The Browse Activity is used for browsing the World Wide Web (Internet). If you are familiar with Web Browsers then the Browse Activity is exactly that.

To use the Browse Activity, you must be connected to the internet. If you happen to accidentally open the Browse Activity before connecting to the internet the screen above will still appear, but you will not be able to browse until your connection is established. 

The World Wide Web, also called just 'the web', is a collection of computers around the world that are connected together. The computers are connected in a way that enables them to communicate with each other. This opens up interesting possiblities for sharing information - which is exactly what the web does best.

Using Browsers we can 'browse' the information stored on these other computers and this information is displayed as 'web pages'. With Sugar we use the Browse Activity to look at web pages from around the world.

from: http://en.flossmanuals.net/Browse/StartingBrowse

You can start the Browse Activity from the Home View or the List View. With luck you will see the Browse icon on the Desktop :

You just need to start the Browse Activity by clicking on the globe shown above.

If you do not see the Browse Activity icon on the Home View then you will have to open it from the List View. To do this you need to first be in the Home View and click on the List View icon :

Clicking on this will display the list of Activities available to you. It is a long list and you can scroll down until you see the Browse Activity icon :

You can now either click on the icon and the Browse Activity will start OR you can add the Activity to your favourites. If you add the Activity to your favourites it will display in the Home View. To do this click on the star next to its name. This will change the color of the star. Next you must return to the Home View by clicking its icon at the top right of the List View:

This will return you to the Home View and then you can open the Browse Activity as explained above.

To visit web pages you need to first open the Browse Activity.

At the top of the Browse Activity you will see this :

This is the Location Bar and it is here you type the location of the web page you wish to view. The location of a web page is also known as the URL or Uniform Resource Locator. Every page on the web has a unique URL. You need to know the URL before you can visit a specific web page. For example if I wanted to visit the Wikipedia web page I would need to know that its URL is :

http://www.wikipedia.org

If I am connected to the internet and I enter this URL into the Location Bar and press Enter then I would see this :

You can then move your cursor over the page and try clicking on different parts. If you click on a part of the page that takes you to another webpage that means you found a hyperlink (or just 'link' for short). Links connect web pages together so you don't have to keep typing the URL of associated web pages in the Location Bar.

Before you spend hours clicking on every part of the page searching for links, it might be quicker to know how links can be identified. While it is true that any part of a web page can be a link, most of the time they are easily identified. Many text links are underlined or colored differently from the rest of the text on the page. In the Wikipedia example above, if I click on the large "English" text at the top I find I am taken to another web page. In this case I am taken to the English version of Wikipedia which looks like this :

I can then keep clicking on links and going from web page to web page, this is typically called 'browsing the web'.

While sometimes you can tell if text is a link it is also true that some images are links. There is one easy trick for telling if part of a web page is a link and that is to simply move the cursor over that part of the page. If the text or image is a link the cursor will change from an arrow to a hand :

from: http://en.flossmanuals.net/Browse/Bookmarks

If you have a favourite web page and you would like to revisit it many times, then it isn't fun typing in the URL of the webpage everytime. The Browse Activity can store URLs for you - each URL you store is called a bookmark and they will stay stored even if you switch the computer off. 

To make a bookmark first visit a web page in the Browse Activity. I will visit the Sugar Labs website(http://www.sugarlabs.org/go/Main_Page)  :

Now I want to save a reference to this webpage so I can easily visit it later. I do this by clicking on the star next to the Location Bar. When I do this a small colored square will be added to the bottom of the Browse Activity and it has a picture of the web site in it.

I can store as many bookmarks as I like. Then when I wish to visit a bookmarked web page I click on the associated square at the bottom.

If you have opened a web page and the text is too small to read you can make it bigger. I will use the Wikipedia webpage as an example. If I look at Wikipedia in the Browse Activity it looks something like this :

I can now enlarge the text by first clicking on the View tab at the top of the page (below the Location Bar) :

At the top left are some icons that look like magnifying glasses :

If you click on the magnifying glass on the left the text on the webpage will get smaller. If you click on the one on the right the text gets bigger. You can click as many times as you want until the text is the size you desire. If I click several times on the enlarging magnifying glass my Wikipedia text gets very big :

Full Screen

We can also force the Browse Activity to use more of the screen when displaying web pages. To do this press the Full Screen icon at the top of the View Tab (next to the magnifying glasses) :

The web page will now take up all of your display. To return to the 'normal' view you need to click on the same icon as it appears at the top right of the web page :

It is possible to collaborate with others by using the Browse Activity. You do this through sharing bookmarks.

To share a bookmark with others in your Neighbourhood View you must have already stored some bookmarks within your Browse Activity. If you have done this then visit the Activity tab at the top right of the Browse Activity :

You will now see a area next to the text "Sharing" - you click on this and choose "My Neighborhood" :

Now all those in your Neighborhood can access your bookmarks.

The Art in All of Us has a quiz you can try with the Browse Activity. Visit the following web page :http://artinallofus.org/artimages/admin/plugins/quiz_eng/quiz.php

You can click on the answer you think is correct. The quiz will tell you if you are right or wrong and ask you another question.

There are many games you can play using the Browser Activity. You can visit web pages like PBS Kids and play many free games. Open http://pbskids.org/games/ in Browse :

You can select to play any of the games available. However you may sometimes see something like this :

If you see this or a simlar request with "Flash Click to play? [X]" then click on the "[X] and the animation in that square will begin.

The XO does not ship with Flash, but instead with a similar free, open-source software program called Gnash. If you experience difficulty running games that require Flash, you may need to install it. For the reasons behind this decision by OLPC, please read:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Gnash

You can also find detailed directions for installing a free download of Flash on your XO at this page on our wiki:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Adobe_Flash 

If you want to find something on the web it is best to use a 'search engine'. One of the most popular search engines is Google. To use Google open the following URL in the Browse Activity :

http://www.google.com

Now enter the terms of what you want to search for into the long 'text box' in the middle of the page. You can enter as many relevant terms as you wish. Then press "Google Search" and you will see a page of links to web pages that are related to your search. Click on any of the links and the Browse Activity will take you to that web page.

Until recent years encyclopedias were a large, very expensive, set of books. However, you can now access very good information about just about anything you can think of through Wikipedia. It's fast to access (if you have an internet connection) and it's free!

You can access this free encyclopedia through the Browse Activity. Enter the following URL into the Location Bar and press Enter : http://www.wikipedia.org

Now click on the language that you understand from the list provided. I will click on the "English" link :

Now you have the 'home page' of the Wikipedia English site open. To search for something we just need to type what we are looking for into the text box where it says 'search' :

When you have entered the terms you are looking for press 'Search' and you will be taken to a list of links from which you can choose or directly to a page refering to your search. These pages are the Wikipedia pages for that subject.

Wikipedia is the worlds largest free encyclopedia. It is also open for anyone to contribute - this means that you can directly change Wikipedia pages and contribute to the worlds largest free knowledge resource! All this can be done using the Browse Activity.

Lets look at an example. I will open the English Wikipedia page on bicycles(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycles  ) :

We can read this page and learn all about bicycles but we can also add our own information to the page for others to read and benefit. To do this we simply click on the 'edit this page' link :

Now the look of the page will change :

The box you see with all the text actually contains the same text as you saw before except that you can now change it. You do this by simply typing in the box and adding, moving, or deleting text. You can add any information you think would be a good addition. When you are finished you need to click on the outside of the box and use the down-arrow on the keyboard to scroll down to the "Save page" button.

Press the "Save page" button - your additions will be saved and you will have made your first contribution to the worlds largest free encylopedia!

You will probably want to  use email to communicate with friends and family with your XO. First, you will need to set up an email account. Most internet service providers (ISPs) give you several email accounts with your service. Call and ask them how to use it if you haven't already done so.

There are other email services you can use, free of charge. You simply go to their web site and sign up. You will be asked to create your email name and a password. The password should include a mix of letters and digits and be easy for you to remember.  

You will probably find that, just like "snail mail" (the regular paper kind) you sometimes get email that is advertising or what is called "spam" or "junk mail." Most e-mail services do their best to screen these out. In fact, it is a good idea to check your junk mail folder once in a while to see if something you really want got filtered out by mistake.

Two popular free email services you might want to try are Hotmail athttp://get.live.com/mail/overview

and Gmail at http://mail.google.com/mail/help/open.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bk&utm_medium=ha&pc=habk&utm_term=g%20mail