Help with using the tutorial

It is advisable to work through the material sequentially although it is also possible to pick and choose via the Table of Contents (to the left of your screen). However, the internal structure is mainly linear and you are advised to work through from the beginning to the end of each section using the Next link provided at the bottom of the page except when advised otherwise.

You occasionally may be offered the chance to select a mini-tutorial: if you choose one of these mini-tutorials you can use either the Next or Previous links to return into the main flow of the course material.

The methods

Internet Detective is an interactive course, offering a variety of learning methods, including tutorials, exercises, worked examples and quizzes.

Testing yourself

You will be able to test your knowledge as you go through and then be given corresponding feedback. As you undertake the tests, your score will be recorded and your progressive total maintained until you have completed the course.

TONIC requirements

Internet Detective uses the TONIC system (developed by Netskills). This requires that you have a browser that is both cookies and frames capable. Most graphical browsers available today have this functionality - however, we recommend that you use Netscape version 2 onwards and Internet Explorer version 3 onwards to be able to fully utilise the tutorial functions.

More on frames

Frames enable Web page designers to split their clients' browser windows into multiple, independently scrollable panels, with separate documents in each panel. Additionally, frame extensions also make it possible to launch multiple browser windows and to control the contents of each window through hyperlinks set in other windows.

Internet Detective uses frames to provide a Table of Contents to help you navigate through the tutorial.

Please note that frames have been removed in the offline version of the Internet Detective

More on cookies

Cookies are a general mechanism which server side connections (such as CGI scripts) can use to both store and retrieve information on the client side of the connection. The addition of a simple, persistent, client-side state significantly extends the capabilities of Web-based client/server applications

In human terms this means that Webservers now have (and have had for a long time) the ability to customize a Website on a person by person basis. A much better way to do this is for each browser to keep their own preferences. That's what cookies do.

Web browsers set aside a small amount of space on your hard drive to keep these preferences, then every time you visit a Website your browser checks to see if you have any predefined preferences (cookie) for that server. If you do it sends the cookie to the server along with the request for a Web page.

If you're worried about us using cookies on your machine - please don't be. Ours is a session cookie (meaning that it goes away when you close your browser) and is essentially used to hold information about what pages you have seen in the course and which particular course you are taking. You will be able to come back to the tutorial at the place you left in your previous session (select the Home button to return to the start of the tutorial).

If you are receiving 'cookie warnings' from your browser you can switch these off in Netscape by:

1. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
2. Select the Advanced category.
3. Select the Accept all cookies item.

Please note that cookies have been removed in the offline version of the Internet Detective

Automatically loading images

You will need to have images turned on to get the most from the tutorial. To turn on automatic image loading from Netscape Navigator:

1. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
2. Select the Advanced category.
3. Select the Automatically load images item. When this checkbox is unselected, the images in pages are replaced by small icons.

These small replacement icons are sometimes accompanied by alternative text, also called ALT text. ALT text is shown only as a substitution when an image is not loaded.