Course notes:

The Internet for Beginners

These notes are designed for you to take away for reference (and reassurance) after the course is completed. Much the best way to absorb the course material is by doing, not by reading.

Introduction

The goal of the course is not that you should "know how to use" the internet, or a computer. The goal is that you should know how to explore your own computer and the millions of other computers which form the internet.

Basic principles:

• The right, or the only, way to do this kind of work is playfully. You are exploring a (virtual) universe full of unfamiliar concepts. You are therefore in a similar position to a toddler developing, say, the concept of the persistence of objects by playing peek-a-boo.
• If you're not making mistakes, you're not doing it right. Your motto, when confronted with an unfamiliar task or program, should be: "I wonder whether that thing does what I want?" So try it. If that doesn't do it, you can almost always "undo" that before trying this.
• It is very, very difficult to do physical harm to a computer with your mouse or your keyboard. I know one way, and I bet you you will never find it by trial and error.
• All computers - yours and those on the internet - are the ultimate literal-minded simpletons. For example, when you get an "error message" and you need to ask someone else about it, you should write it down letter-for-letter, regardless of sense, and read it back accurately. It may look like language, but it's just a string of symbols.

Sorry to repeat the sad news, but you are not going to get step-by-step instructions for any but the most basic tasks.

A computer program is a set of step-by-step instructions. A complete set of step-by-step instructions for a human to use any program would be, by rule of thumb, be roughly the same size as the program. The instructions which make up the program you are using just to display these words on your computer's screen would, if printed as a paperback book, be over 5000 pages long.

What you should have, by the time you finish the course, is a set of strategies for working out which bits of an unfamiliar program are likely to do what you want. This is equivalent to an even more important set of strategies - those for ignoring the bits of a program which are utterly uninteresting to you, which is most of them.

What is this "internet" anyway?

The internet is a means of transport for information. It is not a thing: it is a set of standards which allow disparate things to communicate with each other. The fact that railway rails are four feet eight and a half inches apart means that a train can travel from the North of Scotland through England, France and Germany to Poland. (The standard runs out at the Russian border.) Similarly arbitrary standards - lots of them - make the internet international and independent of any one manufacturer.

Lots of different "services" run over the internet "tracks".

This beginner's introduction will concentrate on the most basic of these services: electronic mail. A lot of the things you need to understand - or have a fully-working mental model of, which is the same thing but easier - are useful in using other services.

1) Getting connected

Before you can use the internet, you need:

1. a computer - an old-ish one will do. You do not need to "upgrade" to use the internet.
2. a telephone line. This can be the same line you use for plain old-fashioned voice conversations. Of course, it will be "engaged" all the time your computer is using it for new-fangled data thingy-wotsits. After you tell your computer to hang up the phone, you can use it for voice again.
3. a modem. This is a box which accepts data from your computer in form it uses, and translates it into a series of squawks which it shouts down the telephone line to another modem, which translates them back to computer data. And vice versa.
4. an "account" with an "Internet Service Provider". This gives you:
   • the right for your modem to talk to the ISP's modems, which are in turn connected to the rest of the internet;
   • space on the ISP's computer hard disks to store your messages (see 2.3 below); and
   • an "email address" (see 2.1 below) so that messages can find their way to that storage area.
   For tips on choosing an ISP, see the Freelance article.
5. programs to run on your computer which:
   1. logically "glue" your modem into the rest of your computer. This one is called, charmingly, a "TCP/IP" or "Winsock" program;
   2. send and receive email messages: for example the "Eudora" program; and
   3. display Web pages on your screen: for example the "Netscape" program.
   You should get all these in a start-up package from your ISP. If you have a Macintosh computer, you may need to obtain "Mac TCP/IP" separately.

Once you have these things, there may be some setting-up to do. You need to tell your "TCP/IP" program the telephone number of your ISP's modem, and other details of exactly how your modem should communicate with your ISP's modem. If the start-up package your ISP supplies doesn't work immediately, you should get someone to do the setting-up for you.

2) Send your first email

In this course we will be using computers which are permanently connected to the internet. So we won't need to tell them to dial an ISP.

2.1) An email address

To send someone an electronic mail message, you need their address. An example is president@whitehouse.gov.

The part to the left of the @ is the name by which a particular computer knows an individual: e.g. president.

The part to the right of the @ is the name by which that computer is known to all the other computers on the internet: e.g. whitehouse.gov.

No email address may ever contain a space or a comma. To the internet, these both mean "here beginneth the next address in a list." Be careful about the difference between "1" and "l" ("one" and "ell") and - does one still have to say this? - "0" and "O" ("zero" and "Capital Oh"). All-lower-case is standard for email addresses, but if you are tying one from someone's card copy it exactly.

The internet is utterly intolerant of spelling mistakes in addresses.

2.2) Sending an email

1. Start your email program (Eudora, etc...)
2. Find the command or button to "Create a new message", or a synonym for that. A new window pops up.
3. Find the "field" labelled "TO:" (or synonym); click in it and type in your correspondent's email address.
4. Find the "field" labelled "SUBJECT:"; click in it and type in a "catchline". The first four words of this must inform your correspondent of why they have to read this message...
5. Click in the "message body" field (often a large, rectangular, un-labelled field). Type in your message, or "paste" in a message which you prepared earlier. (I can't explain "paste" without waving your arms about.)
6. Ignore the other fields.
7. Find the button or menu option which adds your message to a "queue" or "send later" or synonym.
8. At home, you tell your computer's "TCP/IP" program or "Dial-up networking" (or whatever) to dial your ISP once you've finished all the messages for this session. In an office, you're probably already connected to the firm's ISP.
9. Find the button or menu option labelled "Send Messages" or failing that "Check Mail". Hit it.
10. Your message is on its way.

2.3) How it works

The internet chops your message up into standard-sized "packets". An image that works is that these "swim" from computer to computer in the network, finding the best available route in the right general direction.

When the packets arrive at your correspondent's ISP's computer, it sorts them into the right order. Then they sit and wait. Later on, your correspondent connects to their ISP's computer and discovers that they have new mail. Your correspondent's email program then fetches your message (and any others) and stores them locally.

If your correspondent is in an office, their computer may tell them they have new mail immediately it arrives.

Electronic mail is an answering machine for text.

2.4) What can go wrong

See Section 5 below.

3) Replying to email

Find the email message to which you want to respond. Click on its "Subject" line in the listing to select it. Find the button or menu option labelled "reply" or whatever, and hit it. (In one email program, Lotus CC:Mail, you need to double-click on the "Subject" listing to display the entire message before you can reply to it.)

3.1) Email "quoting"

Many email programs will then automatically include the whole of the incoming message in the new, outgoing "message body", with each line prefixed with a ">". The idea is that you intersperse your reply with the original message, to save your correspondent having to look up what on earth they were on about:

At 14:14 08/02/1999 -0000, you wrote:
>Friday around lunchtime is alright for me.  
>Perhaps you or Gary can confirm.  
>By the way Gary do you want me to 
>send you a rail warrant? 

I confirm, 12:30 hrs (Virgin time), as 
Gary indicates 

>Where's the course outline? 

In the (proverbial) post...

Edit out the parts you're not replying to.

3.2) Multiple recipients, forwarding, etc

Sometimes you will get email messages which have been sent to several people. Sometimes, there will be one long list of addressees; at other times there will be one addressee and a list of "CC:" (Carbon Copy) recipients. Most email programs offer you the option of sending your response to all the recipients. In Eudora, hold down the Shift key while selecting the Reply option. In other programs, you'll have to hunt about. Some programs may send your reply to all by default, and ask you to do something extra to send to just the one.

Be careful about who your response is going to.

Making a pithy comment about an individual and then discovering that they are on the distribution list may not improve your health or wealth.

If you see a "BCC" option, it stands for "Blind Carbon Copy". The other recipients will not see that the message has been copied to addresses entered in the "BCC" field. (Do not use this to email very juicy gossip to Private Eye from your desk at the Times,or wherever. The corporate IT department will have a full log of who emailed whom and when. Do it from home, or use snail mail.)

All programs offer a Forward option which allows you to add comments and send the message on to one or more email addresses. Sometimes, forwarding a message back to its sender is useful.

It's always better to cut-and-paste email addresses between messages than it is to re-type them.

3.3) Forwarding virus warnings

Don't.

See http://www.gn.apc.org/media/virus.html

4) Dealing with files

One of the problems of "graphical computer interfaces" - the ones where you double-click on a picture with a mouse to make things happen - is that they disguise an important distinction.

Computers store information in files. A file is an entity which has:

• contents: lots of zeros and ones; and
• a name: effectively a handle by which you can "pick it up".

The whole point of the "file" is that you don't need to know anything else - except that there is an important difference between two kinds of files:

4.1) Program and data files

• Programs: files whose contents are instructions to a computer. These are expressed in the computer's very, very stupid "machine language".
• Data: files containing the stuff that programs do work on. In a data file, the zeros and ones encode your work - text, pictures, whatever

Some data files contain plain text or ASCII (these are effectively synonyms). Any word-processor program on any kind of computer can read in a plain text file. It contains just the facts, m'am: one damn word after the other until it's the end.

Other data files contain extra information encoded in a way that only one program, or a few programs, can deal with. For example, "document files" created in Microsoft Word Version 8 (also known as Word98) make no sense whatsoever to any other word-processor program. No graphics files make sense to any word-processor program (though programs like Word98, and indeed the Microsoft email program, can link graphics files into the middle of your text).

4.2) What program does a data file "belong to"?

Different computer systems use different methods to work out what program a data file "belongs to". This is fine so long as you only use the one computer. It shows you a picture or icon representing a data file. The icon is really just a link in the computer to the file's name.

When you double-click on the icon for a data file, your computer works out what program the data file belongs to; starts that program; and loads the data file into that program.

When you click on the icon for a program file, your computer starts that program, which waits for you to load ("open") a data file for it to work on.

The internet uses a set of standard, but not infallible, conventions, to show what program a data file belongs to. Sometimes your computer will be able to understand these conventions, and sometimes not. What you do when it doesn't understand is very simple so long as you understand the basic principle:

1. look up what kind of data file it is (in the list immediately below);
2. start a program which you have which can deal with it;
3. go to that program's File menu;
4. select the Open option;
5. locate the file (see 4.6 below). click on its name or icon; and
6. click on the Open button.

The conventions work by putting an "extension" on the end of the names of files - a fullstop followed by three or four letters. You're unlikely to meet any which are not in the following list:

• .txt plain text: works with any word-processor program
• .doc almost certainly the program Microsoft Word
• .htm or .html use your Web browser program
• .jpg or .jpeg or .gif or .tif or .tiff: various flavours of picture. Try the program Photoshop, or your Web browser program.
• .zip a compressed file to be unpacked on your DOS/Windows computer using the program PKunzip or Winzip or, on a Macintosh, the program StuffIt
• .hqx or .sit a compressed file to be unpacked on a Macintosh computer (only) using the program StuffIt
• .pdf an Adobe Acrobat™ file - you need to download a reader program.
• .ps or .eps a PostScript™ file; the free GhostScript/GhostView reader combination will display the content, if not the entire corporate design vision thang. (Latest version does .pdfs too.)

4.3 Directories and folders

Putting all the files on a computer in one long list would be very boring. So computers encourage you to group files which have something in common in "directories" or "folders" - "folder" is just Macintosh-speak for "directory".

From the computer's point of view, a directory is just a file whose contents are a list of other files. Some of these may be directories, so you can have directories within directories ("folders within folders").

4.4) Sending "attachments"

Sometimes an editor will want you to send, for example, a Word file (so you can put words in bold and italics and stuff). You want to make sure they can read it, without going into the details of what computer they have.

1. make sure that the main part of the file name has no more than 8 letters and contains no spaces or punctuation marks (except "-"). Re-name it if necessary.
2. make sure your file name has the proper "extension", using the list in 4.2 above. Its name should now be something like budget.doc or straw.jpg
3. prepare an introductory email message, as in 2.2 above. Include the name of program which you used to create or edit the data file you're about to "attach".
4. it's a very good idea to copy and paste the text of the article (if that's what it is) into the body of the email message, as backup.
5. now "attach" the file. Search through the menus and buttons of your email program - try first in the Message menu if there is one, then in the File and Edit menus.
6. a window will pop up, and in it you will see either a list of directories (Windows 3.x), a field marked "Look in" (Win9x) with a button containing a downward-pointing arrow to the right of it, or a similar little field at the top (Macintosh). Click on the downward arrow if there is one, to see a list of directories or folders.
7. wander around the directories until you discover the one containing the data file which you want to attach. Click on its name or icon to select it, and click on OK (or equivalent) to attach it.
8. finish sending the email as in 2.2 above. The file will tag along.

4.5 Reading/using "attachments"

Sometimes when someone sends you an attached file, your email program will recognise what program it belongs to. It will either show you the same sort of icon you see on your desktop, or it will show you an icon which is a picture of a paperclip.

Sometimes it will fail even to recognise that there is an attachment. In this case you will usually see a lot of garbage at the bottom of your email message:

------_=_NextPart_000_01BE626D.986C5470
Content-Type: application/msword;
 name="Internet for Beginners course.doc"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
 filename="Internet for Beginners course.doc"

0M8R4KGxGuEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPgADAP7/CQAG
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAABAAAAKwAAAAAAAAAAEAAALQAAAAEA
AAD+////AAAAACoAAAD/////////////////////////
////////////////////////////////////////////
  ...and so on for 400 lines...

If this happens, write back to the person asking for plain text!

Sometimes, your email program will simply save the attached file onto your computer's hard disk, for you to deal with. It should add a note after the message body to say what it's done, like this:

Attachment Converted: 
 C:\ARRIVALS\netskoo2.doc

In this case, my email program (Eudora) has told me what folder to look in: it's called ARRIVALS and is on my hard disk, which is called C:. It's not inside another folder.

Eudora has also told me it's a .doc file. So I:

1. look this up in the list at 4.2 above;
2. start Microsoft Word (or, better, a Word viewer);
3. select Open in the File menu;
4. look in the ARRIVALS directory; and
5. double-click on the file-name netskoo2.doc.

If you're concerned about viruses, use a "Word viewer program" not Word itself - and read more here.

You probably don't have a directory called ARRIVALS - I created it and told Eudora that's where I wanted attachments to go, so I can find them easily. I did this from the Attachments option of the Settings item in the Special menu. In other programs, try Preferences in the Edit or File menu.

4.6) Tracking down missing attachments

If you have no idea where your attachments have gone, the first place to look is in the directory or folder where your email program itself lives.

If that fails:

1. Start the program File Manager (Windows 3.x), Windows Explorer (Win9x) or File Finder (Macintosh).
2. Find its option to search for file names and click on this menu option or button.
3. Find the field labelled File name or Search for or whatever. Click in it. Type in the name of the file you're looking for, or just the part before the full stop.
4. Find the field labelled Look in or Start from or whatever. Click in it. Select the "root" of your hard disk, which will be called C: or C:\ or My hard disk or something.
5. Click on OK or Search.
6. The program will show you the locations of all files whose names contain the letters you typed in step 3.
7. Write down on paper a note of which directory or folder your file landed in. If a post-it note™ on your computer box is your style, do that.

5) Error messages

Whenever you get an error message while using the internet, the first thing you want to know is: Does it come from your computer, or from a computer you're trying to make contact with?

If, when you try to send email, a box pops up on your screen immediately, it's from your computer. Almost all the error messages mean that you've forgotten to dial your ISP, or a glitch on the phone line has broken the connection. Tell your computer's "TCP/IP" program or "Dial-up networking" (or whatever) to "hang up", and then to dial again.

Reports of external email errors arrive as emails. Say you tried to send email to Renée Descartes at the University of Nulle-Part in France. You might get back:

Subject: Failure Notice

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at 
mailserv.nulle-part.ac.fr.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver 
your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. 
Sorry it didn't work out.

<descrates@nulle-part.ac.fr>:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)

  {lots more stuff for you to ignore, 
   since you've found the problem}

Note that this message comes from the "mail-server" program at the university. It's telling you that it can't find the mailbox name - you mis-typed the part to the left of the @.

If you mis-type the part to the right of the @, you'll get a message from the mail-server program at your ISP, saying "Host not found" or something similar.

In either of these cases, re-send the message to the correct email address. But note that some error messages require no action from you:

Subject: warning

**********************************************
**      THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY      **
**  YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE  **
**********************************************

The original message was received at 
Sun, 14 Feb 1999 01:15:10 GMT
from root@skua.poptel.org.uk [195.224.16.2]

* The following addresses had *
* transient non-fatal errors: *
<janem@ste.org.uk>

   {Lots more to ignore}

In this case, the ISP "host" ste.org.uk has broken down and is refusing mail. The message keeps on trying to reach the host for five days or a week. After that it gives up and comes home.

If you find nothing meaningful in the top part of the error message, there is sometimes a section marked "not for humans" and somewhere in there there is a line beginning with a number in the 500s which, after all, tells you what happened!

6) The rest of the internet

As noted in the introduction, email is just one of the services which runs over the internet.

You will do yourself no harm if you think of the other services as increasingly sophisticated ways of computers sending each other formalised email messages, and acting on them:

The full list of internet services which you are likely to encounter is:

• Electronic mail -- sending a message to one or more named individuals
• Mailing lists -- automated distribution of messages and responses to a set list of subscribers. An eighteenth-century learned correspondence society, but a bit quicker
• "Usenet" discussion fora or "newsgroups" -- making messages and responses public to the entire net
• Telnet -- a way of connecting directly to another computer, opening a window on your screen which is effectively a "wormhole" to the other machine -- for example a library catalogue
• File Transfer Protocol -- a means of wandering around other peoples' computers and retrieving files which they have chosen to make available. Now rarely publicly available. Also used for putting new files onto Web sites.
• "Gopher" -- a catalogue of available files, and "Veronica", the Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Networked Information Cataloguer and Archiver, which indexes the one-line descriptions in the gopher catalogues -- when accessed through Netscape these look a lot like rather boring pages on... the Web.
• The notorious World-Wide Web -- hypertext, potentially linking everything from the complete works of Shakespeare to jokey takes on the Bacon Society and the Journal of Psychosomatic Metallurgy into a single hyper-document.
• Human-maintained directories of the content of the Web.
• Machine-made indexes of the content of the Web.

For details of these, see my Internet for Journalists document.