Browsers, ISPs, Hosts, and Search Engines

More and more frequently the software that we use on our computers attempts to isolate the user from needing any knowledge about computers, the internet, and software in general. The end result of this is confusion if anything should happen to go wrong, and a disconnect between the "help desk" (in the case of this website, your friendly webmaster) and the user.

You start out your internet experience by connecting to the internet through your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or an online provider. For a monthly fee the ISP gives you a username, password and access phone number. You can then log on to the Internet and browse the World Wide Web (Web) and send and receive email -- amongst other things.*

Once your ISP connects you to the internet, usually a browser will open automatically and you can surf the net. A browser is a piece of software that allows users to read web pages - just as a word processor allows users to read word-processing files. Computers talk to each other by transmitting a series of zeroes and ones. The browser interprets those zeroes and ones that get transmitted, and displays a page** with proper paragraphs, formatting, etc. Examples of browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, and Netscape. Both AOL and Compuserve have their own browsers. All of the browsers listed but Internet Explorer use what is known as the mozilla engine -- they vary in the bells and whistles of use, but are similar. In Windows generally you get to choose which browser is your default browser and that will automatically open when you connect to the Internet. AOL and Compuserve are exceptions to this rule, the browser that is opened is the AOL or Compuserve browser, but you can force it to open the browser of your choice.

There are a set of standards so that, in theory, every browser will interpret a web page in the same manner. Unfortunately, that is still a dream. The browsers do not interpret web pages the same and you may from time to time encounter a page that you cannot read properly. Switching to a different browser may help -- if you were in IE (Internet Explorer) switch to a Mozilla based browser and vice versa. As a practical matter it is a good idea to have an extra browser on your computer anyway, because if the browser you are using gets corrupted you may not be able to access the Web at all to get a new browser if you don't. Most of us no longer have CDs containing our browsers. If you don't have a second browser, download one right after you finish reading this document! It is also a good idea to keep your browser version updated -- the newer browsers support web pages more consistently.

Nowadays the line between browsers and search engines is getting blurred, as most browsers provide access to a search engine right from their toolbar. No matter how fuzzy this line, you should remember the difference between the two. Browsers read web pages -- search engines find them. Most of the main browsers now search the web if you simply type a search term into their address bar, or perhaps a search box near the address bar. Generally, if you search in this method, you are not controlling which search engine you use. AOL and MSN have their own search engines which may not be as effective as the search engine you wish to use. They have you as a captive audience unless you make sure you use another search engine. AOL, in particular, seems to come up with old versions of web pages. More than two weeks after we changed color schemes, if you searched for our website and went to the resulting page, you got a mixture of the old and new color schemes. Firefox has a search area built into its address bar line where you can access different search engines and also search just particular sites (like Webster's dictionary). You can also get a search engine toolbar for your browser, if you have a standard browser. Google has search engine toolbars for IE and Firefox. Dogpile just has a toolbar for IE. (Dogpile is a search engine that searches Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask.com, and others). Search engines have help sections that teach you how to do more complicated searches -- often needed to cut down on the number of "hits" that you get.

Perhaps the single most ill-used software in computerdom is the browser. So many people just get it, never read about its capabilities, and bumble along. Almost anyone will have more enjoyable browsing experiences if they learn about their browser. You can do such things as choose your own font and style -- over-riding that which is on the webpage. Would you rather this page have a bright green background? You can choose that. Would you like the print to be bigger -- you can choose that also. If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel it is very easy to change the font size by holding down control and moving the scroll wheel. I know that I find websites where I can not read the "small print". Generally I can increase the font size and be far more comfortable with it.

Some browsers have even more exciting features, or have features that you can add to them. Do you have a hard time remembering how you set your passwords? If you use Firefox you can look at them in the browser when you get the dreaded "password is invalid" message. You can throw away that 3 page "cheat sheet" of passwords! Do you want to know what cookies have been set for what sites? It can be quite enlightening and you can look at them both in IE and Firefox (and perhaps other browsers). Firefox arranges them nicely and although usually the cookies are innocent storage of such things as your user id or something, if you see them for sites you never visit any more, you can delete them. In IE, you look at your temporary files to see your cookies, Firefox has a separate tab.

For your browser to be useful you will probably have to agree to some "plug-ins". These are modules that interpret code outside of the rather limited boundaries of html. Java and Java script are examples of such extensions, as is Flash for animation.

You may have heard the term "hosts" or "hosting". All the pages that you see on a site such as ours plus other support programs reside on yet another computer. When you access a website the host of that site honors the address that you have typed in, and serves a page to your browser. So, typically, we have your computer (on which your browser resides), your ISP which has computers that allow you to connect to the internet, other computers on the internet which route your requests, and host computers that store web pages and programs so that you can actually see the information. A search engine such as Google is actually just another hosted web site that you go to trying to find information.

Whenever computers talk to each other there is a protocol involved. They must agree on a method to interpret all the zeros and ones that flow across the line. The World Wide Web (web) is a group of computers/servers that have agreed to use the HTTP protocol (aha! that http and www that is in your address bar) in communication. The computers on the web support documents that are written in HTML(Hypertext Markup Language). The page you are looking at is written in HTML. The browsers are interpreting that HTML so you see what appears to be a typewritten page, with some pictures, in front of you. If you would like to see an example of HTML, click on your browser's View menu and choose "Page source"(Firefox) or "Source" (IE). I am sure you will be very glad there is a browser that interprets that for you so that the page is more easily viewed!

In a separate article I have written about caches. Remember to locate the refresh button on your browser so that you can see the latest and greatest web page. For most people a version of a recently accessed web page is stored on their computer in their cache. Cache's help pages load faster. However, you might find that the latest message on the message board is not showing on your page (for example). If this is true, reload(refresh) your page. From time to time you might want to empty your cache as when it gets filled, not always do good things happen. AOL and Compuserve customers have caches at AOL and Compuserve which complicates matters considerably. You may not see the latest web page right away no matter what you do. Some of the literature indicates that holding down the control button on your computer while clicking on the refresh button will force those ISPs to load a fresh web page. From reading the documentation on AOL's site I am not convinced that will always work though I read of one webmaster who bought a cheap subscription to AOL just so he could force the clearing of the cache on his websites daily by doing this.

I strongly encourage you to check out the help button on your browser and become familiar with more of its capabilities. You can also search the web and find out more about your particular browser. I promise you, once you start using more of the features available to you, your internet experience will be so much richer!

* USENET (for newsgroups) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol for downloading/uploading files) are also part of the Internet.

** A web page is not limited to a screenful of information, but is all the information that you can see by using the scroll bars provided. If there is not more information horizontally or vertically you will not see any scroll bars.

Judith B. Currier 6/2006