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Web
Navigation
With your web browser as your space ship,
you can navigate through a universe of information on the
Internet. The elements of web navigation are summarized
below -- there are four directions you can surf, and five
basic techniques.
Directions. From any page you can surf in one of four directions: - Back. Go back to the
previous page -- press the Back button, right-click on the window and select
"Back", or press <alt><left arrow>.
- Forward.
Go forward to a new page after going back -- press the Forward button, right-click
on the window and select "Forward", or press <alt><right arrow>.
- Link. Click a link and jump to a new page.
- Jump. Select a new page from an external source such as your bookmarks.
Techniques. The five
basic surfing techniques are described below: - Surfing. You
don't have to wait for a page to load to either click a link, press the back
button, or select a new link from your bookmarks. You can take action whenever you are ready. Jumping ahead of the browser is recommended if the link you
want is already loaded but the rest of the page is lagging behind. When you click
on a link as soon as it is available, you speed up and accentuate
the feeling of surfing from wave to wave.
- Chains. After you click on several links and proceed through several pages,
you create a chain of web sites accessible with the down-arrow beside your browser's Back button. You can click on the browser Back button to return to a previous page and read it again, and then repeatedly click Forward to return to the last page without the trouble of finding the
links you used last time. If you click a new link from any page, you start a new chain from that point on.
- Reloading. You can stop and then reload a page at any time if it is
having problems loading or to ensure you have the latest copy of a page that
updates regularly.
Explorer: Click the Refresh button, right-click
on the window
and select "Refresh", press <ctrl>-r, or press F5.
Firefox: Click the
Reload button, right-click on the window and select "Reload", press <ctrl>-r,
or hold the shift button and click the Reload button.
- Stopping. You can stop the load of any page at any
time by clicking Stop on the toolbar or pressing <Esc>. The browser will
display as much of the page as it loaded, and all of the displayed links will be
operational.
- Restarting. If a page seems to be taking
a long time to load, don't hesitate to stop the connection and then select the
link again. As long as the messages in the bottom border show that some parts
of the page are loading then you should let it continue, but if nothing happens
for more than a minute then something is likely stalled, and you should stop and
reload the page again. HTTP connections often
get dropped on busy web sites, and requesting the page again will often load it quickly
on a new connection.
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