Links/URL in Netscape 4

 

Entering a URL

Type the URL directly into the location text field.

Alternatively, you can choose Open Page from the File menu and type the URL in the resulting dialog box. (On the Mac OS, select the pull-right menu item Open, then choose Location in Navigator or Location in Composer to enter a URL.)

By entering a page's URL, Navigator can bring you the specified page just as if you had clicked a link.

Here are some sample URLs:

http://home.netscape.com/index.html
ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/
news:news.announce.newusers

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Entering partial URLs

If you omit certain parts of a URL in the location field, Navigator automatically completes the entry. You can omit the following:

  • The prefix http://. Navigator automatically adds the necessary prefix to complete the URL search.
  • The partial pathname http://www.. Navigator automatically adds the necessary pathname to complete the URL search.
  • The suffix .com; Navigator automatically adds this suffix if none is specified.

On Windows, when you begin to type a URL in the location field, Navigator attempts to automatically complete the URL. As you type, Navigator checks for previously visited URLs that match the letters you have typed and, if a match is found, fills in the remainder of the letters. If more than one match occurs, you can press the down-arrow key to fill in the next matching URL.

Also on Windows, the location field offers a pop-up menu to the right of the field. The menu contains up to 14 URLs of pages whose locations you've most recently typed into the field and viewed. Choosing a URL item from this menu brings the page to your screen again. The URLs are retained in the menu for each of your Navigator sessions.

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About HTML tags

Web pages are created by authors using a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). Composer, Communicator's editing component, automatically generates HTML.

HTML uses short tags (source text enclosed in angle brackets) to designate a page's links and graphical elements. When you transmit a page, Communicator interprets the HTML tags and presents them as links and other graphical elements.

Tags often contain URL information. When you click a tag containing a URL, you're instructing the Navigator application to display page information that's located on a server, irrespective of the server's geographic location. The URL part of the HTML tag is hidden in the page's source text; the content area only displays the highlighted link.

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Opening a Page

  • Choose Open Page from the File menu.
  • In the resulting dialog box, type a URL (or select a file using the Choose File button) to display a page in the content area.
  • Select a radio button to specify whether you want the page opened in a Navigator window or Composer window.
  • After you have specified a page location, click Open to display the page.

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About Links

A link is a connection from one page to another. You find a link by looking for one or more words highlighted with color, underlining, or both in the content area of a page. Images and icons with colored borders also serve as links. A link within a page that contains frames can be a connection that displays one or more new pages within frames, or an entirely new top-level page replacing all frames.

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Using a Link

  1. Point the mouse cursor over a link. The URL location of the link appears in the status message area at the bottom-left of the window.
  2. Click once on the highlighted text, image, or icon. This transfers page content from a server location to your location.
  3. After you click a link, the Netscape company logo animates to show you that the transfer of the page to your computer is in progress.
  4. Examine the status message area and progress bar at the bottom of the window to receive feedback about the progress of a transfer.

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Identifying followed and unfollowed Links

  • An unfollowed link is a connection to a page that you have not yet viewed. By default, unfollowed links are blue.
  • A followed link is a connection to a page that you have viewed. By default, followed links are purple.

You can change the colors used to denote unfollowed and followed links; from the Edit menu, choose Preferences, then select the Colors panel. If you have a black-and-white monitor, unfollowed and followed links are highlighted only with underlining and not differentiated.

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Stopping a Page Transfer

  • Click the Stop button.
  • Alternately, you can stop a link's action by choosing Stop Loading from the Go menu.

You can stop a transfer whenever the loading process takes longer than you like. This might happen if the content of the page is large or if the server computer is sluggish. Sometimes the page specified by a link just isn't available. You'll usually get a message if a connection was not made or a page not found.

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