Griffith Feeney
Objective To learn or to extend your knowledge of hypertext documents, the Netscape browser, and World Wide Web tools and resources.
Pedagogical Notes In this as in most workshop exercises, the exact nature of the exercise depends on how much you know already. If you know nothing about hypertext, browsers, or the World Wide Web, your assignment is to learn the basics. If you are already familiar with them, you job is to extend your knowledge in one or more of the suggested directions. If you already know everything discussed below, your job is to help your fellow participants learn.
Many specific execises and explorations are suggested here, both to accomodate variation in knowledge and experience among participants and to provide you with some choice in how to focus your efforts. Your assignment is not to do everything suggested below (that will probably not be possible in the time available), but to learn as much as you can of what you find most useful. These exercises are also an opportunity to organize yourselves as a group to learn more by cooperation than you could learn by working individually.
Basic Concepts A hypertext document is a digital document with links (references) to other digital documents, that when viewed on a computer using a browser (and perhaps also various helper applications such as the Microsoft PowerPoint viewer), enable the reader to move (more or less) instantly from one document to another linked document and back--as you are doing alreading in reading the workshop syllabus and the various documents linked to it. The World Wide Web is a collection of hypertext documents residing on computers around the world that are connected to the Internet and accessible from any computer connected to the Internet.
Exercise 1 Study the workshop syllabus and the various documents linked to it. This will familiarize you with the Netscape interface, with 'clicking' the left mouse button on links to move to the linked page, with using the Back button to move back to the document you came from. Some of the documents (pages in web jargon) will be on the computer you are using, some on another computer at the East-West Center, and others on other computers around the world.
Exercise 2 Visit the home page of the Central Bureau of Statistics in the Netherlands and explore the various resources found there, including the very complete set of links to other national statistics offices throughout the world. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is www.cbs.nl.
Exercise 3 Use [File > Save As] to copy several web pages to your hard disk. Then use [File > Open File in Browser] to open the pages you have saved. You can use this technique to save copies of what you find while browsing. Note however what happens to images when you do this. Based on what you observe, what is an 'image'?
Exercise 4 Learn how to search the web to find information on topics that interest you. Begin with the [Net Search] button on the Netscape toolbar, then try any or all of the following search engines: [ www.hotbot.com | www.lycos.com | www.excite.com | www.altavista.digital.com ]. Learn how to use these sites by experimentation and by reading the various instructions and notes provided.
Exercise 5 Something you may want to do if pages load slowly is to turn off automatic loading of images. [Options > General Preferences > Images > check Display Images After Loading], then [Options -> uncheck Autoload Images]. Having turned off the loading of images in this way, use [View > Load Images] if you want to see images on the page you're looking at. You can also reverse these steps to turn automatic loading of images back on.
Exercise 6 Download the text editor TextPad from www.textpad.com and install it on the machine you are working on. Read and follow the instructions for installation. You may need to 'unzip' (uncompress) the files prior to installation, and you will want to know how to create a directory (use a dos window or Explorer). Read the material that comes with the program to learn what 'shareware' is.
Exercise 7 Explore the Info-ZIP web site www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip and learn about the Zip and UnZip programs. These programs handle long file names, unlike pkzip and pkunzip. There are also freeware, not shareware, with source code available and with ports to a large number of operating systems.
Exercise 8 Visit the International Programs Center of the US Bureau of the Census. Note the various software packages available for free downloading, including the Integrated Microcomputer Processing System (IMPS) and the Population Analysis System (PAS). Documentation for the latter exists only in print form, unfortunately, and costs $40. It was created before the importance of capturing all documents in digital form was fully appreciated.
Exercise 9 Visit the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) of the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), funded by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plue.sedac.ciesin.org/china/ and note the remarkable set of country level data for China on line, including very large GIS files giving country boundaries as well as topographic features.
Exercise 10 Computer specialists may want to investigate www.tucows.com, which provides a very extensive collection of networking shareware and freeware for Windows 95 and Windows NT, www.egghead.com, a vendor of computer hardware and software, which provides links to product reviews, and www.pcmag.com, one of the major Intel oriented computer magazines in the US.
Exercise 11 Use [View > Source] and/or open one of the .htm files (such as this one) in a text editor to begin to learn about the structure of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) documents.
Exercise 12 Configure Netscape to use the PowerPoint Viewer as a helper application. [Options > General Preferences > Helpers > Create New Type > Mime Type = application, Mime SubType = ppt > Okay > File Extension = .ppt > Action = Launch the Application > Browse to Ppview32.exe > Okay] With this configuration set, the PowerPoint viewer will be activated whenever you click on a link to a file with the extension .ppt. Try this with presentations.ppt.
<gfeeney@gfeeney.com>
