Sure, the Internet has been hyped and superhyped, and it's understandable that some people might be reticent or sceptical. But, believe me, the Internet is truly amazing. If you're about to try it for the first time, you really are in for a treat.

The Internet has a lingo and culture all of its own, but once you understand the basics it's really quite simple to use. Once you've read this tutorial, you'll be ready to take off on your Internet adventure.

First, if you haven't read Rose Vines' introduction to the fundamentals of the Internet, see 'Introducing the Internet'!. Next, you'll need to understand those ugly addresses such as bongo_beans@criminy.edu.au, the funny symbols like :-) and the basics of 'netiquette' -- the online version of everyday etiquette.

Understanding Internet addresses
One of the more formidable aspects for newcomers to the Internet are those horrific e-mail and site addresses -- things like www.phantasmagoria.com/~bozo.htm. Don't be intimidated by them! They're pretty easy to decode if you break them down into bits.

Let's start with the basic building block of Internet addresses -- the domain name. Each computer connected to the Internet has a unique address, which other computers and individuals can use to locate it.

Australian PC User, for example, has a domain name of pcuser.com.au, which is easily demystified by reading it from right to left.

The au in our domain name indicates this is an Australian Internet site. The Net uses standard country codes such as NZ for New Zealand, UK for the United Kingdom, DE for Germany and so on. Domain names in the US don't have any such code -- when the Internet began as a US military and scientific research project in 1969, no-one ever imagined it would extend beyond American soil to become a global network, let alone the global network that it is today. The letters 'US' have since been allocated for Stateside domain names but sightings are rare indeed.

What else does pcuser.com.au tell us? The com part of the address designates PC User as a commercial or business organisation. This is also part of an international standard, which includes edu for educational institutions, gov for government bodies, mil for the military defence forces and org for non-profit or community groups and others which don't clearly belong in any of the previous categories.

The odd one out is net, which is supposed to stand for 'networks' but varies from country to country in its usage.

The final component of the address is the name of the organisation, in this case pcuser. Add them all together and you've got a unique Internet address, pcuser.com.au -- and that's where we live online!

(Because computers think in numbers, not words, there's a digital equivalent to the pcuser.com.au address -- 203.18.241.183. It's a lot like using a telephone book. When you tell your Web browser to go to our PC User page on the World Wide Web, the computer consults an online database, matches the name to the number and away it goes. The browser's status area will actually show the message 'Connecting to 203.18.241.183' when it makes contact with our Web page).

You are Elle?
Armed with such an address, your computer can navigate its way to almost any place on the Internet, but not being as clever as us humans, it doesn't know what to do when it gets there.

This is how the Uniform Resource Locator or URL came about. It's a special form of Internet address which builds on the domain name to tell your computer how to handle the data it will be receiving.

Every one of those wonderful places you visit on the World Wide Web has a unique URL which normally begins with http://www -- such as http://www.pcuser.com.au. HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the language used by computers to link the Web together and let you jump from one site to another by clicking your mouse. WWW is, of course, the World Wide Web.

When you type http://www.pcuser.com.au into your Web browser's address box, it knows not only to go to the PC User domain but to display it as a Web page.

The second most common URL is designed to help with transferring files from distant computers onto your own hard drive. This is called File Transfer Protocol or FTP and is written as ftp://ftp.microsoft.com (that URL points to Microsoft's massive online file library in the USA). There are special programs designed to let you download files using FTP, but most Web browsers also allow you to enter an FTP address and download files.

The first part of the URL -- http or ftp -- is often dropped when referring to the address because Web browsers know to add those codes as soon as they see the www or ftp command immediately preceding the domain name. This shortens the Internet address and makes it easier to remember and print.

Conversely, as soon as you dive into an Internet site, the URL will grow. A Web site with multiple pages will add extra characters after a slash to indicate which page you're looking at.

For instance, Microsoft's Web site contains thousands of pages, all branching off the home page, www.microsoft.com. There's a page called www.microsoft.com/products, and this page has sub-pages with names like www.microsoft.com/products/msoffice and www.microsoft.com/products/windows.

You'll also often see addresses such as www.ozemail.com.au/~Jane_Doe.htm. Internet addressing can't handle spaces in the addresses, so characters such as the tilde (~) or underscore are used instead.

E-mail addresses
Another way in which the domain name is used is to represent an electronic mail or e-mail address. The format for all e-mail addresses is username@domainname. The domain name may be your Internet service provider, your employer or the university you attend -- whichever you use to access the Net.

If your Internet service provider is the national OzEmail network and your user name is Matilda, your e-mail address would be matilda@ozemail.com.au.

Finally, while we don't want to put words into your mouth, how do you pronounce an Internet address? The full stops are read as 'dot', so to tell a friend where to find the PC User Web page you'd say, "w w w dot PC User dot com dot ay ewe".

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