Downloading From the Web

Downloading Files from the Web

Genealogical Society of Okeechobee


GETTING FILES FROM THE WEB

In computer parlance, the process of getting information from a remote computer onto your home PC is called Downloading, and the process of getting information from your computer to a remote one is called Uploading.

Getting Information You Find on the Web:

Okay, you've been surfing the web and you find a distant cousin who has great information about your family. How do you get it back to your computer? There are a number of ways, three of which are:
Block, Cut and Paste
Saving to Disk
Asking for E-mail.

Block, Cut, Paste

– To get the information, simply place your cursor on the screen just before the part of the document you want to copy. Hold down the left button with your index finger and move the cursor slowly right and down until the entire text you want to copy has been highlighted (blocked). Release the left button and move cursor to the Task Bar at top of screen. Click on Edit and then on Copy. (This will place the text into a place on your computer called the Clipboard.)

Now, open up any word processor. (For Windows 95-98 users, you have two word processors built in: Click on Start, Programs, Accessories and either Notepad or Wordpad.)

When the word processor is on the screen, click on Edit and then Paste. The text will be copied onto the screen. You can then work with the text like any other copy. You can go back and copy more text if you want. Simply minimize the word processor (click on the - in the upper right hand corner of the screen) and return to the web. Repeat the above.

Saving to Disk

– You can also save the entire file to disk (usually). When the page you want to save is on the screen, go to the Task Bar at the top of the screen and click on File, Save As. Then you can specify the location (Directory) you want the file stored, and you can change the name of the file if you wish.

This file will be in html (Hypertext Markup Language) format. To use it, you must delete all the html coding (words between <>). Several programs, like HTML Assistant and WordPerfect 8, have filtering commands which can do just that.

If you find a photo you'd like to save (such as the photo of an ancestor), place your cursor over the photo and click the right button. A "box" will appear on the screen. Click on Save Picture As. Again, you can specify directory and name of the file.

Asking for E-mail

– A third way of getting the information is to ask the author of the webpage for e-mail copies. Most pages include a way to e-mail the author, usually simply by clicking an URL (Uniform Resource Locator, which is the address for anything on the web: a web address will begin with http:// and an e-mail address will be of the form: [email protected] (my address). The addressee's name or code-word goes before the @ and the address of the service provider is shown afterword.

When you receive files, they will either be as attachments or included in message. Attachments are files you can work with like you work with any file. If the information is in the message, you can work with it by using Block, Copy, Paste as above.


To add information to this website, contact Eve Olson

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