ITI E-Commerce
BackSurfing The Net: The Next Steps
Lesson 8
What's A Download?
Downloading a File
It Isn't Downloaded Yet. You Need To Give It A Name.
Downloading Pictures From The Web
Later, When You Want To See Your Downloads
Opening Multiple Windows
Using History
Using History With Netscape
Plug-Ins
Changing Your Home Page
You can buy almost anything you want or need on the web; you can do it comfortably from your own home; and it is a relatively low risk experience. It’s easy and incredibly convenient. Nearly every online retailer works in a similar fashion. Our ITI Worldwide Mall is a prime example of the thousands of items available for our friends, families and prospects online.
Shopping online is similar to wandering through the grocery store. You walk up and down the aisles, browsing at the items on the shelves, pushing a cart. When you browse at an online store, if you see something you like, add it to your shopping cart. When you’re ready to leave, take a look at your cart and then decide if it has everything you want. You can add or remove items at any time (You don’t even have to return anything to the store shelves, they do it for you!) Then checkout and tell them how you want to pay.
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Is It Really Safe To Use My Credit Card? No credit card experience is perfectly safe. Credit card numbers are stolen in restaurants and "bricks and mortar" stores. Giving your credit card number over a non-digital cordless telephone may be riskier than using the web. Because of the tremendous potential of the web as a way to do business, online retailers and credit card companies are going to great lengths to protect your credit card number and limit your liability. Amazon.com is one of the biggest and most successful online businesses. They offer this guarantee: We guarantee that every transaction you make at Amazon.com will be 100% safe. This means you pay nothing if unauthorized charges are made to your card as a result of shopping at Amazon.com More companies will follow suit. VISA also has a program that will protect your online purchases when using a VISA card. |
When you want to read or see something from another computer (or community of computers like the internet) you have to load it onto your computer. In computerese, you have to download it.
As you have gone through these lessons and looked at various web pages, you have been receiving files from the internet. In other words, every time you get information from the web you are downloading information (When you send information to another computer on the web, you are uploading).
Normally, when people talk about downloading, they are talking about finding a program or a document online that they want to keep and look at later. So what we're really talking about is saving stuff. Here’s an example.
I've been thinking about going to Amsterdam, so I decided to download a list of sights to see there. You will find downloads all over the web. Once again, Yahoo! is a good source for these. Another is ZDnet.
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How to do it |
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NETSCAPE USERS ONLY:
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INTERNET EXPLORER USERS ONLY:
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It Isn’t Downloaded Yet. You Need To Give It A Name.
You haven’t finished downloading yet. Now, you have to tell the computer where to save the file. Before you answer, decide how comfortable you are with using folders. If you really don't understand the concept of folders, or if you just don't like to use them, save everything in My Documents.
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Choosing Folders Personally, I try to sort files into four different places. If it's a program, I put it in My Downloaded Programs. If it's a general picture, then I put it in My Pictures. If I have pictures for my ITI website, I put them in a folder I made called ITI. And if it's a document, a spreadsheet, or some other file that is used by another program, I stick it in My Documents. Having a complicated filing system isn't the point here. The point is to make sure that you can find the stuff you download. The only place that I don't recommend for storing files is the default folder that the computer will suggest. This folder can be difficult to find later on. But the truth is, you can store your downloads there, too |
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How to do it
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Downloading Pictures From The Web
Suppose you go to your daughter's (cousin’s, sister’s, aunt’s, whoever’s) web site. And she has put irresistible pictures of your grandson (cousin, nephew, whoever) online. This is something you may want to keep. You may want to print it out, send it to a friend, or put it on your own web site.
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How To do it
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If You Use Netscape
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If You Use Internet Explorer
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Later, When You Want To See Your Downloads
There are a number of ways look at your downloaded files (including pictures). Here's the easiest way.
How to do it
- Minimize
all your open windows
- You can minimize each one individually…OR…
- If
you have this icon
on your taskbar, click it.
- Double-click MY DOCUMENTS or MY COMPUTER on your desktop.
- Open the folder where you stored your downloads.
- Find the name of your downloaded file and double-click it.
- In most normal circumstances, your computer will select a software application that is capable of opening the file or displaying the picture. If the downloaded file is a software application, it will either run or install itself on your computer.
In lesson 2, you learned how to switch among several open windows. This is important because some links will automatically open a new window for you. Sometimes, you may want to do that for yourself. Suppose you want to investigate some information from another web site, but you don’t want to lose track of your place on the current web site. It’s easy to lose your trail when you start surfing the web, sometimes it’s nice to know where you started.
How to do it
- Find the link that you want to open in a new window.
- Right-click the link
- Position the pointer over Open in New Window.
- Click
Don’t remember where you surfed yesterday? Didn’t bookmark that great site? Your best hope is to view the history file. Both Netscape and Internet Explorer keep track of the sites that you’ve visited, and you can use this feature to backtrack to previously visited sites.
Using History With Internet Explorer
How to do it
- Click the HISTORY button on your browser’s button bar.
- The browser will split into two frames, just like it does when you press SEARCH or FAVORITES
- Click on the folders to see what pages you visited at that site
- Click on the link to the page that you wish to visit
- If you can’t find a page that you know you visited, try the search feature. It will search your history list.
How to do it
- On your keyboard, press and hold the CTRL key.
- Press and release the letter H
- Release the CTRL key
- Scroll through the list until you find the link you want to visit
- Double-click on the link.
- If
you want to search for a page:
- On your keyboard, press and hold the CTRL key.
- Press and release the letter F
- Release the CTRL key
- You can use this box to try and locate the link.
There is no way to predict what will be available next on the web. But one thing is certain. Someone is about to create something that you can’t view with the browser you are currently using. Plug-ins are a way to extend the usefulness of your browser. Some of the older plug-ins are so popular that they are distributed with your browser. You use them without ever realizing that you have plug-ins.
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How Do I Add A Plug-In When you surf, and you come across a file that your browser can’t handle, you will see a message that you need a plug-in. Usually, the web page will have a link to another site where you can download the plug-in. How to do it
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Each time you start your browser it probably starts with the same home page. Even if you don’t like this page, it’s there on your screen every time. In this section, I’ll tell you how to change that. You can select your ITI Replicating page as your HOME page, any other page you'd like, or you can open to a BLANK page each time, allowing you to easily enter the web address you're looking for.
How to do it
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Internet Explorer |
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Netscape |
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