using this internet


Part 1: What is the internet, what is email and what are browsers?

By Gerard Evans

Welcome to the wonderful world of the internet. You've probably heard lots about it and now you've arrived. But if you're not sure where to start, we at grannynet are here to help.

So, the internet - what is it? Look up the internet on the information site Wikipedia, and you'll get this definition, albeit in double-dutch:

"The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP)."

Well, that descrition is not quite going to be competing for any plain English awards, is it? Let's see if we can remove the double-dutch...
Essentially, the internet is simply lots of computers linked together so they (and therefore we) can communicate with each other. Some of these computers are called 'servers' - these are the 'super-computers' that house websites and store your emails before you download them. So, let's take a look at emails and websites.

  1. The web, emails and websites
    E-mails (electronic mail) are, as the name suggests, electronic letters. They are the most popular way of sending each other messages on the web. There are two ways of doing this.

    With the first, you can visit a website (eg Hotmail, Gmail etc) which will store emails sent to you and enable you to reply to them and / or send new emails to people. This tends to be known as webmail.

    The second option is to use some software (known as an email client e.g. Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird - all free) to download your emails when you log on to the net. Then you can read them, reply to them or write new emails at your leisure.
    The Outlook options usually come already loaded with Windows (do a search on your PC for 'outlook'), whilst Thunderbird can be downloaded from Mozilla.com. (Downloading is easy - just go to the site and follow the instructions).

    There are other ways of communicating on the web as well. Forums, such as the one on this site, can be used to have virtual discussions, whilst chat rooms take the process one stage further with live real-time chatting. Also, if you want to contact someone running a website, there is almost always a facility to contact them on the site, either by a link that activates your email client or by use of a web form.
    But how do we explore all these websites? Well, we need something called a browser. Indeed, unless you're looking at a printed version of this article, you're using a browser already.

  2. What is a browser?
    Browsers are the tools we use to 'surf the web' i.e. visit various websites.
    Although there are a range of browsers, the vast majority of people use either Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer. Again, Internet Explorer usually comes ready loaded with Windows, but Firefox is well worth downloading for free from Mozilla.com It's quite acceptable to have more than one browser on your computer, incidentally, and even to have them both running at the same time.
    General guide to browsers
    To surf the net, you simply open your browser and type a web address into the address bar and then you'll be taken to that web site. If you need to find something and aren't sure of the web address, you can go to a search engine such as Google and type in a search for it - we'll cover search engines in detail in a future article here. The address bar looks like this:

    address bar

    Alternative browsers Your default browser on a Windows PC will be Internet Explorer, but a growing number of people prefer the alternative Firefox, which is free and available to download from Mozilla.com.

Please feel welcome to ask any questions pertaining to this article in our forum, and to suggest topics for forthcoming columns.


Gerard Evans runs Abisti Web Design. .

  1. The internet is simply lots of computers linked together
  2. Servers are just 'super computers'
  3. There are two ways of sending emails, through a website or through email software, it is all free
  4. Forums and chatrooms are a great way of communicating on the internet, with the latter being a live activity
  5. Browsers are the tools we use to visit various websites
  6. You can have more than one browser on your computer, some are better than others