The Internet is a very large resource of machines connected together, exchanging information, all the way across the world, and is often given the colloquial name of the "World Wide Web" or just "Web".

The Internet consists in bulk of "sites", specific areas within the vast resource of data, which pertain to a single topic - Open Site is one example of a single resource, being an encyclopedia.

To access these resources, a program called a "browser" will be required. This often refers to a program called Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Netscape Navigator.

Because the Internet is such a large resource, it is unlikely you will know precisely the item you are looking for, hence you will need to look for it. As a result, two general branches of aid have started up - web directories and search engines. The former gives you links to sites, broken down into subjects. The Open Directory project (also, the "Mozilla Directory") is one example - found at dmoz.org or at directory.mozilla.org

The other type, search engines, work by searching through a large database of sites, looking for pages which seem to be relevant to the key words you tell it to work for. The most famous of these is Yahoo! ( www.yahoo.com )