Saving your "Stuff"
You can save a wide variety of materials from the Internet and other sources on your computer. The problem sometimes is finding it again. The computer knows where in the dark recesses of it's hard drive where it stored it, but without going to a search of the hard drive (that's another lesson), you may never find it. The file folder that we created on the desktop on the last page is a good way to store your "stuff". Remember this, from this point on, the term "data" will now be used instead of "stuff". OK, now we are computer literate! Let's start by saving a photo from the Internet to our computer.
We will start by going to the web page http://www.angelfire.com/in/shideler/photo.html
I have directed you to a web page where the photos belong to me, so there are no copyright infringement problems. After you learn how to do this, you are on your own! Find a photo on one of the pages to save. Right click on the photo (right clicking on an item brings up a menu of options). From the pop-up menu, select save picture as. At the top of the next window save in will appear next to an area that you can enter where you want the photo (data), to be stored. Click on the arrow next to the window, go to desktop and click on it. A new list of selections will appear. Find the folder that you created on page four of this site and click on it. Click on the folder name (My Stuff ?), and then select open. At the bottom of this window, there will be a space where the computer has already named the photo. If you want a different name, highlight the name and type in a new one. Now click (select) save.
You have now saved the photo from the Internet to a file folder on your computer or, in techno-geek, you have "downloaded a file". If it worked, congratulations! If it didn't, try again, computing is many time trial and error (that's why children are so good on computers while the more conservative adults sometimes flounder). Some items on a web site may be protected and will not allow you to download them, again, trial and error. Saving an entire web page can sometimes be tricky, usually you only need to save certain items on a page for reference anyway.
The same principle above will also allow you to place a word processor document in your folder. On page one of this site, we told you how to copy text from the Internet and paste it into a Wordpad or Notepad document. To save it in your folder, select file from the menu bar at the top of your screen, then select save as. The procedure is the same as when you saved your photo above.
Congratulations, you have achieved yet another step in achieving full geek status. Oh yeah, from now on we will refer to "stuff" as "data".