Hulmer Assignment One

Getting Up To Speed on Netsurfing

Congratulations! You made it to the assignment page. That shows that you already know a little something about using the Netsurfer software. What follows is a series of exercises that are designed to take you through some browser basics. Although some of these questions might seem like busywork, they are actually intended to help you stretch yourself concerning the internet. Remember, we're going to design our own pages now, so we want to examine each site with a critical eye.

Please note:

These exercises were designed for use with the Netsurfer browser software available on the Allegheny College network. Most of the exercises will work for other browsers, but will require slightly different technical directions.

Before you get started

In this exercise you will be asked to download some files. Right now is a good time to create a NEW FOLDER in your home account to transfer your files into easily. (I call my file WEBSTUFF)

You will be asked to turn in your answers. Have a blank WordPerfect document already up on your screen for making notes or jotting down addresses of your files.

BASICS

BOOKMARK or SAVE this page by clicking on the panel with the cross.
What title appears automatically in the "Remember" Panel?
Where else do you see this title on your browser?

TIP: Look at the upper right corner of your browser. You see two generic icons: a page with a globe on it, and a plain page. If you want to save this page with a fancy icon, click on the Virgin Hodegetria picture on the top of my page, and drag it on top of the globe-page. Save the page with this new little icon.

NOTE: When you dragged the image, it turned into a .TIFF file. More on that later.

RECOMMENDATION. Now SAVE your index by clicking on Resource / Save Index. Our system -- any system -- is notorious for crashing and kicking you out of the program. Don't lose your work because you haven't saved it!

SURFING

Following are a couple of URL's (web addresses) that came up when I did a quick internet search on "Russian Icons." I've set them up for you below as links. Choose one of them and explore the site that you find there in order to answer the questions that I list.

TIP: Do you want to keep this assignment page handy on your computer screen for easy viewing? In the upper left corner of your screen click on Resource / New Browser. Click on the INDEX tab to bring forward your Index files, and retrieve the Assignment One page you just saved into your new browser. Now you can travel from one browser and keep the other one on this page.

Questions to Answer
1. What is the URL of this site?
2. Who is the author of this site?
3. What gives this site and/or author its authority? How can you tell?
4. How is this site organized? Is it easy to get around?
Sites to Explore

CITING

Although a URL alone will get you to a page on the internet, if we want to use websites as sources in academic contexts, we need to be able to cite the reference information in a formal way. How do we do that? Any citation contains the basic information: Author, Title, Place and Date of Publication. but you'll find that this information isn't always easy to find in a website.

Scholarly organizations are beginning to standardize the citations of internet resources. In art history, we can generally use the MLA guidelines. For information about various formats, see the site maintained by Emory University.

SEARCHING

There are several search engines that will look through internet sites to find information for you, based on keywords that you supply. Using these is like using Allecat, or any indexing reference. Learn to love 'em, because you can't live without them!

If these programs are not already in your Netsurfer Resource Index, add them.: TIP: CUT and PASTE the URL's rather than retyping and risking a typing error.
Lycos: http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/
Webcrawler: http://www.webcrawler.com/
AltaVista (This is Yahoo's Search Program): http://altavista.digital.com/

As a group, we need to identify internet sites that are important for our project. We will use the resources ourselves, and put together a "links" page that will direct our future viewers about related materials. Keep in mind:

Assignment Two will ask us to collect and evaluate BEST and WORST sites. Start looking now!
Remember to SAVE sites as you run across them. Believe me, it's almost impossible to retrace your steps later on.
Try different combinations of words and concepts in your search.
Do not limit yourself to one Search Engine only. They all utilize different databases and search criteria. You'll be amazed at how different your hit lists will be!

Do a search

Use the keywords Russian Icons.
How many hits do you get? Why so many? Which ones are useful?
Start making your own list of sites that will be useful to us.
Send two or three of them to me, in proper citation format. Extra points if you find a good site that nobody else lists.

DOWNLOADING

How many ways can you think of to "save" information that you find in a site? Below I've listed some of the most common techniques. Review each of these procedures to make sure you know how to do them.

Holding down your left mouse button, block off an area in a document, COPY it (with ALT-C or Edit / Copy) and PASTE it (with ALT-V or Edit/ Paste) into a blank WordPerfect document.
Drag the page icon in the upper right corner of your browser into your NeXT account, or a folder you've designated for that purpose. Note: When you dragged the image, it turned into a .RTFD file. More on that later.
Some browsers (but not Netsurfer) have a RETRIEVE SOURCE option. Eventually we will have a few other options for this procedure.

As we build our own web pages and retrieve information from the web, we will be able to make use of archives of data, software and images. For example, all of the little icons I used on this page, like the backward arrow, the image of the Virgin, and my homepage symbol were taken off of the web. As you create your own pages, you will want to take advantage of these graphic sources, too.

For practice, let's download a graphic or two from Psyched Up Graphics.

Instructions:

CLICK on the Psyched Up Graphics link,
CLICK on IMAGES,
Then, CLICK on ARROWS. You will see a page of square boxes that will gradually turn into various images of arrows for web pages. THESE WILL TAKE A LONG TIME TO LOAD. But here is one image that you will see right away:
Note: You do NOT have to wait for the whole page to load. When you see an image you like, CLICK on it.
Now you have an entire browser devoted to a single tiny image. In the upper right corner, note a square icon labeled GIF.
DRAG that GIF file into your "webstuff" folder. The arrow shown above will appear as a file labeled arrow2.gif.
CLICK on the file in your home index folder to see the image. If you can't view the file you downloaded, LET ME KNOW. You will probably only need to load an ImageViewer application into your account.

That's all there is to it. When you devise your own pages, you can download entire sets of navigational icons, backgrounds, and more. To find more sites, try searching under CLIP ART or GRAPHICS. Sites like Caboodles of Clip Art will often contain links to even more graphics archives.

EVALUATION

Was this easy for you? or difficult? What did your experience tell you?

If you had trouble with simple tasks of navigating, saving, etc., that may indicate that you need a refresher course on the basics. That's okay, just LET ME KNOW!
If you found yourself confused by the websites, maybe it's not your fault, but a problem with the webpage, or the software. Can you identify the problem? How will OUR site be better?
Was this taking a long time? Or were links not working? Avoid netsurfing during the peak early afternoon hours. Late at night, or early am works better.
Was everything really bland? For this class, it might be worth hunting down those wonderful color monitors!

I want to make it as easy as possible for you to communicate with me. Send comments and opinions by E-Mail to acarr@alleg.edu

The Virgin Hodigitria of Volhynia (late 14th c.)
Ukrainian State Museum of Ukrainian Fine Arts
From an Exhibition of Ukrainian Icons in the 11-16th CC maintained by the Archdiocese of Lviv.

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Last modified January 17, 1997