The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Internet Users

1
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Internet Users

• Brad Paleg
• National Extension Association of Family and
  Consumer Science, (Maryland Affiliate)
  Association Meeting
• October 28, 1997

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Internet
Users(with apologies to Stephen Covey)

• Brad Paleg
• National Extension Association of Family and
  Consumer Science, (Maryland Affiliate)
  Association Meeting
• October 28, 1997

3
Slight Change of Program

• The Hands-on experience with Brad Paleg
• is being replaced with a
• hands-on computer training session covering
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Internet Users.

4
Todays Agenda

• Welcome to the training!
• What are the 7 Habits of Highly Effective
  Internet Users?
• Discuss each habit - identifying helpful tips and
  techniques
• Questions and answers

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Internet Users

• 1. Be Internet Savvy
• 2. Your Browser can be your Best Friend - Treat
  it Well
• 3. Balance Yourself with Adobe Acrobat
• 4. Be a Bookmarker
• 5. Think Win-win and Search Away
• 6. Change Hats - Be an Information Provider
• 7. Sharpen your Technological Saw - Practice

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Habit 1 - Be Internet Savvy
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In Order to Play a Game Effectively You Must

• Understand the rules
• Understand the rules limitations
• Understand the playing field
• Understand the language (vocabulary)
• Understand the players

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So, What Exactly Is the Internet?

• Worlds largest computer network (bunch of
  computers connected in some manner)
• Network of networks, freely exchanging
  information
• System of systems
• Our playing field and the set of rules that
  govern the game

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OK, Then What Is the World Wide Web (WWW)?

• The WWW is a bunch of pages of information
  connected to each other throughout the world.
• The WWW lets you jump or "hyperlink" from one web
  page to other pages on the web.
• The WWW is one facet of the internet consisting
  of client and server computers handling
  multimedia documents.

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Client and Server Computers - Woe, Slow Down!

• Client computers use browser software (such as
  Netscape Navigator) to view documents (pages).
• Server computers use server software to maintain
  documents for clients to access.

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What Are Web Sites?

• If the WWW is a big library on the internet than
  a web site is a book and pages are like
  specific pages in the book.
• A home page is a starting page for a web site.
• Each web page has a unique address called a
  universal resource locator (URL)

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Web Sites Definition Example

• The College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
  (AGNR) has a web site.
• The web site homepage (URL) is
• http//www.agnr.umd.edu
• The URL of the Department of Family and Consumer
  Sciences page is
• http//www.agnr.umd.edu/ces/homeec/

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More about URLs

• URLs are just addresses that identify unique Web
  pages.
• Most URLs begin with http// (Hypertext Transport
  Protocol). Good news, Netscape Navigator 3.0 and
  more recent versions allow you to ignore typing
  the http//.
• URLs must always be typed correctly. They are
  unforgiving.

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Lets look at a Specific URL http//www.agnr.umd.
edu/ces/homeec/childcare_train.html

• Type specifier http
• Host identifier www.agnr.umd.edu
• Path identifier and file extension
  /ces/homeec/childcare_train.html

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Top-level domain names

• edu University or academic institution
• com For-profit commercial organization
• gov Government organization
• org Not-for-profit organization
• net Internet service facility
• mil Military organization

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Other Country Top-level domain names

• ca Canada (not California)
• uk United Kingdom
• jp Japan
• de Germany (not Delaware)
• fr France
• nl Netherlands

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What Can One Do on the Internet?

• Personal communication
• Electronic mail (e-mail)
• Public forums
• Listservs
• Mail reflectors
• Simeon address books
• Usenet

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The World Opens its Door to You. What Can One Do
on the Internet?

• Find people www.four11.com
• Find businesses www.bigyellow.com
• Find directions and maps www.mapquest.com

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The World Opens its Door to You. What Can One Do
on the Internet?

• Search for information using search engines
• Altavista
• Lycos
• Webcrawler
• Hotbot
• Infoseek

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The World Opens its Door to You. What Can One Do
on the Internet?

• Read news online
• Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com
• New York Times www.nytimes.com
• Wall Street Journal www.wsj.com
• CNN www.cnn.com
• MS-NBC www.msnbc.com

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The World Opens its Door to You. What Can One Do
on the Internet?

• Miscellaneous Services, You can
• use a dictionary www.m-w.com/netdict.htm
• or a thesaurus www.thesaurus.com
• read or search the complete works of
  Shakespeare the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/

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The World Opens its Door to You. What Can One Do
on the Internet?

• Miscellaneous Services, You can
• send flowers www.flowernet.com
• check on the weather www.weather.com
  

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The World Opens its Door to You. What Can One Do
on the Internet?

• Supply information and create linkages on the
  Colleges Web Site

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Habit 2 - Your Browser Can Be Your Best Friend -
Treat It Well
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Browser, Sounds Like a Type of Dog, What Is It?

• A browser is a software program that requests,
  interprets, and displays WWW documents.
• Commonly used browsers include Netscape
  Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Lynx.

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Recommended Browser

• Currently the Colleges browser of choice is
  Netscape Navigator 3.01. (See Netscape
  instruction sheet).
• Windows 95 users with sufficient memory (32 MB)
  and lots of free hard disk space may want to use
  Netscape Navigator version 4.

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Location field
Title bar
Tool Bar
Menu bar
Status indicator
Directory buttons
Content area
Security area
Status bar
Progress bar
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Exploring Netscape Navigator

• Title Bar - shows the name of the current page
• Menu Bar - standard pull-down menu containing
  various commands
• Tool Bar - contains large buttons allowing you to
  easily perform major Netscape tasks
• Location Field - shows you the URL of the page
  currently being displayed

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Exploring Netscape Navigator

• Directory Buttons - Beneficial for newcomers to
  find their way around the Internet
• Status Indicator - Shows when Netscape is loading
  a page
• Content Area - Shows the content of the requested
  page

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Exploring Netscape Navigator

• Status Bar - Provides information about the
  connection to a particular page
• Progress Bar - Show you what portion of a
  download that has been completed
• Security Indicator - Shows whether or not you
  have a secure connection

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Netscapes Toolbar

• Back - moves to the previously viewed page
• Forward - moves to the next page
• Home - Takes you to your homepage
• Reload - Causes the currently displayed page to
  be reloaded.
• Images - Loads images on the page you are viewing

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Netscapes Toolbar

• Open - Enables you to directly move to a new site
• Print - Prints the current page
• Find - Allows you to move directly to a
  particular word on the current page
• Stop - Stops the downloading of information from
  a remote server

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Tip - You can increase the Content Area by

• Not showing either the Toolbar, Location, or
  Directory Buttons.
• From the Options menu on the Menu Bar, Click on
  Show Toolbar, Show Location, and Show Directory
  Buttons.

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Click on a Hyperlink - What Happens?

• Netscape loads the page but other things happen
• Status Indicator goes into motion (meteors streak
  across the blue field)
• Progress Bar shows the percentage of the page
  that has completed loading

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Click on a Hyperlink - What Happens?

• Notice two things
• Text is displayed first, which means you can
  immediately begin using the given page
• Images are downloaded using progressive
  rendering, allowing the browser to display the
  images in several passes

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Ive Pulled up a Great Page, Now What?

• Bookmark the page (well discuss this more fully
  in a while).
• You can print the whole page by clicking on the
  Print Button.
• You can print specific parts of the page by
  selecting Print Preview from the File Command on
  the Menu Bar.

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Ive Pulled up a Great Page, Now What?

• You can e-mail the file by clicking on the Send
  Page Command from the File Command on the Menu
  Bar.
• You can use the Search Button to scan for a
  particular word on the current page.
• You can copy and paste selected text into your
  local word processing program (see next two
  slides).

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Copying Text

• Edit, Copy
• Right-click highlighted text
• Makes a copy of the selected text or graphic from
  a document and places it on the Windows
  Clipboard.

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Pasting Text

• Edit, Paste
• Right-click after placing your cursor
• Places whatever is currently in the Windows
  Clipboard into your document at the point where
  your cursor is.

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Tip - Accessing a .com site

• Netscape makes it easy to go to a new URL
  directly.
• If you are trying to go to a commercial site (one
  with a .com extension), all you need to do is
  type of name of the company in the Location
  Field.

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Habit 3. Balance Yourself with Adobe Acrobat
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What is Adobe Acrobat Reader and what is its
Importance?

• Adobe Acrobat Reader is an application program
  that lets you view Acrobat files (known as PDF,
  or Portable Document Format files) directly
  within your browser.
• It is extremely beneficial because it allows you
  to work with documents that arent limited to the
  restrictions of a normal Web page.

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What is Adobe Acrobat Reader and what is its
Importance?

• When installed on your computer (see Adobe
  installation instruction sheet), Adobe Acrobat
  Reader is launched when you either click on a PDF
  link or directly go to a PDF file.
• For example www.agnr.umd.edu/CES/Pubs/facts
  heets.html

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Adobe Acrobat Summary

• PDF files are wonderful ways to reproduce pages
  with great precision.
• Though PDF files require a proprietary viewer for
  display, they provide additional utility by
  displaying files in their original layout
  (format).
• However, they are often very large and
  downloading them can be painful.

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Habit 4. Be a Bookmarker
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Using bookmarks well can be the best way to
maintain a handle on the Internet.

• Build your bookmarks well and you will reap the
  benefits.

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Adding a bookmark to Netscapes Bookmarks menu

• Bring up the desired page.
• From the Bookmarks menu, click on Add Bookmark.

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Using a bookmark from Netscapes Bookmarks menu

• From the Bookmarks menu, click on the desire page.

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Mange your bookmarks well to fully benefit from
this feature.

• From the Bookmarks menu, click on Go to Bookmarks
• Once there, you will start to organize and sort
  your bookmarks so that you can easily access them
  when you wish.
• Instead of a unsorted list of 50 or 100
  bookmarks, you will have a categorized listing of
  pages sorted into folders.

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Habit 5. Think Win-win and Search Away
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About WWW Search Engines

• Search Engines provide the quickest and most
  complete way to find information on the Internet.
• The result from a search engine is a Web page
  displaying a prioritized list of links to pages
  that contain the terms that you selected.

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About WWW Search Engines

• There are many popular search engines.
• It is to your best advantage to try a couple of
  different search engines in order to satisfy your
  search.
• Though how you structure your query will be
  similar among the different search engines, the
  results will differ.

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AltaVista

• http//altavista.digital.com/
• AltaVista says it provides access to "31 million
  pages found on 476,000 servers, and four million
  articles from 14,000 Usenet news groups."

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Excite

• http//www.excite.com/
• Excite's producers say that their NetSearch
  database is not padded by including the number of
  links embedded in indexed pages.

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HotBot

• http//www.hotbot.com/
• HotBot is powered by the Inktomi search engine.
• Databases WWW pages, Usenet news groups.

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InfoSeek Guide

• http//guide.infoseek.com/
• The InfoSeek Guide database counts unique Web
  pages, not the URLs (or links) mentioned in those
  pages.
• Databases WWW pages, Usenet news groups,
  InfoSeek Select Sites (reviewed), directory of
  companies, e-mail addresses, one month of news
  stories, FAQs

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Lycos

• http//www.lycos.com/
• Lycos merges the results of its continuous WWW
  sampling into its catalog on a weekly basis.

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WebCrawler

• http//webcrawler.com/
• WebCrawler allows document title and content
  searches of its submission and robot-constructed
  database. The database consists of both explored
  and unexplored Web pages.
• Databases WWW pages

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Yahoo! Search

• http//search.yahoo.com/bin/search/options
• Databases WWW pages, e-mail addresses, Usenet
  news groups.
• Yahoo provides excellent subject indices -
  especially useful when you start exploring the
  WWW.

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Habit 6. Change Hats - Be an Information
Provider
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Explore the Colleges Web Site and investigate
how you can use this technology to share
information with your users.
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Habit 7. Sharpen your Technological Saw - Practice
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Lets explore some Web Sites and practice what we
learned.

• FCS homepage http//www.agnr.umd.edu/ces/hom
  eec/
• e-answers http//www.e-answers.org/
• AGNR http//www.agnr.umd.edu
• ADEC http//www.adec.edu