JCU - World Wide Web

An InfoHelp How To...? Guide

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The Internet is a continually growing, world-encompassing network of computers, the exact size is unknown. The World Wide Web is an easy way to look at the information that is available over the Internet. A web browser is a program that you can use to look at the information presented on the world wide web. Web browsers contact computers linked to the Internet that hold web pages. The information can be in the form of text, graphics, sounds or a mixture. Internet Explorer and Netscape are two well-known web browsers.

James Cook University is linked to the WWW through the Australian Academic and Research Network, AARNet. As with JCUNet, AARNet is governed by "Acceptable Usage" rules.

IMPORTANT:

James Cook University has in place accounting for Internet usage, this means that every time you go browsing the Internet off-campus an amount will be deducted from your quota. When you go off-campus you'll be asked for your account code and password. When you are done browsing remember and close down your Internet browser and log off the machine to stop others using your quota!

You can find out more about internet accounting, check your current balance and get some tips for reducing the cost at:

http://www.jcu.edu.au/internetaccounting/

Running a Web Browser in the GAT Computing Facilities	Bookmarks
Following Links	Information for Staff
Searching the Web

Running a Web Browser in the GAT Computing Facilities

Start the computer and login as normal. Use your mouse to double click on either the Netscape or Internet Explorer icon to launch the application. The browser window will open on the screen at the current JCU Homepage. Look for the Location: or Address: bar under the menu bar and toolbar buttons, it will contain the text:

http://www.jcu.edu.au/

This is the address, or URL (Uniform Resource Locator), for the James Cook University Homepage. You can delete the address in the location bar and type in other URL’s.

Here are some useful URL’s that you can type in:

http://www.library.jcu.edu.au/Tropicat/tropicat.shtml

takes you to the Library catalogue

http://www.library.jcu.edu.au/InfoHelp

InfoHelp's Homepage

Following Links

Links are represented by either hypertext, text of a different colour and underlined, or by graphics. When you place your mouse pointer over them a little hand appears. If you click once on a hyperlink it will take you to another Internet site or to another web page.

Bookmarks

Because the General Access computers do not allow changes to be made to the applications you are unable to create your own bookmarks. You will need to keep track of any webpages either on a disk or by writing them down. The GATCF computers do however contain a list of pre-defined bookmarks with links to frequently accessed pages such as LearnJCU, StudentsOnline, and Labprint

Searching the Web

There is a vast amount of information available on the Internet stored at numerous locations. There will be something on almost everything. This means that it can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but search tools are available. Search buttons can be found at the bottom of all official JCU pages. Clicking on this button takes the user to the JCU Search Facility. From here it is possible to search locally on all the JCU web servers. If something further afield is required then try the Exploring the Internet link

From this page it is possible to access some of the major search tools available. Click once to open a Search Tool. There will be a box for you to type in a topic or keyword and a button to start searching. The results you get will be displayed in descending order of relevance to your query and will take the form of links to pages.

If you don’t find what you’re looking for try to redefine your search and remember that the results you receive will vary between different search tools.

Information for Staff

Running a web browser in your Office

In order to run Firefox or Internet Explorer from your office you need to make sure that the proxy server is set correctly so that you can access web sites outside JCU.

Settings for this can be found at: About the JCU WWW Server

Creating Bookmarks

Once you find a page that you would like to revisit then create a bookmark (Firefox) or a favorite (Internet Explorer). In Firefox click on Bookmarks and from the drop down menu that appears select Bookmark this page . This will add the page address to your bookmarks. In Internet Explorer click on Favourites and select Add to Favourites . To access pages via your bookmark list, simply click on Bookmarks or Favourites and click on the name of the page that you want revisit.