How to enter a website address

To many people, entering a web address to connect to a website has become second nature. However, the rise of specialist sites that hunt down web pages, called search engines, have muddied the waters a little. Put simply, entering a full website address into a search engine is like calling directory enquiries for a phone number you already have. So, this Workshop will explain exactly what to do and what not to do with such addresses, also known by the rather more geeky term ‘URLs’. Begin by launching your web browser, which for most people will mean Internet Explorer. In Windows XP, this is found in the All Programs menu from the Start button.

Now, here’s the important bit: web addresses must be typed in to the web browser’s Address bar. In our screenshot this is the white bar directly below the mouse pointer: it currently says ‘about: blank’. In Internet Explorer 6 there is a label to the left that actually reads ‘Address’, though this has been removed in Internet Explorer 7 – the latest version of the web browser. To type a web address here, just click anywhere in the Address bar area with the left button on your mouse. When you do this, a text-entry cursor will appear: just type in the web address. When you’ve typed the full address, hit the Enter key on your keyboard or click the green right-pointing arrow labelled ‘Go’ on the far right-hand side of the Address bar. That is the essence of entering web addresses. However, we’re aware that some people find other causes of confusions – so we’ll cover those next.

The first thing to note is that not all web browsers will look exactly like the Internet Explorer 6 screenshots in the previous step. For example, depending on where and from whom you bought your computer, the first page you see when launching the web browser may look entirely different. The screenshot here is a typical example of how a web browser may appear when launched on a brand-new PC. It looks utterly different to the clean screenshot seen in step two – so what’s going on here? And, more to the point, where should web addresses be entered in order to access a website?

The first thing to know is that this is Internet Explorer 7, which looks different to the previous version. The PC manufacturer has also decided to make this web browser automatically display the home page of MSN (a Microsoft website) as soon as it is launched. MSN has a white bar in the middle, which looks similar to the Address bar previously described. The PC manufacturer has also installed the Google Toolbar, so there is yet another white bar at the top of the browser window. But to return to the pertinent question: where should web addresses be entered in a situation like this?

The answer is the same as before – web addresses should always be typed in to the Address bar. However, with so much going on in a browser window like this it can be easy to overlook that fact, especially if you don’t know too much about computers. For example, if we type www.computeractive.co.uk/2193150 into the white bar next to the green Search Web button and hit Enter, a page will be displayed saying nothing has been found. That might make you think that our published web link is incorrect.

But our link is correct. What went wrong is the web address had been typed into MSN’s web-search system (in this example), and this search service can’t find our page. That is the search website’s failing. Move to the Address bar, at the top of the browser window, type in the same website address here and all will be well. There’s nothing wrong with search sites like Google but they are the wrong place to access published web addresses. If you try to access a published web address, do so from the web browser’s Address bar.

So far we have looked at Internet Explorer 6 and 7. While these are the most commonly used browsers, a significant number of people use the open source alternative, Firefox. In this browser the area we are interested in is called the Location Bar. It is to be found in much the same part of the browser window as is the case for Internet Explorer, as seen in this image. The respective Address and Location Bars in Internet Explorer and Firefox work on exactly the same principle. Remember that you can still use the Search windows on websites such as Google, MSN or Ask to look up general terms and topics, but if you have a direct website address starting with 'http' or 'www', use the Address or Location Bar.