Getting Started

    You can start a Web Browsing session in one of five ways:

    • Type an address into the space marked URL in the WebsterXL toolbar.

    • Click on the large W icon to the left of the toolbar and type in an address to move to.

    • Choose one of your favourite sites from the hotlist by first clicking on the hotlist button on the toolbar, and then selecting the site you wish to go to.

    • Click on the Goto Search Page button on the toolbar to begin an Internet search for the information you need.

    • Click on one of the links in this guide to visit that page.

    In order to visit a web site which isn't on your hard disc, you will need to be connected to the Internet via a modem or network card. Software to allow you to do this is supplied with WebsterXL, but you can use any other software such as the ANT Internet Suite, Voyager from Argonet or Termite. Acorn’s Intertalk suite can also be used.

    At this point, you may wish to change the default main window size/position

    Moving Between Pages

    The site that you have chosen to visit will then be displayed in this WebsterXL window. To navigate around the site, simply press the left mouse button over any links that may exist on the page. Links are usually marked in a different colour to the rest of the text, and the pointer will change when it is over one.

    If at any time you wish to move backwards or forwards through the pages you have already visited, simply click on the appropriate arrow on the left hand side of the toolbar. To return to this page (or another page that you have marked as ‘home’) click on the home button which sits between the two arrows.

    Stopping a Fetch

    To stop the computer getting the page you requested, click on the large W icon on the left of the toolbar. If the browser has already finished fetching the page, the Goto URL window will appear. Please note that the abbreviation URL simply means ‘Internet Address’.

    In addition, you should be aware that pressing the Alt key on the keyboard at any time will force the browser to stop all rendering and fetching for the current page. This can be useful if the browser becomes confused by badly written pages (you would be amazed by how many ‘bad’ pages are out there!).

    Downloading Files

    When browsing the Web, there may come a time when you wish to download data to your hard disc. If you click on a link to a downloadable file, WebsterXL will fetch it for you and open a standard Save box allowing you to save it out. However, you will not be able to do anything else in WebsterXL during the fetch. To solve this problem, it is possible to download files in the background, and this is the recommended way of receiving files, as it can offer faster transfers.

    To start a background download, either right click on the link and choose the Save Link option, or press the menu mouse button over the link, and choose Save Link on the Links sub-menu. Either way, you will be given a Save box which allows you to tell WebsterXL where to download the file too, then the background fetcher will open a window and begin the download. Please note that when complete, the window will not disappear as many users will want to go away and leave the computer to download the data. If the window simply vanished as soon as the download stopped for any reason, you wouldn't know whether the data had fully downloaded. With WebsterXL, you will see that the percentage completed bar has reached 100%, so you can rest assured that the whole file has downloaded!

    There you are! It’s as simple as that to get started browsing the Web. In time, you’ll probably want to use some of WebsterXL’s more powerful tools and options, and these are covered in later sections of this documentation.