New to Internet!

This guide is intended for you who have little or no experience of the Internet. I will describe in simple terms how the Internet works. There are basically three things you need to know in order to find what you are looking for on the Internet.

The addressing system
The hyperlink structure
Search engines

Addressing
Every computer connected to the Internet has a specific number, a so-called IP-number. This is based on the URL(Uniform Resource Locator) system. An IP-number looks like this: 212.105.55.137
Since it would be almost impossible for us users to remember all these numbers a translation-system was developed called the DNS(Domain Name System). With this system you can subscribe to and register a name for your website, making it much easier to find and remember.These names are composed by a given, logical structure. Take for example the address of the page you are now looking at:

http://www.ebug.se/new_internet.html

which can be described like this:

protocol://www.subdomain.topdomain/filename

It is devided into the following categories:
protocol - tells the browser which Internet service to use
www - states that it's a webpage. (This part is not allways used though).
subdomain - is often chosen based on the corporate name, in order to make the corporate website easy to find.
topdomain - tells us in which part of the world the website resides i.e. se for Sweden, de for Germany and so on. There are a few exceptions to this. USA has devided their locationnames (or topdomains) into serveral categories like; com for commersial, net for network, edu for education to name but a few.
filename, could also be directory/filename - describes where on the computer the files are stored and called from.

I won't go much further into this. If you are interested to learn more about the technology on which the Internet is built, there is plenty of literature avalible on the subject.

Hyperlinks:
This is one of the things that makes the Internet so practical. If you compare presenting information in printed form and on a website; you will find that in the printed version you'll have to go through each and every page to find the information you need. If there is an index, you still have to work your way through the material to get to the section you want. With the internet you can highlight any word and make a "link" of it. By doing this you make it possible for your visitors to go directly to related information with just a click on the mouse. These hyperlinks are most often marked in blue text and are underlined. It's also important to know that images too can be a link; if an image is also a link your cursor will change from the arrow symbol to that of a hand when you move the mouse across it.

Search-engines:
On the Internet today there are so much information that it's nearly impossible to find what you are looking for unless you know how to search for it. To help you there are a number of search-engines which you can use. Some of these are listed below.

These are a few that you can use to find what you are looking for. There are hundreds more out there but these are the most common. Be advised that there are ways to use these engines more effectively. I won't go into this here, more than to say that each of these search-engines have help-sections that describes these methods in detail.

Good Luck!
Webmaster @ eBug

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