The Internet gives us access to millions of pages of information, and it grows every day. In this episode, we learn the best ways to find what we're looking for using the tools designed for the Internet. We also discuss the major tool we use to navigate through the Internet, the Web browser.
Guests
Justin Steen
Justin Steen
Justin Steen is a technology specialist from the University of Minnesota's Academic and Distributed Computing Services (ADCS), Office of Information Technology (OIT). He teaches computer courses, designs Web sites, writes technical documentation, and answers consumers' questions on the computer helpline. He also has a bachelor of science degree in computer science.
Kari Branjord
Kari Branjord
Kari Branjord is the director of Enterprise Applications Development and Maintenance and Enterprise Web Development at the University of Minnesota, OIT.
For Your Files
Justin Steen, technology specialist at the University of Minnesota, defined a browser as a simple computer program that lets you view Web pages on the Internet. Your Web browser connects to a Web site and pulls in a Web page, and from there you can link to other Web pages on the Internet.
Justin told us about several kinds of Web browsers. Selection is based on the features each browser offers. But whatever one you choose, you'll want to update it periodically. The Web standards that determine how Web pages are put together are continually updated to include more features that you can have on a Web site and greater functionality. And in order to be able to use those new features, the browser needs to be able to support them. With an old browser you may miss new Web content.
Video clips and a transcript of this episode are not available.
Browsing
What you do when you search for information on the World Wide Web.
Cache
A small and fast section of computer memory that temporarily stores
and provides faster access to information that has already been used.
Domain Name
A string of letters and numbers that is an address of a computer
network connection and that identifies the owner of the address,
like www.umn.edu.
Search Engine
An Internet software program that searches a database and gathers and reports information that is related to certain content. It is basically a huge database of millions, even billions, of Web pages that are out the on the Internet.
Web Crawler
A small program that follows links from one Web page to another
and records information about Web sites in a search engine database.