Lab 2
Part 5

Downloading files and programs

Saving web pages

You will often come across pages, images, sounds and other files on the Web which you would like to use on your own computer or Web pages. Perhaps one of the easiest things to download is an HTML page:

1. Find a quick-loading web page you would like to download
2. Choose "Save As" from the File Menu
3. Save the file to the Desktop

The web page you just saved now exists on your hard drive as well as the computer where you originally located it. If you choose, you can open it locally (open the copy on your computer) by choosing "Open File" from the File Menu and locating it. While it will load much more quickly that way, understand that it is no longer the same page as the one from which it was copied. If updates are made to the original, they will not appear on your copy.

Downloading images

Images are probably the most frequently downloaded files on the Web. In your explorations you may notice that two or more web sites may have the same buttons and graphics. This is because web authors often "steal" what they like from other pages to include on their own.

Find an image you like and download it by right-clicking on it and choosing "Save Image As..."

Be careful not to download images which aren't explicitly made available for download. While copyright laws allow what is called "fair use" for personal use, home pages are public. You may be violating a copyright and can get in trouble if you use other people's logos and artwork.

Downloading sounds

Not many sites include sounds because there are not yet too many feasible ways to integrate them well into web pages. Many times, unsolicited sounds annoy the user, who also won't take the time to follow a sound link. Nonetheless, you should be able to find plenty of sound sites in a Web Search.

Find a link to a sound file and download it by right-clicking on the link and choosing "Save Link As".

Note: In order to listen to sounds on the computers in this lab, you must bring headphones. This week, we would just like you to download the sound file to learn how it is done. If you are interested in adding sound to your web pages or actually listening to the sounds you have downloaded, you may want to bring your own headphones next week. Later in the course, there will be a complete lab on Sound Processing and Multimedia.

As with images, be careful not to infringe on copyrights when browsing the web for sound files.

Downloading programs

Aside from images and sounds to use on their web pages, Web users often want to download programs to run on their own computers. To accomplish this, they often must download large files, uncompress them, and then install them on their computers.

In another browser window, visit the site http://www.download.com

These pages hold links to thousands of programs, ranging from large professional products like Netscape to small games and screen savers. For security reasons, CIT does not allow users to install programs on the machines in the lab. However, if you own a computer, you may wish to download programs to it for your own use.