.6
Fig. 12.6
When the New Folder window appears, type a name for your folder in the Name text box and click OK.
To move a bookmark into a folder, click on it and drag it onto the folder where you want to store it.
To rename a bookmark, click the bookmark to select it. From the Bookmarks window menu bar, select Edit, Bookmark Properties (Edit, Get Info on the Mac). A dialog box with the same name as the bookmark will appear. Type a new name for the Bookmark in the Name text box.
To delete a bookmark, click the bookmark icon on the list and press the Backspace (Delete) key on your keyboard.
3.4 Net Search
Netscape's search engine is called Net Search. Net Search lets you choose between six different search tools: Netscape Search, Alta Vista, Excite, Infoseek, LookSmart, and Lycos. All these tools contain slightly different information, but each works much the same way.
3.4.1
Search the Web Using Net Search
You can search for a piece of text on a particular web page. From the Navigator menu bar,
select Edit, Find (or Find in Page). When the Find dialog box appears, type of word you're looking for in the text box and click Find. The word will be highlighted in the Navigator window.
Or
Click the Search button on Navigator's Navigation toolbar. Navigator will load the Net Search page.
Type the words or phrase you are looking for into the text box.
Press Enter (Return) or click the Search button.
In a moment, Navigator will load a page that contains links to pages related to the words you typed. When something looks interesting, click the link. You can always use the Back button or the Go menu to return to the Search results page.
If you don't find what you're looking for, you can try your search again with a different search tool. Just go back to the Search page and click the name of a different search engine. The words you're searching for will appear in the new search tool automatically.
3.4.2
Browse Web Directory
A directory is similar to a search engine in that it, too, stores information about the web in a database.
While search engines catalog every page they can find, a directory includes only the information about pages that human beings have selected. These pages are sorted into categories. Most directories let you choose between typing words in a search box and clicking the names of categories to browse the information like a library.
Netscape's directory is called Web Director
The Netcenter home page functions much like a directory. You can click the name of a topic that looks interesting to access news, related links, special offers, and handy tools related to that topic.
Exercise 2
I-low many search tools does net search provide you with?
As indicated above Net Search lets you choose between six different search tools, Netscape search, Altavista, Excite, Infoseek, Looksmart and Lycos.
Click the No to visit Netcenter, then choose a search tool from the pull-down menu. Type in your phrase, clic the button, and go!
3.5 Speeding Up Web Browsing
You may have noticed that web pages load into your browser window at different speeds. The speed of a page's download (or transfer) depends on several factors, including the speed of your Internet connection or modem, the length of the page, and the number of images and sounds the page contains.
If you have a slow Internet connection and want to speed up web page downloads, you can instruct Netscape Navigator to replace the page's own images with small icons, called placeholders, when it loads a page.
3.5.1
Turn Off Automatic Image Loading
From the Communicator menu bar, select Edit, Preferences. The Preferences dialog box will appear.
Click Advanced on the Category list. That panel will move to the front.
Windows: Uncheck Automatically Load Images. Macintosh: Uncheck Automatically Load Images And Other Data Types.
Click OK to close the Preferences dialog box and return to the Navigator window.
The next time you access a web page, you'll see little placeholders instead of the images that would normally load with the page, and your toolbar will have a new button called Images.
When you turn off automatic image loading, you can still decide to view images. If you have auto image loading turned off, click the Images button on the navigation toolbar to load the images on that page. To view a single image without loading other images, click the image's icon on the downloaded web page.
Exercise 3
What effect will turning off your automatic image loading give?
Images on a general note slow down the downloading of a web page so turning it off will increase the speed of loading the web page.
Fig. 12.8
4.0 Conclusion
Your home page is the first page you see when you start Netscape Navigator. The History window allows you to quickly return to the web pages you have visited since you opened and started using Navigator. While the Bookmarks will help you to organize your bookmarks and manage it. Images on the web page can affect the speed at which it is downloaded which can be controlled with Netscape Navigator.
5.0 Summary
We've seen how you can keep track of sites you have visited using the history list and how to manage and organize this site on your bookmarks for easy access subsequently. I have also explained how to set your home page as the startup page anytime you start the Netscape Navigator.
6.0 References and Suggestion for Further Reading
Widernet Project, (http//www) widernet.org Microsoft Windows (http/Iwww) Microsoft.com OpenContent License (http://www/opencontentorg/).