Handling Information

In this section we look at the different ways of handling the information you may find on the World Wide Web.

Copying and pasting text
Though you can't edit or change a web page that has been published by someone else you can make a copy of it or of parts of it. This may be useful when writing an essay or report or gathering information. If you do use the information for report or essay purposes you should, as usual, acknowledge its source.

To copy some text from a WWW page you first select it by dragging your cursor over it. You can then go to the Edit menu of your browser and choose Copy. This will then put the copied information onto your computer's clipboard ready for pasting. It will be immediately replaced by the next item you copy, so you will need to paste it straight away. For instance, you may want to paste it into a word processed document so you will need to open a document in your word processor, choose the word processor's Edit Menu and select paste. (You may have already prepared a new file ready for this purpose). This will reproduce the text in your open document. You can run your word processor and web browser at the same time and switching between them should be easy even if you can't see them both at once. On a Windows PC press the Alt and the Tab key to switch between any applications that are open.

Apart from quoting text you have read on the web, copying text has another important role when working with the web. Some information on the web can be complex - URLs for instance. Copying a piece of text will give you an exact copy of that text free of the mistakes that can be introduced by bad typing. Copying a URL that appears in a computer document and pasting it into the Location bar of your web browser is more accurate and usually quicker than typing it in by hand.

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Saving a web page on your computer
If you pay for your own Internet connection you can find your phone bills mounting. A cheap alternative is to avoid reading everything while you are connected. You can save a copy of any web page. This can be opened later in your browser while you are off-line and read at your leisure. Go to the File menu, choose Save As, and save it in a directory on your hard disk or even to a floppy disk.

You should be aware that this will save the text in the page, the links and the layout. It will not save the images or other media that may have attracted your attention. In addition, though it will save the links it will not save the pages that the links point to! If all you want is the text to read later this will be fine - otherwise you may find it easier to deal with by staying connected!

How do you read a page you have saved? What you have saved is a web page file - it will have the extension .htm or .html. Therefore you use your web browser to view it - just as if it was live on the web. Go to the File menu, choose Open and locate it in the place to which you saved it.

You should be aware of copyright issues if you intend to edit or re-use anybody else's work.

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Saving an image
You can also save images. This is slightly different to saving web page files because the images we see on web pages are stored separately to the rest of the web page - they are not part of the same file.

To save an image (using a Windows PC) use the right mouse button on your mouse to 'right click' the image. A menu will appear which includes the command 'Save Image As...' Select that option and save it to a place on your computer so that you can view it later.

How do you view that image later? As with the web page file in the previous section you can use your web browser. Choose File, Open and find the image on your computer in the place to which you saved it. You will need to select All Files for file type in the dialogue box that appears as initially it will think you are only interested in web page files. The image will probably have the file extension .gif or .jpg.

You may have an image editing application installed on your computer that will open the image you have saved and allow you to edit it. You should be aware of the copyright ownership of the image if you intend to edit or re-use the image.

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Using and Editing Bookmarks and saving Shortcut Links
Bookmarks and Favorites allow you to save the web addresses that you come across as a set of hyperlinks in a special file that you can call up at anytime in the future from your Bookmark or Favorites menu. This may be a page that you frequently visit (like a search engine) or it may be a page that you haven't got time to read now but wish to return to later.

While the page is displayed click the Bookmark button and choose Add Bookmark. In Netscape you will notice there's an option to Edit Bookmarks too. If you choose this you can delete or move around the bookmarks you have saved by dragging them.

If you are using a computer on a network any bookmarks you make will be saved to that machine. Next time you are browsing the web you may have to use another machine. That's alright because if you go to Edit Bookmarks again notice that the File menu there allows you to Save As... In other words you can save a copy of the bookmarks file to a floppy disk and take it away with you. From that same menu is a command to Open Bookmark File which is what you would use on your return to open the file from your previous session.

In addition to creating a bookmark file you might just choose to save shortcut links to pages separately. By right-clicking your mouse on the currently displayed web page there is an option to create a shortcut link. This link will appear as a file on the desktop of your computer.

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More Techniques
As a practiced web surfer you will find using the above techniques become a routine part of the way you work. Explore the other menus and discover other useful techniques. We all have our own favourite ways of working. This section has introduced you to just a few of the most useful ways of working with the web.

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