Intro to Web Surfing and Searching

• The Web and Web Surfing for Beginners
• Using WWW Browsers
• Online searches of Web sites and Public and Commercial Databases
• Other Places to Look

• About.com's Internet for Beginners, which has great information, including info on viruses. (You can't surf the Web without knowing about them!)
• Internet 101: Beginner's Handbook: A collection of links to About.com's introductory pages on the Web, Web publishing and searching, FAQs, email, viruses, and much more. Do you have basic questions? The answers are here.
  
  
• History of the Internet, from VAC Media. Very interesting; with pictures.
• A Brief Guide to the History of the Internet, from Investintech.com.
  
  
• Web Security for Beginners
  • Symantec AntiVirus -- it's free to any member of the UIC community, to put on any of their computers, at home or on campus. Don't Surf Without It!
  • Keeping Secure on the Web
  • Cookies on the Web
  • Active Content on the Web (Java, JavaScript, ActiveX)
  • Web Security at UIC: Bluestem
    
    
• About URLs: About.com's What is a URL?
  
  
• WWW FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
• FYI 4/RFC 1206: answers to common "New Internet User" questions

• Firefox/Mozilla, a well recommended alternate to IE, available for all platforms.
  For security reasons, the ACCC recommends the use of Firefox rather than IE whenever possible.
  • Firefox/Mozilla documentation
  • Firefox/Mozilla support links
  • download Firefox/Mozilla
    
• Internet Explorer
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer home page
  • IE Support Center
  • IE downloads
• Others:
  • Apple Safari
  • Google Chrome
  • Opera
• ACCC UNIX Web browsers (Don't use these unless you must.)
  • lynx WWW browser (on tigger and icarus)
  • mosaic WWW browser (NCSA)
  • netscape (X Windows WWW browser, on tigger and icarus)
    
    
• More, including other browsers: Yahoo!'s Web Software >Browsers page

• UIC Search, search the UIC Web pages
  
  
• UIC Library Research Guides: A treasure-trove: search online catalogs, indexes and databases, and electronic journals, many of which are licensed specifically for the UIC community.
• UIC Library's Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and More: The Library's other treasure-trove: dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, directories, gazetteers, maps, atlases, handbooks, and archives, and links to other collections of reference tools. Some of these are licensed for the UIC community also, including the online Oxford Reference Online and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
  
  
• Web Search Engines: There are lots more, but here are some popular ones:
  • Google (my personal favorite)
  • Bing
  • Yahoo
  • Lycos
  • List of search engines, including specialized ones, from the Wikipedia.
    
    
• Lists of Web Sites:
  • When I first wrote this Web page, in the way dark past, there were few enough Web pages for people to attempt to list them. Now that's an impossible task. But there are lists of the "best" or "coolest" sites, or sites for specialized purposes. Library Web servers, museum Web servers, lists of Energy-Efficiency Web Sites, and so on. If you're interested, here's a Google search to browse:
    Google search for lists of Websites.
    
    
• Online Collections of Freeware and Shareware Software:
• Cnet's Version Tracker, for both Macs and Windows
• Cnet's shareware.com collection of Internet freeware and shareware software
• TUCOWS collection of Internet freeware and shareware software

• John December's Internet Overview. John December has been working on his Internet tools pages since 1992, and it shows.


• Ready to start publishing on the Web? Web Publishing at UIC explains how.