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Web Basics |
General Knowledge
Troubleshooting Issues
General Knowledge
What does a Web Browser do?
A Web browser's primary function is to load and display pages from a Web server. Modern-day Web browsers (or at least the most popular two) come with fully-featured E-Mail software, management of favorites or bookmarks, advanced searching, multimedia, and even instant messaging features. Web browsers have pretty well evolved into being a part of larger Internet software suites.
What Web Browsers are there that I can use?
The most widely-used browser on the Internet (and this is from various sources), would be the Internet Explorer (IE) browser from Microsoft. Second to that, Netscape Navigator.
Both of them have many similar features, and also some items that are unique which is what generally ends up making the difference for people who are making a choice on which one to use.
There are also a variety of other browsers out there if you don't want to go with the big two. Neoplanet is a browser with a customizable interface (although, it uses Internet Explorer as the "engine" behind it), Opera is a favorite of a select few people, and there are even text-based browsers like Lynx.
What are some of the benefits of Internet Explorer?
Microsoft Internet Explorer is the browser we have traditionally distributed and still do. We give lots of support for Internet Explorer, and many people find that the browser runs faster, loads pages more smoothly, and does a better job at displaying pages the way they were meant to be seen.
Internet Explorer also comes with Microsoft Outlook Express, which is a very popular E-Mail program. If you run a full installation of Internet Explorer, you can also get support for a variety of extra types of graphics, multimedia content, and even FrontPage Express to help you make Web pages easily.
Internet Explorer 6 has some very convenient features:
- auto-completion features so you don't need to type in addresses you've been to recently (IE guesses at what address you might be typing and displays a list of places you might want, and narrows them down as you continue to type)
- a search feature that allows you to enter something you're looking for and check a variety of places easily
- a searchable browser history to go back to pages you've been to but forget where they were
- integration it can have with a Windows operating system (it comes standard with many versions of Windows because some of the features of the OS are dependent upon Internet Explorer components, and to provide the ability to browse the Web as a standard feature of your computer)
- friendly error messages to help you understand better any problems you might run into while browsing
- multi-level security features so you can designate what level of warnings you get before running potentially harmful scripts in pages, or allow more things to happen automatically depending on what sites you trust better
Find out more about Internet Explorer here.
What are some of the benefits of using Netscape Navigator?
Netscape is the other very popular browser, and has a lot of great features as well, and also is free. Netscape also includes auto-completion of Web addresses as you type, built-in searching mechanisms, and more.
Netscape Communicator, the full package that includes Navigator, also includes Netscape Messenger (a full-featured E-Mail client), and Netscape Composer to design Web pages.
Some of the key features of the latest versions of Netscape include:
- It comes with AOL Instant Messenger to give you connectivity with AOL members (can be downloaded separately without Netscape).
- In-line automatic completion features so you don't need to type in the the full addresses of sites you've been to before (it guesses and fills in the rest as you type).
- Unified Preferences so you can configure all your options in one place.
You can download the latest version of Netscape here.
What if I'm using a Macintosh computer?
Macintosh computers, being so popular with many people these days, also have a great deal of software support. No, you can't get everything made for Windows in a Macintosh version, but when it comes to Internet software, there are lots of things you can run on a Mac.
Both Internet Explorer and Netscape are able to be run on a Macintosh. You can download Netscape from Netscape's home page, and the latest and greatest version of Internet Explorer for Mac can be downloaded from Microsoft Mactopia.
What if I'm on a computer running Linux?
Linux, being newer to the club of popular operating systems, doesn't have as much average user application support as Windows or Mac OS, but that doesn't mean you can't get by easily. Microsoft doesn't currently make software for Linux, so you can't get Internet Explorer at this time.
Most newer distributions of Linux come standard with a copy of Netscape Navigator already installed, so you should already have a fully-featured, modern-day browser on your Linux system. For the latest version, you can go to Netscape and download a fresh copy.
Troubleshooting Issues
What are common HTTP errors?
Sometimes, you'll receive standard HTTP error messages that might be a bit cryptic. Internet Explorer 6 does a good job of showing friendly versions of those messages to let you know what's going on, but other browsers don't. So here's the ones you'll see the most often...
- 404 - File Not Found - this means that the page you're trying to reach doesn't exist on the domain where the page is coming from. You might see this when you end up at a bad link, or enter in a URL incorrectly when typing one.
- 403 - Forbidden - this means that the page or resource you were trying to access is somehow restricted via a security measure on the server on which it lies.
- 401 - Unauthorized - this means that you have not supplied, or incorrectly supplied a username and password while attempting to access a password-protected page or site.
- 500.x - Internal Server Errors - this means that there is something wrong with the server. It could be a process running on the server required to display a page you're trying to reach, an issue with the server itself that it's not operating, or even the server being too busy.
What does it mean when I get "Internet Explorer can not find the Internet site..." or "Netscape is unable to locate the server..."?
Many people who receive this error from Internet Explorer or Netscape (respectively) get it simply because they're not connected to the Internet.
Otherwise, this most likely means that the server you're trying to reach is temporarily unavailable. It can also mean the server doesn't exist.
What does it mean when I get "The page can not be displayed" in Internet Explorer?
This is a "friendly" error message given by Internet Explorer, versus a cryptic error message you would otherwise get. It usually means that either you're not connected to the Internet, or you're trying to go to a site that isn't available.
Why am I getting content advisor errors in Internet Explorer?
You might have the Content Advisor turned on. This is a tool that can restrict access to certain Web sites rated with RSACi ratings, or a site that isn't rated, depending on how the advisor was turned on.
Go into Internet Explorer's options, and disable the Content Advisor from the Content tab.
What does it mean when I get "The connection with the server was reset..." from Internet Explorer?
This means that in the middle of retrieving a page from a Web server, something happened that caused your connection to it (through the Internet) to terminate. Simply hit the Refresh (
) button in Internet Explorer to try it again.
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