The following instruction sheets are an introductory lesson to doing searches on the Internet and doing simple navigation with Netscape Communicator, v4.0x.

At the startup homepage, if you are using Netscape version 4.0X, you should see something like this:

There are many tools here that allow you use Netscape to browse, find things, and do other neat stuff. We will try many of them today. You can accomplish a great deal with just one or two of them!

A search engine is a tool that allows you to send an inquiry out over large portions of the Internet and find Internet sites that contain some kind of match for the query.

Our first tool will be try out a directory style search engine.

A directory is organized into categories like the phone book. Unlike the phone book, you only need one finger to do the walking, or clicking in this case. Each click takes you to a particular category like "Government" or "Education" or "Sports". A directory will also have sub-categories, as you will see in this example.

1. While in Netscape, go the pull down menu item FILE.
   Highlight Open, then Location in Navigator.
   [Mac Shortcut: Command L]
   
   
2. Enter the address: http://www.yahoo.com
   
   (Yahoo is a directory of sites on the internet. Yahoo also allows you to search for a particular item on the internet. We will do that in a little while.)
   
   
3. You are whisked to a new page that shows, among other things, a directory with the following categories:
   
   

   Arts and Humanities	News and Media
   Business and Economy	Recreation and Sport
   Computers and Internet	Reference
   Education	Regional
   Entertainment	Science
   Government	Social Science
   Health	Society and Culture

   
   
4. Follow the Yahoo! Search examples on the next page.
   
   Most of the following Yahoo! lesson page is from the March 1998 issue of Classroom Connect.
   To contact them for a sample issue, email them at <connect@classroom.com>.

   Yahoo!

   Yahoo! is the world's most popular Internet directory, and it's not hard to discover why. To start the search, let's link to the site's home page.

   To go to Yahoo!, go to the pull down menu FILE at the top left side of your screen. Click and hold your cursor over FILE, then highlight the phrase OPEN. Another message bar appears to your right. Without letting go of your pressed down mouse button, slide over to LOCATION IN NAVIGATOR and let go of the mouse button.

   [Mac Shortcut: Command L].

   When the small dialogue box opens, enter the URL [Internet address] for Yahoo! listed below, then click OPEN.

   www.yahoo.com

	Welcome to the world's largest subject tree listing to te Internet! To start our search for T.S. Eliot, click on the Literature subcategory under Arts and Humanities.   note: be sure tht your cursor/hand is directly over a portion of the word literature.
.
	Wow! Take a look at all of the subcategories available under Literature. Next, click on Authors to continue.
.
	Once again, we have many subcategories to choose from. Click on Poets to continue.
.
	Scroll down through the alphabetical list that appears, and click on Eliot, T.S. (1888-1965). Links to T.S. Eliot-related Web sites appear! This example shows you how easy it is to click through the Yahoo! directory to find links to some of the best sites the net has to offer.

 You have learned your first basic tool for Netscape, a directory type of search engine. There are many other directories available on the internet, but Yahoo is currently the most popular. You may also use Yahoo! as a general search engine by entering a word or phrase in the "search window" located towards the top of each of the pages of Yahoo!, and then clciking on search.

If you've just finished the Classroom Connect Instruction Sheet for Yahoo, you should be on the T.S.Elliot links page. Look down the list of links. CLICK on the title Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. On the new page that appears, CLICK on Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock again.

Now what?

What if you wanted to get back part way to where you started and visit some other topic you saw on a page. Here's a couple of ways you can do that:

1. Look at the Tools bar. Click on the "Back" button. You go back to the page immediately preceding. Click on the "Back" button again.
   
   Now, write down another topic you'd like to explore on the T.S.Elliot links page:
   
   
2. Click on the "Back" button again. Write down another topic you'd like to explore on the Poets page:
   
   
3. Click the "Back" button once again. Write down the name of another category you'd like to visit if you had time: .
   
   
4. Click the "Back" button one more time. Write down another topic in the Literature category that you'd like to explore: _____________________
   
   
5. What do you think the "Forward" button does? __________________
   
   
6. The second method of revisiting sites you've been to is to
   
   pull down the GO menu at the top of the screen. Put the mouse at Go, click and hold the mouse button down. You should see a list of everywhere you've just been.
   
   The same list can be seen by putting your cursor over the BACK button, then clicking and holding.
   
   Now, scroll down to "I have heard the..." and let go of the mouse button. You should go right back to the correct page.
   
   
7. Third method for revisiting a particalar site:
   
   go to the "Bookmarks" menu at the top of the screen and scroll down to "Add Bookmark". Let go of the mouse button.
   [Mac Shortcut: Command D]
   
   
   Go to the "Bookmarks" menu again. Click and hold.
   
   It should show "I have heard the..." in the bookmark list.
   
   You can now return to this page whenever you want, days or months from now, by going to the Bookmarks menu.

You now know how to use a Yahoo search directory and how to go back to places you've been.

But what if you need or want more information?

Go to instruction sheet 3.

1. Go to the pull down menu item FILE, and highlight "Open Location". In the Open Location box type: www.altavista.com.
   
   
2. 2. In the new page that opens, you will see
   
   
   
   
3. Type the following in the box (or, if you're adventurous, type any subject you want):
   
   

   Petaluma Junior High School

   
   
4. Click on the Submit button. A list of annotated links appears.
   
   
5. Notice that you can now scroll down a list of 10 sites to visit on the internet that have something to do with the words you're searching for. Notice that not all of them are related to our school. Notice at the top of the list is the number of documents that match your query. At the bottom of the page are the word counts related to your query and additional pages of links generated by this query.
   
   
6. Click on two sites that seem most promising and then, each time, click on Back to return to the AltaVista page. Which two sites did you visit?
   
   
7. Now, back in the AltaVista Search home page, click in the query box and add quotation marks around the phrase: "Petaluma Junior High School"; click on the search button.
   
   

   "Petaluma Junior High School"

   
   
8. How many "hits" (items returned by the search) did you get this time? Try one.....
   
   
9. Once you are in a specific page that's part of a website, you might be interested in seeing more of the website. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll sometimes see buttons you can click on that take you to the main homepage for that particular website. (Sometimes the buttons are at the top or even at the side, if the page has frames.)
   
   Click on the homepage button [if there is one] to find out more about the author of the page you're visiting.
   
   
10. Now get back to the AltaVista search page using the GO menu or the BACK button. And don't forget to Bookmark places that you'd like to return to another day.

Go to instruction sheet 4.

There are many ways to focus your searches. One of the methods involves the use of 'Boolean Operatives'. This is done by inserting the terms AND, NOT, OR or *. Sometimes you will use symbols such as + or &endash;.

1. Go to the pull down menu item FILE, and highlight "Open Location". In the Open Location box type: http://www.altavista.com.

2. In the new page that opens, you will see a sentence that says:

3. Move your cursor inside the box and click once. This places your text cursor inside

Type the following in the box

chocolate chip cookie

Click on search.

4. Within a few seconds, a new screen will appear. It displays the AltaVista logo and ad, then lists the sites that appear to have related information. Note the number of hits [or matches] listed just above the beginning of the list of sites. Note the number of hits per word at the bottom of the page.

5. Scroll down the page and see how many of the listings actually connect to the chocolate chip cookie.

6. Scroll to the top of page and enter the following phrase in the query box

[note: do not put a space after the + or the &endash;]

"choclate chip cookie" -nuts -white

7. Check the counts at the top of the responses now. What do you notice?

The "quotes" tell the search to look for a phrase; + tells it that this word or phrase must also be found in the document; &endash; tells it that a word should not appear in the document.

8. You can make any combination and length of these Boolean indicators; it is often easiest to do this after a preliminary general search.

Now, enter a search, using Boolean logic, that relates to your team or curricular subject area.

 

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page last modified 24 August 2000

Barry Sovel © 1998, 1999, 2000