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Home > Chronic and Serious Illness > Internet Reducing Online Frustration Page Index: Check and Double-Check the URL Downtime for Periodic Maintenance and Repairs Short-Circuiting the Wait for Pages to Load Don't Forget to Bookmark Sites You Like Where in the World Did That Link Take You? Do You Really Need a New Audio Program? When More Than One Internet Window is Open
Check and Double-check
the URL If you think you have entered the correct URL (Uniform Resource Locator, which is the Internet address), but get a message that it "can't be found," carefully check to see that you've typed it in correctly. URLs are extremely finicky creatures! There is a HUGE difference between http://www.senior.com and http://www.seniors.com. A " ~ " and a " - " may look similar, but they will give you very different results. And you will need to especially note that spaces aren't allowed in Internet addresses, so what looks like a space is just the underline mark " _ ", inserted to create more readable addresses. So if you can't locate a site you want, don't assume you've typed it correctly. Downtime for Periodic Maintenance and Repairs
If you enter a URL and get a clear message saying something like "URL not found," it may mean that you've typed in the wrong address or it may mean the page is no longer active. However, you will sometimes be given a message telling you the browser cannot open the Internet site and a connection with the server could not be established. This may mean (1) there is no such URL page or (2) the server on which the URL is located is temporarily not working. Sometimes the server, located on someone's computer, is shut down because the computer has a temporary problem. It could also mean that there is a technical glitch in the part of the Internet "backbone" over which the website normally travels from the server to your computer. The way to handle either of these situations is to just come back later. Sometimes as little as fifteen minutes can make a difference and sometimes you may need to wait a day or so. Short-Circuiting the Wait
for Pages to Load Tired of waiting for pages to load? You can sometimes turn off the graphics, which means you won't get as pretty of pages, but the text will get to your computer faster. Here's some other very helpful advice. You don't have to wait for a website to completely load on your screen before you click on a link to a feature within that website. In other words, if you know you want to go to the cancer survivors section, as soon as you can see where to click, just do it. The browser will stop trying to load the homepage and will begin going to the new page instead. Also, if you click on a feature and then realize you didn't really want to go there, or if you aren't willing to wait any longer for a page to load, just click the Back button or the Stop button at the top of your screen or type a new URL in the address line. This will tell your browser to (1) go back to the page you were on before you clicked, (2) to stop the process or (3) to find another webpage. Sometimes a page can take so long it seems to be stuck and yet you really want to view it. Then clicking on the Reload button at the top of the screen will start the process over again, but it might just load more quickly the next time. Incidentally, the speed with which a page loads (i.e., the speed with which it comes fully onto the screen) is partly due to the way in which some web designers are enthralled with all the bells and whistles they are able to put into a page. While that may be necessary for commercial sites trying to attract your eye so you'll buy something, it isn't very important when people simply want information. Cancer patients don't care if helpful material is on a page that isn't fancy or has few graphics. A confusing term for new web users is the word "page." That because on the Internet a "page" is not the same as an 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper. Here page refers to everything within one URL, whether the text and graphics are very short or very, very long. How can you tell how long an Internet page is? Just look at the light gray "scroll bar" at the bottom of the page and the similar bar at the right of the page. If there isn't any dark gray box in either of them, then what you see is what you get. There won't be anything else below or to the side of the page. However, if there is a long dark gray box on the right, that means there is a little more information at the bottom of the "page," material which may or may not be critical to what you need. Pulling down the box can tell you quickly whether there is something you can use. On the other hand, if the box is very tiny, that means the "page" is long and you'll need to scroll down a long way to see it all. The same applies to the bottom scroll bar. If there is a long dark gray box, there's a little more material to the right and moving the box to the right will allow you to see the text or graphics more fully. You won't see a very small box on the bottom. Pages aren't designed to be wider than the width of the widest screen, although they can be very, very long. How can you get around a page and view all of it? There are several methods, each of which is called "scrolling." When you click on the light gray area, you will go up or down one screen length per click. Clicking on the arrows moves you up or down line by line. However, if you want to quickly get to the bottom of the page (or, conversely, to the top), use the "Home" and "End" buttons on the computer keyboard. That will whip you immediately to the top or bottom of the page, no matter how long. With a little practice, you'll be able to move quickly through any page. There's only one minor problem with all this jumping around in a page. It gives some browsers a headache. So even though I recommend you go as fast as you can, if your system crashes a lot, consider slowing down, Incidentally, from a web designer's perspective, I can assure you that deciding how long or short to make a page is a major problem. We know that people don't like to scroll, so if we create a long page, they are likely to jump to another page before getting to the bottom, which we believe contains as good of information as that which appears above. On the other hand, breaking up an article into small pieces that don't have to be scrolled very far means you have to wait for a lot more of them to open, although because they are smaller it will take a little less time. Needing to scroll back and forth across your screen is a matter of design as well. The problem arises because at one time almost everyone's screen was small and it didn't make sense to create a wider page. Now that new computer monitors are larger, some web designers create wider pages (that is, wider than 580 pixels, in case you're interested), but that makes it hard for all the millions of those who haven't yet upgraded to a large screen. It's a dilemma that will probably be solved when all screens are wider and high speed Internet access will allow websites to load in milliseconds. Don't Forget to Bookmark Sites
You Like When you find a page you like or want to explore later, take a few seconds and "bookmark" it so that you'll be able to find it when you come back to the Internet another day. For sites like CancerOnline that update content regularly, you can easily return to see what's new. Incidentally, we use the word "bookmark," which comes from the Netscape Navigator browser, as a generic term. In deference to Bill Gates, however, we should point out that on Microsoft Explorer (and on AOL) the term is Favorites. Unfortunately, some sites force you to always return to their home page. For example, although the American Cancer Society website has excellent content, it is impossible for you to bookmark their material on a specific cancer and return to it later. Even though you "think" you are saving a specific page, when you open the bookmarked page, you will only see the home page and will need to find your way back to the article again. (Or at least that is what was true when this article was written.) Another problem with bookmarked pages is that sites are constantly being reformatted and the old URL address may no longer work. So if you can't find a page you bookmarked, take a look at the first part of the address, because that name is unlikely to change. To help you understand this point, when I first wrote this article I used the following example. If you get a "can't be found" message with http://www.red-pink-yellow.com/wonderful-article.html, use just "http://www.red-pink-yellow.com" and search again for the wonderful article, which may be located in a different section. Go back to the primary name of the site and start over again if you can't find a specific page. Where in the World Did
That Link Take You? It's easier for an adult to get lost on the Internet than for Hansel and Gretel to find their way home through the forest. That's because hyperlinks allow you to move quickly from one interesting idea to another. Even if you use the back button and your browser shows which sites you've recently visited, before you know it, you couldn't get back to the place you started if your life depended on it. Because I get lost myself sometimes, I'm not sure I can help you a great deal in this matter, except to remind you to bookmark the pages you like best and check the feature on your browser that allows you to see where you've been since you logged on. However, I have learned to tell whether clicking on a linked topic in a table of contents, usually at the top of a page, has taken me to another page or whether I have been transported to material farther down that same page. The clue lies in a pound sign (#). If you have been reading this page by scrolling down and reading the paragraphs as you go and have now come to these words, in the URL field at the top of the screen will be the address: http://www.learningplaceonlne.com/illness/internet/frustration.htm On the other hand, if you clicked on the topic "Where in the World Did That Link Take You?," which is a link in the Page Index at the top of this article, you would have been transported to this section and the URL would add a pound sign (#) at the end of the address and would add "where" to the address. http://www.learningplaceonline.com/illness/internet/frustration.htm@where Notice that in both cases the basic page name—which is always after the last slash ( / ) in the URL—has not changed. Therefore, you can get back to the top of the page by using the scroll bar on the right. Most of the time when you click on a link there will be no #, so you'll know you've been taken to a new page. Just to make things more complicated, however, sometimes a link will be made directly to a section within another page and there will be a # —but the basic page name has changed. Don't know if this helps or not, but little tricks like this can sometimes come in handy. Frames are web designs with a feature that is both good and bad. Some of these sites make arrangements with other websites to re-publish material from those sites. Imagine, for example, that a site we'll call www.spectacular-information.com (don't believe there's an actual site with that name) might link you to the online magazine, "Absolutely the Best." If Spectacular Information introduces you to this magazine and you wouldn't have found out about it otherwise, the site has served a valuable purpose. But it can be frustrating if you want to go to the home page of the magazine, since most framed environments keep you stuck within their website. What you can do, however, is to try http://www.absolutely-the-very-best.com and see if you find the magazine. Often, however, the magazine may be created online by a publisher whose name you don't know. In that case, type "Absolutely the Best" in the search field of a search engine. This should soon lead you to the magazine's primary site. It's particularly frustrating when a framed environment captures a framed website. Then the pages can get really wide. Some sites and search engines, such as AskJeeves, will give you the option of turning off frames. That way you have more screen space to move around and can more readily contact the site directly. Do You Really Need
a New Audio Program? Another way to speed things up is to ignore the small windows that pop up on the screen when you open some articles. It's hard for me to understand how the browser (or whatever is controlling them) decides to present these unrequested windows when they do. They're almost never really important -- from my perspective. They're just attempts to get me to buy some new Internet software or other product. Of course, there may be something you want to buy and you'd like to read all these windows, but most likely you're focused on finding information. So just click on the close command (X) on the upper right of the small window and it will go away. When More Than One
Internet Window is Open Here's something that confused me a great deal before I understood what was happening. I first noticed it when a friend would recommend a website in an e-mail and I would click on the URL. Without my knowing it, the click would open a new window to the Internet—even though I already had my Internet access open. Consequently, the feature that I was counting on to tell me where I had been was inaccurate and hitting the back button didn't work as I thought it should. And the truth is that here on LearningPlaceOnline we do the same thing, as do many websites these days. We don't want to lose our visitors, so we give you a chance to see another site and still keep our site available in the background for you to return to. If you have a large computer screen or if you keep your window smaller, you can often see the other window behind it. But if your window covers the whole screen, beware that you can have more than one Internet window open. © Copyright 1998, Revised
2002, Arlene F. Harder, MA,
MFT
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