Beginners 101 - what do you want... and want to learn?
Beginners... 101, What do you really want to put on-line... or do with the web / internet...
First you need to decide what you want from your on-line experience, i.e. which one or more of the following do you want to use / learn:
- E-mail - send / receive e-mail messages with others
- Blog - (web log) post your thoughts or articles, and optionally receive on-line comments
- Photos - have an on-line collection of pictures or photo album(s), that you can share with others
- Web site - create and post your own web pages any way you like, possibly with pictures, all the way to having a sophisticated and interactive sites, with programs for collecting, storing data in a database, interacting with users etc... perhaps with your own unique URL (address), e.g. www.my-unique-name-company-web-site.com
- Business / store front web site - a full web site to conduct business and/or sell articles
This series of lessons will address some of the above, enough to get you started and understand the scope and basic details. We will then provide you references to more in depth coverage and available options... with an effort to keep it inexpensive or free for you whenever possible.
We assume if you got this far, you have or have access to a computer, internet access, and a web browser.
Internet Access:
Options include, work, library, free/pay public Wi-Fi access, or you can pay. Your paid options generally are dial-up using your telephone, or getting from your telephone company their DSL offerings (on your basic typical copper phone line, but it is faster than dial-up, and now in some areas it is available over fiber line, which is faster and more expensive), or you can get access from your cable company's cable high speed access offerings. DSL and cable are the fastest (with prices varying a lot), and each comes in a range of speeds, typicall, even the slowest will be good enough, settle for dial-up only if you really don't plan on being on-line much at all, live in a remote area where DSL or cable offerings aren't available or you really can't afford anything else. Some DSL low cost options are now comparable to dial-up in cost, but much faster.
Web Browser:
Some of your web browser options, and you can certainly use more than one, are:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) - most used since most people are on personal computers running Microsoft Windows, and IE comes already installed. Version 7, IE7, is now much improved, but will only run on Windows XP and Vista.
- Mozilla Firefox - (my favorite) - much better internet standard support (for viewing and properly displaying web pages, etc), without the use of proprietary tags/extensions on web pages, also available on many types of computers: Linux, MacOS, various Unixes, etc. and of just about all versions of Microsoft Windoes. Many Firefox extions, available from the user community add anything and more you would wan the web browser to do, the Web Devloper Toolbar extension is very useful. Firefox is currently the second most popular web browser. This is the follow-on to the Mozilla Navigator / Communicator based on an old Netscape.
- Opera - a very good state of the art, standards compliant browser, but doesn't have as much widespread use as Firefox. Opera is now typically the third most commonly used web browse. Earlier versions were not free, free versions were available but with embedded ads, which turned people off. Opera like most othe web browsers now, are freely available and able to be downloaded.
- Netscape - the old Netscape had it's day as a worthy contendor to IE, but now it is built / reliese on Mozilla Firefox for most of its code, upon which it is now build, and lags in version / capabilities. Earlier versions were not free, giving the then new IE, which was free a chance to grab market share.
- Mosaic - no longer available / maintained... For a historical footnote: the first Netscape browser grew out of the open source/free Mosaic web browser (and developers). Mosaic was also used as the basis for other early web browsers including IE. Mosaic while not the first web browser, it was the first practical graphical web browser, previously other web browsers like Lynx, were only text based (no fancy fonts or graphical images or tables, etc.).
- and of course Mac users typically now use Safari, available only on MacOS
Stay tuned for our next installment...
posted by AdultLearners.biz @ 12:56 AM
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