How can you move around?
There is a navigation bar at the bottom of every page. You will use this bar to move within this tutorial and between pages displayed on the screen.
Click the FORWARD button now to move to the next page.
If this is your first time as an online student, you may not be sure about what all the features on the computer screen in front of you do.
This section, Using this tutorial, explains some of the more common features and gives you hints on how to move around and use the tutorial.
To begin, click once on How can you move around?
There is a navigation bar at the bottom of every page. You will use this bar to move within this tutorial and between pages displayed on the screen.
Click the FORWARD button now to move to the next page.
As well as moving through the pages of the tutorial, the bottom navigation bar also has a number of other functions as shown in the diagram below.
A glossary is available throughout this tutorial. The glossary will help you identify the meaning of some of the words which may be new to you when you first start using the Internet.
You can access the glossary by clicking on those words that are bold, mustard and underlined. When you click on one of these words a pop-up window will appear displaying the word and its meaning.
Try using the glossary now, by clicking on the word glossary.
The word will change to yellow once you have visited the glossary.
Sometimes not all of a page can be seen on a screen at once. If a page is longer or wider than the size of the screen, scroll bars will automatically appear.
The image below shows how the scroll bars work. You may need to scroll down to see the full image.
The vertical scroll bar allows you to move up or down the page to display the information not in view. The horizontal scroll bar also has arrows at each end so you can read information going off the left or right edge of your screen.
A browser is quite simply a computer program that helps you access the Internet. It allows the computer to display information. This information can be in the form of text, pictures, sound or even videos. If you are reading this text on your computer, you are at this moment using a web browser, maybe without even realising it.
Microsoft® Internet Explorer is a popular browser that lets you move around the Internet by using menus, tools and buttons that you can click.
Netscape® Navigator is another popular browser.
All browsers provide the same basic functions so it doesn't really matter which one you use. When you purchase a computer, it usually has a browser installed on it.
If there weren't any browsers, you would have to learn complicated commands to navigate around the Internet.
Your web browser shares many common features with other computer programs you may have used, but it also comes with some special tools that help you do different jobs while you explore the web.
Move your mouse slowly over the picture below and the important elements of the browser will be highlighted. Click on each highlighted element for an explanation. There are fifteen of these to find.
You may have already noticed that sometimes the mouse pointer changes shape automatically as you move it around the screen. The mouse pointer changes shape to indicate different options are available. Here are some examples used in Microsoft® Internet Explorer.
Most often, the mouse pointer is in the shape of a left pointing arrow that will allow you to point to an item or a function, then select that item or function by clicking on it.
If the mouse pointer changes to a pointing hand, then the item it is pointing to is a link. By clicking on a link, you will move to another webpage or website. Links can be in a variety of formats from pictures to underlined text.
When the mouse pointer is moved over text it will change to an I-beam. You can use this to select portions of text that you would like to copy.
When the mouse pointer changes to a timer, then the computer is completing an action. You will have to wait for the action to be completed before doing anything else.
If you want to stop using this tutorial but remain connected to the Internet you can either:
click once on the Close button on the browser window or
select File on the menu bar, then select Close from the drop-down menu.
click once on close on the bottom navigation bar.
You have now completed the topic on Using this tutorial. Click the HOME button to return you to the contents.