Browser Basics

The language of Web Browsers is generically termed hypertext. The name implies that hypertext is more than just text on a computer screen. As we shall see, it is much more than mere text. The most important feature of hypertext is the concept of a link.

Hypertext Links

This Tutorial is a collection of hypertext documents. The colored and/or underlined text (for example, like this) corresponds to hypertext links to other documents (or other locations within the present document). Clicking once on these links will take you to the corresponding document, and if you use the mouse to place the cursor over the link the corresponding address for the link usually appears somewhere on the screen (usually at the bottom, but exactly where depends on the browser you are using---hold your mouse over a link without clicking and see what happens!).

The preceding example of a link was to a simple text file, but links can correpond to much more interesting things. For example, try the following links (use the "Back" button, or hold the mouse down and choose "Back", to return if the link takes you to a new page) :




HyperText is for exploring, and you are unlikely to get into trouble by clicking on whatever link interests you. You can always return to the previous page by using the "Back" button on your browser (if you are not using frames), or by holding the mouse button down over a page and choosing "Back", and your browser probably has a "History" or "Go" list that allows you to return immediately to documents accessed earlier in the session.

In the worst case, the "Home" button on the browser will rescue you from almost anything, taking you back to where you started. And don't worry about damaging any hardware or software on your computer by randomly clicking on hypertext links. If you can do that, you are very clever indeed!

Browser Navigation Buttons

Exactly where the navigation buttons mentioned above are located depends on your browser. The following image shows the menu of Netscape Navigator 1.1N for Unix. The "Back" button, as well as other navigation aids such as "Home" and "Forward" (you guessed it, the opposite of "Back"!) are evident. The "History" list in this case is a pulldown menu under "Go". Your browser is probably similar. Note that this is an IMAGE OF A BROWSER, not a browser---you can't click on the buttons in this image and expect it to do anything!

Most browsers are very intuitive, so just click on things to see what they do. If you don't like what they do, use the "Back" functions described above and try something else!

Visited and Unvisited Links

Unless something unusual has been done, your browser is probably set up to distinguish visited from unvisited links: the color of links you have already visited will be different from unvisited ones. The exact colors depend on your browser and the document you are viewing. Two common colors for visited and unvisited links are red and blue, respectively, but they depend on the browser and how the document that you are viewing has been written. For example, in the present document the visited and unvisited links will probably be red and blue, respectively, if you are using Netscape Navigator with default settings as your browser.

Additional Navigation Buttons

At the bottom of main pages there may be additional navigation buttons, as illustrated in the following image (not all of these buttons are present on every page).

Clicking on the right-arrow button (or the word "Next") will take you to the next section; the left arrow (or "Back") returns to the previous section; the up arrow (or "Top") takes you to the top of the present page; the Home button (or "Home") takes you to the entry level for this module (the Table of Contents---note that this "Home" generally differs from the corresponding one on the Browser itself), and the "Help" button gives you help information on topics like navigation.

Words Aren't the only Clickable Objects

In addition to words, other objects on a page may be clickable links. For example, images may be hypertext linked to something else. This will usually be indicated by a colored box around the image, or by some other signal (in Netscape Navigator the cursor image turns into a hand with a pointing finger when it is over a clickable link). When in doubt, click and see what happens!

The adjacent image is a link, since if the mouse is held over it the cursor turns into a pointing hand. Click the image and see what happens! By default, clickable images usually display with a colored box around them, but here is an example where the colored box has been suppressed in the underlying hypertext document for aesthetic reasons (it looks better without a box around it).

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