Web browsers are designed to access the World Wide Web, an Internet information resource. Web browsers can also be used to view hypertext documents on a local system. Common web browsers include Opera, Safari, Mozilla, Firefox, Internet Explorer.
In order to use web browsers effectively you should get familiar with the icons and menus that can be found usually at the top of the window. The icon Back gets you back to the location you came from. If you ever get lost, it can be useful sometimes to follow your steps backwards, using the Back icon, until you get to a location from which you can find your way out. If you do go back to one of the previous locations, the next icon Forward will be highlighted; you can then use it to make a step forward in case you need to return to the location you backed up from. Home stands for your default home page: you can set this to be your own home page (i.e., with information about you, your own set of links, etc.) or any other page you wish.
If you are on a machine where the default has not been set to anything else, Home will take you to the web browser's home page. If you are new to the Internet, this is a good starting point for exploring the World Wide Web. Just follow one of the many links offered by the page. Just make sure you don't waste the time allocated for the lab! Reload can sometimes be useful if there was an error during receiving information and some part of the text or graphics is not properly displayed as a result. Just click on this icon and the screen will reload. Stop stands for stop receiving information. If a connection takes too long or you decide not to follow a link after all, just click Stop and you will be left at the present location.
Next, let's take a quick look at the menus. Most of them are self explanatory. Some of the options in the menus are equivalent to the icons that have already been mentioned. The Go menu gives you a list of sites that you have visited most recently. You can jump to any of them by selecting them form this menu. The Bookmarks menu is a useful tool; you can use it to store locations that you visit often and jump right to them without having to type in the address each time. Whenever you want to make a bookmark to a site, just choose Add Bookmark from the menu and your list of bookmarks will get updated with the present location. In the File menu, the Open Page option will bring up a window in which you can enter the location of any site you want. Alternatively, simply type the location of the site in the Location window. In the Edit menu, the Preferences option allows you to adjust such features as font style, the home page that gets displayed when you load web browsers, and other preferences.
To find things on the internet, Google is a fine tool and easy to use. Some browsers have Google built in -- usually a text area you can type a query into and when you hit "Enter" the request is sent to Google. Google finds many webpages related to your query and sorts them in a fairly clever way. Google is your friend.