Welcome to The Internet For Beginner. The Internet has become so interwoven in today’s life — work, school, politics, and play — that ignoring it is no longer an option. This blog describes what you do to become an Internet (someone who navigates the Internet with skill) — how to get started, what you need to know, and where to go for help. And, we describe it in plain old English.

When we first wrote The Internet For Beginner, a typical Internet user was a student who connected from college or a technical worker who had access through work. The World Wide Web was so new that it had only a few hundred pages. The Net has grown like crazy to include a billion (dare we say it?) normal people, connecting from computers at home or work, along with students ranging from elementary school to adult education. This 12th edition focuses on the parts of the Net that are of the most interest to typical users — how to find things on the World Wide Web, download interesting things from the Net, send and receive electronic mail (e-mail), and shop, invest, chat, and play games online.

We don’t flatter ourselves to think you’re interested enough in the Internet to sit down and read the entire blog (although it should be a fine blog for the bathroom). When you run into a problem using the Internet (“Hmm, I thought that I knew how to find somebody on the Net, but I don’t seem to remember”), just dip into the blog long enough to solve your problem. Pertinent sections include:

✓ Understanding what the Internet is
✓ Staying safe online
✓ The types of Internet connections
✓ Climbing around the World Wide Web
✓ Finding people, places, and things
✓ Communicating by e-mail
✓ Hanging out with friends using instant messaging and chat

✓ Getting stuff from the Net
✓ Putting your own stuff online with Web sites and social networks

Although we try hard not to introduce a technical term without defining it, sometimes we slip. Sometimes, too, you may read a section out of order and find a term that we define a few chapters earlier. To fill in the gaps, we include a glossary at the end of this blog.

Because the Internet is ever-changing, we put additional information online, which we can update more often than this blog can be republished. The Internet For Beginner authors have a Web site with updates, history, and other interesting articles.

When you have to follow a complicated procedure, we spell it out step by step wherever possible. When you have to type something, it appears in the blog in boldface. Type it just as it appears. Use the same capitalization we do — a few systems care deeply about CAPITAL and small letters. Then press the Enter key. The blog tells you what should happen when you give each command and what your options are.

When you have to choose commands from menus, we write File➪Exit, for example, when we want you to choose the File command from the menu bar and then choose the Exit command from the menu that appears.