I. Browsing WWW

World Wide Web (WWW) undoubtedly started the Internet boom in the early 1990’s. It has created a means to bring enormous amount of information to people on the global scale.

WWW changed the direction of the flow of information. Traditionally, people are receivers of information disseminated by established mass media (e.g. TV and radio stations, magazine, etc.). WWW makes everybody a broadcaster of information by allowing them to open and maintain "home pages." Once you have your home page, your site, however small it might be, is no different from sites of huge corporations in terms of power in disseminating information.

Foreign language studies obviously benefit from WWW. WWW makes authentic information readily available to teachers and students. For teachers, a wide variety of instructional activities become possible using what is available on WWW. (Warshcauer 1994) Students can further explore WWW by applying foreign language knowledge and skills they have learned in the class.

The nature of authentic information changes with the advent of WWW. Authentic information or materials are the ones intended for native speakers of the target language. With traditional mass media, authentic materials have already been filtered since they have to be broadcasted or printed for the public. Information available on WWW, on the other hand, is not filtered or censored at all. As a result, there are a lot of very interesting materials on the WWW, but at the same time, there are a lot of questionable materials. In fact, this lack of censorship and global accessibility of WWW is causing a major headache for educators and parents since there is no easy way to stop the flow of "inappropriate" information. (Acceptability of certain types of information has been defined and checked against morality and needs established within individual societies. There are no societal (or national) boundaries in WWW.)

1. URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

   URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the term used to express an address of a WWW site. For example, the address of the WWW site of Purdue University is "http://www.purdue.edu." This brings up the home page of the university. Pages of various units with in the university system have addresses such as "http://www.purdue.edu/academic" and "http://www.purdue.edu/academic/fll". The slash ("/") is used to indicate a subdirectory of the site. (This is the same as a subdirectory on Windows computer or a folder in Macintosh computer.) This tree structure is very common in large-scale WWW sites. Thus, an URL can get very long if you are specifying a particular section of a large organization.

   Like e-mail addresses, URL ends in ".edu" for educational institutions in USA, ".com" for commercial entities in the USA. URL’s for other countries end in a country abbreviation such as ".au" for Australia and ".jp" for Japan.

   Opening a WWW site by publicizing its URL is similar to opening a store. People will stroll in to see what the store carries, and if they like it (or find useful in the academic case), they will come back. As you find sites which interest you, you will add their URL’s in your bookmark file. Remember that you should occasionally organize your bookmarks since it has a tendency of getting long very quickly.

   In addition to "http://", you will commonly see "ftp://" and "mailto:" "ftp://" is used to download files from a server such as getting a newer version of NetScape over Internet. "mailto:" is used with an email address such as "mailto:khatasa@purdue.edu" This causes a browser to open a window where you can compose an email message to send.

2. Search engines

   There are several search engines available on WWW to find sites which carry information you are interested in. Yahoo!, Excite, Inforseek are the names of commonly used search engines.

3. Saving WWW pages

   When you find a WWW page which interests you, you can save the content on your computer. This is different from adding the site to your bookmarks. While bookmarks only contain URL of the site, saving the page brings the entire content of the page into your computer. That is, you can view the saved page anytime without connecting to Internet. There are two options when you save a page: TEXT or SOURCE. If you save a page with TEXT option selected, the content of the page will become a plain text file which can be opened by any word processor. If you save a page with SOURCE option selected, the page will be saved as a HTML file so that you can view exactly the same page as if you were connected to Internet. (see next section for the discussion about HTML files.)

4. Opening WWW pages saved on your local computer

   Once saved on your computer, the WWW page will no longer have a URL. This is because the file no longer exists on Internet. Instead, you need to open the page as a regular file. Both NetScape and Internet Explorer provide an option to open a page in the FILE-OPEN menu. The distinction between opening a WWW site and opening an HTML file becomes important when you start authoring WWW pages.

II. Downloading files and resources using anonymous FTP

As you go through WWW pages, you will encounter (or may have already encountered) a line like "Click on the name to download a newer version of XXXX." Once you click on it, a small window appears and downloads (transfers) a file from the server to your computer. This process of downloading files is called "anonymous FTP." FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and it refers to the transfer of files between computers.

There are a large amount of resources (e.g. computer programs, language corpus, etc.) available on Internet. These resources are usually compiled and stored at particular depository sites called "FTP sites." By logging on to those sites anonymously without a password, you can download (or retrieve) files of your interests. This is what is known as anonymous FTP.

Anonymous FTP has a longer history than WWW. Before WWW browsers were available, special software for FTP such as Fetch and WinFTP was the only way to perform the anonymous FTP. However, the HTML has incorporated anonymous FTP in the URL specification. If you begin a URL with "ftp://" instead of "http://", the browser interprets what follows is the address of an anonymous FTP site and it automatically logs on anonymously. You will see a list of folders from the site. Find the one you want and double-click on the icon. It automatically starts downloading.

Files are usually encoded similarly to what happens to attachment. Browser automatically decode it for you most of the time. When you download computer programs such as Eudora for email, make sure you are downloading the program for the correct computer.

Site for Window
Site for Mac

Although FTP software is no longer necessary for anonymous FTP, it is still very useful when you create WWW pages. It will be discussed in the next section.

III. Basics in authoring WWW pages

In order for different browsers (e.g., NetScape and Internet Explorer) running on different computers to understand what to display on the screen, Web pages must be written in a common code that browsers can interpret correctly. That code is called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). Example 8.1 shows how a simple file written in HTML looks like.

The file which contains the same code is at http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/literacy/chapter8/SampleCode.html.

There are two main steps in creating a WWW page. First, you create and edit an HTML file on your machine. Then, you will send the file to your WWW server, which has a URL. The second process is called "uploading."

1. Creating a file in HTML

Due to constant improvements in HTML editors, creating and editing simple WWW pages have become as easy as creating documents in word processors. Newer versions of word processing software, in fact, provide an option of saving files in the HTML format. (See figure 8.2.) They can also open HTML files for subsequent editing. Thus, you can create functional WWW pages without knowing the meaning of HTML tags such as <BODY> , <CENTER>, <P>, <IMG SRC="ushioni.rgb.jpeg" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=520 WIDTH=360>. However, you will need more powerful HTML editors and a good understanding of HTML in order to create professional-looking WWW pages such as the ones with animation and interaction with the user. (It is beyond the scope of this tutorial.)

In this tutorial, we will use a feature called NetScape Composer which is a part of NetScape Communicator. The File-New-Blank Page, as shown in figure 8.3, will cause a new blank page to open. You are now in NetScape Composer. The menu bar now has different items, and a series of icons for different tools appear.

Although composing a page is fairy similar to what you do in word processor, there are a few noteworthy items.

The first ones are "Heading", "Paragraph Style", and "List" under Format Menu. (See Figure 8.4) They are essentially the same as style sheets you learned in Chapter 3. HTML uses preset style sheets for headings and other paragraph styles, so you should familiarize yourself with these items. Common styles can be accessed directly from the tool bar as shown in Figure 8.5.

The second one is "Link" under Insert menu. Linking is the heart of WWW. Link makes you to jump over to different sites. Make sure you learn how to use this feature, and it is easy. (See Figure 8.6.)

When you save a file, make sure the file name ends in either ".html" or ".htm" This is an important tag for a browser to recognize files in the HTML format.

NetScape Composer provides extensive help on these items. Make a good use of them.

Task 1: In the following, you will see five WWW sites which contain information about Kyoto, Japan. First, visit the sites and come up with a short description for each one of them. Create a page which begins with the title "<Your name>’s Home Page." Create a five-item numbered list with your short descriptions. Create links so that you can jump to these sites.

• http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/hellokcb/
• http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/restaurant/index.html
• http://www2.justnet.ne.jp/~kyoto2/index.htm
• http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/saikosha/English/index-E.html
• http://www.kyoto-np.co.jp/kp/index_e.html

Add these pictures for flare. (Click on the pictures with the right mouse (Windows) or hold down on the mouse button for a few seconds (Macintosh) for options to download pictures.)

A model answer is found at http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/literacy/files/ch08/KyotoInformation.html.

2. Uploading an HTML file to a server

Once you are done with composing an HTML file, you are ready to upload it to a server where you have been given some storage space and an access to. The storage space needs to be allocated by your computing center and the access means LOGON ID and a password just like your email account. The space will have an URL which allows people to look at what you have produced. If you do not have the storage space for WWW yet, contact your computing center or network administrator to receive one.

As was discussed in the previous section, the process of transferring files between computers is called FTP (File Transfer Protocol). When a file is transferred from your computer to a server, it is called "uploading." In your case, you need to upload an HTML file and place it in the storage space you have. There are different programs to accomplish this, but the basic steps are the same. In the following, a popular FTP program called "Fetch" is used for illustration.

Step 1. Run an FTP program, then establish a connection by typing in the name of the server, your LOGON ID, and the password.

Figure 8.9




 

Step 2. Go to the desired directory where you would like to place an HTML file. (In this example, the directory "Chapter 3" is the destination.


Figure 8.10






Step 3. The button "Put File" initiates uploading of a file. (The term "PUT" is used in all FTP programs.)

Step 4. The program will ask you to specify the name of the file and the format. Choose "Raw Data" as the format.

Figure 8.11




Step 5. When the transfer is finished, quit the program. The HTML file is now viewable to the world. Go to a browser, and type the correct URL. (Remember to use the slash for a subdirectory.)

This completes the illustration of WWW page authoring. For fancier pages, you will need a full-blown HTML editor such as Macromedia DreamWeaver, Adobe GoLive or Microsoft Front Page. NetScape Composer will do an adequate job for now.

Exercises for Chapter 8

1. Decide on particular themes of your target culture. Using search engines of WWW, find different sites on the theme in your target language. Compare the content and how things are treated in sites done by large official organizations (e.g., government, non-profit organizations) and in sites done by individuals and small interest groups. How are the same themes being treated? If you are to use them in your class, how would you use those sites?
   
   
2. Choose a key word for a search. Choose three different search engines and perform a search on each one. Compare the result. Describe how they differ in terms of search result, search options, and interface. Do you have a favorite one?
   
   
3. Browse through WWW while you add Bookmarks. Build at least dozen bookmarks. Organize your bookmarks and save it on a disk. Try it on different machines to see if you can use them.
   
   
4. Save a WWW page in two different options, namely TEXT and SOURCE. Open them in your browser as well as in your word processing software. Identify how they are different.
   
   
5. Go to an FTP site to download computer programs. Familiarize yourself to the format of an FTP site. How are the files organized? How do you navigate? Is decoding a problem?
   
   
6. Create a page to introduce yourself. It should include a photo, different types of heading, list, and links. Make sure to include your educational background, work experiences and current professional interests. You may include personal information such as hobbies, family, favorite food, etc.
   
   
7. Create a page which contains either one of the following: (1) cultural resources for your target language, (2) linguistic resources for your target language, (3) resources for your research interests. In each case, list at least five resources with a short description of each resource. Create the link to the resource page.
   
   
8. Another useful yet easy feature available in NetScape Composer is "Table." Choose Insert-Table menu to experiment with a table in your home page. You can use a table to jump to different sites.