HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the language used to create web pages. &browser.name; &release.version; supports HTML 3.2, plus many popular HTML extensions.
If you would like to learn more about HTML, see A Beginner's Guide to HTML, provided by the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Application).
Follow the links below for detailed information about each one, or see the Getting Started Navigation Page for a summary of all the toolbar button functions.
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To visit a place on the Web, click in the Address field, which is normally found in the header or footer of the &browser.name; window. Then type the desired URL directly into the Address field and press Return or Enter to display the specified web page.
If you have chosen not to display the Address field in either the header or
footer, choose Open from the File menu (or display a
The first part of a URL (the part before the ":") is the Internet transfer protocol of the page you are trying to access. This indicates the page type and how the browser accesses the page. See the next section ("Supported Protocols") to find out about the different types of URLs that you can use in &browser.name;.
To visit a web page, type:
http://Internet-host/path-to-document
in the Address field and press Return or Enter.
You can omit the http://
portion of the URL; &browser.name; will automatically add
it for you. For example, these two URLs both take you to the
Java Software home page:
Furthermore, if the URL is a simple name
containing only letters, numbers, and hyphens (that is, a name that does not
contain any periods, slashes, colons, and so on), &browser.name; adds
www. to the start of the name, and
.com to the end of the name. It then adds the
http:// to the front of the URL.
For example, if you type
sun in the Address field, this gets expanded first to
www.sun.com, then to
http://www.sun.com, which saves you some typing.
Note: This protocol does not work in versions of
&browser.name; that do not support SSL (Secure Sockets Layer).
The lock that appears at the left of the message area appears locked when
you're connected to
a secure
If you're loading an ASCII text file, the file must have one of the
following extensions:
.text .txt .java .c .cc .c++ .h .pl .el
If you type a URL that starts with "c:", you'll get an error message
instead of a file listing from drive C. As described above, when a URL
starts with a simple text string before a colon, the string is considered
to be an Internet transfer protocol. Therefore, &browser.name; interprets
a URL that starts with "c:" as if "c" is a protocol instead of a drive.
When you specify an FTP URL, &browser.name; displays the directories
and files at the FTP site. Click a directory to go there, or click
a file you want to see. If &browser.name; recognizes the file type, it
displays the file. If &browser.name; doesn't recognize the file type, it
displays a page you can use to save the file locally.
This is a protocol that &browser.name; uses to locate specific &browser.name;
files. It is not recognized by other browsers, and is therefore not useful for
general web browsing.
If you want to list the contents of the C drive, use the URL
Holding down the Shift key tells &browser.name; to open a new &browser.name; window for the new page.
You can also choose New Window from the File menu to create a new &browser.name; window displaying your home page.
Another way to open a new window is to press the right mouse button over a
link or image, then choose Open this Link in New Window or
Open this Image in New Window from the
Note: The new &browser.name; window is part of the current &browser.name; session, so it does not consume as many system resources as starting a new instance of the &browser.name; application. If you open one or more windows and then change preferences in one window, the changes apply to all the windows.
- Means &browser.name; is
not loading a page over the network.
- Means &browser.name; is
loading a page over the network.
Applet developers: Click the broken applet icon to see an exception trace to help track down the problem.
To resize the areas of a page divided into frames, position your pointer on the edge of a frame (where it borders another frame), press your mouse button, and drag the pointer. You'll see a line indicating what the new size of the frame will be as you move the pointer. Release your mouse button when the frame is the desired size. You may have to try a couple of times at first to successfully find the edge of the frame, but this will become easier after the first try or two.
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