Surfing the Web

When you connect to a Web site the main page is called the home page of that site. Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, you may have to wait for the page to download completely. The more graphics on the page, the slower it is to download. Sound and video are also slow to download.

After the text loads, you can use the side scroll bar to move through the page while the graphics load. You may see empty spaces where the graphics will appear when they load. When the graphics and text finish loading, the status bar message reads “Done.” The title bar contains the name of the page and the address bar contains the page’s URL.

All Web pages contain hyperlinks (often simply called links) that you can use to open other pages. These hyperlinks may be text (usually underlined) or graphics. When you move the pointer over a hyperlink, you see the URL address for that link in the status bar. You can transfer to that page by clicking once on the link. You can tell a link because when you pass your mouse cursor over it, you see a special cursor shape, a finger pointing upward:

Most Web pages have menus, created using links, that let you choose from a number of possible pages.