Stamp Column Archives

Glassine Surfer August 2004

If you need to save an illustration to your PC, that's generally as simple as putting your cursor on the image and clicking the right mouse button. You can then select "Save Picture As..." and save it to your desktop or folder on your PC.

Set Your Homepage

Everytime you open your browser the first page it loads up is the "homepage." It's also the destination of the Home icon on the Standard Buttons toolbar.

To do it, or to change it, all you have to do is surf to the page you want as your homepage, whatever that may be. While that page is sitting in your browser, click Tools - Internet Options and under "Home page" click "Current."

It's a good idea to select a homepage for your browser that's useful to you. Generally speaking, you can choose any webpage or file on your PC as a homepage, even a picture, though that might not get you anywhere on the Web.

My own personal solution for a homepage was to make my own webpage on my PC that I've filled with the links that I always use. That might be more than you've bargained for, but if you have a web savvy friend, maybe your pal could make one for you with your favorites, etc.

Needless to say, it a website has a popup box that asks you if you'd like to make it your homepage, you should say no.

Searches and Directories

Since you're going to always be looking for things on the Web, it's a good idea to get familiar with directories and search engines.

The easiest way to find the best things on the web is to find a website where the webmaster has already collected the pages and sites in one place. Those are directories, and there are several with links of varying quality and quantity.

Engines

Search engines try to cover as much of the Web as possible, accessing so-called relevant search results through programming, rather than the lists of directories. Currently, Google is the pre-eminent search engine, though both Yahoo and MSN are re-tooling their search technologies to try and outdo Google.

It's here at places like Google that people really come to grips with the complexity and immensity of the Web. In Google, APS, as we know it, is actually the twelfth such site to represent a group with those initials. In Googleland it'd be better to type in "APS stamps."

Type "www.google.com" in the Address toolbar. On the Google homepage "Web" is the selected search. Type in something you like. Perhaps, "1869 Pictorials." Now, remember that the results you get will be listed from one to ten in the order that Google's programming selected them.

It seems that this order may not necessarily be in the actual order of what you'd consider useful or even relevant, but the "best" as viewed by the Google computer. And it doesn't collect stamps. But in this case, the first ten results pretty much hand you the best sources around for the 1869 Pictorials.

As you select from the list of Google's results remember to bookmark the site or two that strikes your fancy.

After a couple of days of wandering the Web, you'll have quite a few bookmarks in your Favorites, and if you click "Favorites" on the toolbar and then "Organize Favorites," you can put them in some sort of order by creating some folders, like "stamps," and moving all your philatelic sources into it.

Directories

Once long ago, directories were the very best at navigating the Web. Now, with tons of sites on every topic and fewer or the same number of directory editors, they're very good at certain areas and lacking in other areas of the Web.

The most useful large directories that cover many or all topics are: Yahoo and the ODP. Yahoo is www.yahoo.com and the Open Directory Project is www.dmoz.org. But there are two different philosophies here.

Yahoo is a business and, though sites used to be listed in the directory solely on some sort of merit, now they must pay for inclusion. The ODP is owned by AOL and run by volunteer editors. It's easier for a good site to get into the ODP, but it would be with the approval of the editor of that section of the directory, and sometimes there are other reasons why a site does or doesn't get included therein.

Typically, the best directories are single topic sites that you may well be aware of in your career and areas of interest. And hopefully, you'll find these single topic directories through a search engine or big directory. Be alert for sites that copy the ODP and style it to look like their own for advertising and marketing.

Random Facts

The Web is loaded with shorthand and acronyms, some of which you just may want to know. "HTML" is Hyper-Text Mark-up Language, which is the simple code used to display webpages in browsers, and "URL" is Universal Resource Locator, which is a browser command to find an internet server on the 'net. We call it the address, and popularly starts with "http://" though there are others.

Questions?

If you have a question about surfing, browsers, making connections, or anything related to matters mentioned above, post me and I'll try to answer it for you. Questions and answers are often a good way for everyone else to learn a thing or two, so we'll run some Q and A's here in the column.

Next Time

Next time around, I'll try to shed some light on online protection for your PC. Though it's a more technical topic, it's one that you have to know deal with whether you want to or not. Besides, it's really not that cumbersome, if you stick to the basics.

Glassine Surfer

The Glassine Surfer archive is online along with other stories, help, and links to stamp collecting sites. We also host the Sociable Stamp Society chats online on Sunday evenings at eight o’clock eastern. Just click on “chat.”

The Glassine Surfer
http://www.glassinesurfer.com

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