The Web pages that we see from the Internet are text files that are stored on a Web server. We use a Web browser (ex. Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, etc.), which acts as an interpreter, to translate these text files into what is seen on our computer screen.

If we want to see the text file without the Web browser processing the instructions, all we need to do is:

1. Left click "view" at the top of the page to open a menu box
2. Left click "source" on the menu box that you just opened

This brings up a text editor with the Web page's text file. We can save this text file with a .txt extension to the hard drive if we want . Then we can open the text file with the text editor to view it any time that we'd like since it's stored on our computer now.

If we want the Web browser to process the instructions of the text file, then we save the text file with a .html (or .htm) extension instead of a .txt extension. Then open the .html file with the Web browser to process the instructions and display it on the screen. Of course, if the instructions say to display a picture on the page, we need to have the picture available for the Web browser to find it.

We can also use the Web browser to translate our own text files stored on our hard drive. Or we can copy a Web page text file from the Internet, change some of the instructions (called "hacking"), save it with a .html extension and process it with our Web browser.