'The WebMaster Speaks....' 1-5

WebMaster icon, Lecture 1

Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
http://course.wilkes.edu/webmaster/wm1-5

http://
gopher://
mailto:
ftp://
news://
telnet://

Bad URL

Copy text off screen,
paste into WP

Click and hold (or right click)
on a graphic to copy it

Prev | Next | Introduction to the World Wide Web

Each page on the web has a Universal Resource Locator or URL. A URL begins with the protocol used to do the connection. For instance, "http://" means to use the http (HyperText Transport Protocol) to connect. The next characters between slashes represent the computer (server) to connect to. For Wilkes, the server name is "www.wilkes.edu". Most WWW servers on the net begin their name with "www". The next characters between slashes are the folder (or directory) in which the page is to be found. The page may be in several nested folders. The last characters are the name of the actual file containing the page. The URL of this page is:

http://course.wilkes.edu/webmaster/wm1-5

Thus, the browser must use the HyperText Transport Protocol to connect to the Wilkes web server course.wilkes.edu, look in folder webmaster and finally find file wm1-5.

Netscape is a Swiss Army Knife program in that it can handle many different protocols found on the Internet. It can handle the following:

http:// HyperText Transport Protocol (web pages)
gopher:// Gopher Protocol (finding files)
mailto: Electronic mail (email)
ftp:// File Transfer Protocol (download files)
news:// News Protocol (can read news files)
telnet:// Terminal session (uses telnet program)
WAIS:// Wide Area Information Server (access to a system of indexed databases)
file:// Look at a file on a local disk

Occasionally, the "smoke and mirrors" aspect of the web can show through. The web is a network of computers that are always left running. The web pages are "programmed" by people using HTML. If you click on a link that points to a computer that has been turned off or has locked up, you can get a message about a "Bad URL". If the person who wrote the HTML link made atypo (of as little as one letter incorrect), you can also get a "Bad URL" message. Don't get discouraged by such messages. They are not your fault. They mean that someone else has made an error (by turning off a computer or moving a file) that you have just found. In fact, most web authors are happy when someone emails them and reports a "Bad URL" link.

You may also run into "Netscape's connection request was refused by server:". This also is not your fault. It usually means that the server is a popular (and therefore busy) site. Try again later.

There are two techniques in Netscape you can use that will enhance the value of the web to you. First, you can click and drag through any text on a page. The text will highlight (darken). You can then copy and paste it into any word processor. For instance, if you were doing a report on Shakespeare and found a good web page, you might want to copy a quote or a reference off the page and paste it into a report that you were writing. Second, you can copy any graphic (picture) you see and save it to your disk. All you need to do is click and hold down the mouse button on a graphic. A menu will appear and allow you to save the graphic to your disk. Most graphics are in GIF or JPEG format, so you would need programs such as GIFConverter or JPEGView (both shareware or postcardware programs) to look at them later.

Prev | Next | Introduction to the World Wide Web