Basics

Learn the basics of the internet Here are some of the basic things that you need to know about the internet.

• Things Newbies Need To Know What does someone new to the internet need to know? Here is a list of some of the important things.
• Downloading You need to know how to download so that you can take advantage of he tremendous number of files available from the internet.
• Use FTP to upload and download files FTP (File Transfer Protocol) allows you to download and upload files quickly across the internet.
• Internet Speeds Explained What are all these bits and bytes and things?
• URLs give names to web pages and documents A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator which allows web pages to locate one another throughout the world.
• Basic Web Terms Here are some basic terms you will run across on the web. These include page views, hits, unique visitors and impressions.

Browsers

Some of the browsers that are available There are several good browsers available. Here's a description of each of them.

• History Of Browsers The first real web browser was Mosaic and it was released in 1993. Netscape soon followed, and Internet Explorer came even later.
• America Online America Online is great for entertainment and chatting, truly awful for web browsing or doing anything significant on the internet.
  • Review Of America Online I began my net adventures with AOL, but reached the point where it was no longer necessary. My kid cried when I disconnected it, so it soon returned.
• Internet Explorer 5.0 is arguably the best browser available Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0 is the best browser available. It's fast and efficient and supports virtually everything available on the web.
  • Security problems with Internet Explorer Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0 must be configured properly to be safe while browsing.
    • Disable ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting You must disable the 'Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting' setting for Internet Explorer. Here's how to do it.
    • Setting Internet Security Zones in Internet Explorer It's important to modify your internet security zone in Internet Explorer to ensure your browsing is safe.
    • Setting Restricted Sites in Internet Explorer A great way to ensure your security is to take advantage of the 'restricted sites' options in Internet Explorer.
    • Setting trusted Sites in Internet Explorer A great way to ensure your security is to take advantage of the 'trusted sites' options in Internet Explorer.
  • Keyboard shortcuts in Internet Explorer 5 Here is a short list of some of the shortcuts in Internet Explorer 5.
• Neoplanet Neoplanet is a very cool add-on to Internet Explorer which lets you customize your browser
• Netscape Netscape is a decent browser, but it's been steadily loosing in the browser wars.
• Opera Opera is a small, reliable, fast browser
• Browser Helper Objects Is your system crashing? Perhaps you've unknowingly done what I did - added a Browser Helper Object.
• Browser Tips Here are some tips to help you with Internet Explorer 5. You can set the home page and many other things.
  • Browser Tips - Browse with images turned off You can turn off images, which makes your browsing faster. Of course, this is not useful if the site does not have ALT tags defined on images.
  • Browser Tips - Setting your start page Want your browser to start up on a specific page? It's easy to do.
  • Browser Tips - Changing Your Default Font Don't like the font that you see in pages by default? You can change that easily.
  • Browser Tips - Changing buttons on the links bar You can change the buttons on the links bar just by dragging links to it.
  • Browser Tips - Print a List of Links in IE5 Want to know what links are embedded in a page? IE5 gives you a way to print a list
  • Browser Tips - Retrieve the PDF files Want to get a PDF file that you previously looked at in your browser? It's easy to do.
  • Browser Tips - Turn on or off Autocomplete Autocomplete can be very useful or totally annoying. If you find it annoying you can just turn it off.
  • Browser Tips - Export Your Favorites If you are changing computers or you just want to perform a backup, you can export your browser favorite list.
  • Browser Tips - Turning Off JavaScript Want to surf without JavaScript junk driving you crazy? Here's how to turn it off.
  • Browser Tips - Changing Default Browser Need to set a browser as the default? Here's how you do it.
  • Browser Tips - Clearing Your Browser Cache Sometimes it is useful to clear out your browser cache. This can save disk space or delete unwanted files
• Browser Parameters Your browser actually informs the HTML page and web server quite a bit of information. Here is some of it.

Chatting

Chatting Chatting is a great way to socialize on the web. 

• Instant Messaging There has been a lot of talk about instant messaging. Why does anyone really care?
• America Online Instant Messenger AOL instant messenger is a great, simple to use chat package.
• ICQ The most full-featured chat client is ICQ. You can literally do almost anything with this software.
  • ICQ Skins ICQ has a really cool feature in that you can add skins which let you customize the look of your chat engine.
  • ICQ Sound Schemes You can change the sound schemes in ICQ easily. This lets you change one sound or all of them at once.
  • ICQ Tips Here are some tips to help you with ICQ.
• IRC is the most full featured chat client IRC is another way to chat with your friends.
• MSN Messenger I have found the MSN Messenger program is by far the easiest to use of it's class.
  • MSN Messenger - Smiley's and emoticons MSN Messenger has a great feature - you can include graphic representations of emoticons (smiley's) to your messages.
  • MSN Messenger - Disabling Messenger Did you get Windows XP and now cannot figure out how to uninstall Microsoft Messenger? Here's how at least stop it from bugging you.

Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery If you manage a computer facility, then you must understand there will be disasters. Be ready for them.

• Laying The Groundwork Before you can do anything to prepare for a disaster, it's a good idea to look around, see what's there and collect your thoughts.
• Convincing The Boss Before you can do anything to prepare for a disaster, it's a good idea to look around, see what's there and collect your thoughts.
• Getting Started You begin a disaster recovery project with analysis, design and a lot of help.
• A Case Study Our first attempt at creating a disaster site was a disaster. We then redid the whole project. This time, however, we learned from our mistakes and did it correctly.
• Checklist for Disaster Recovery There are many things you need to think about BEFORE a disaster occurs to make it possible to recover quickly if the worst happens.
• Examples Want some examples of disaster recovery scenarios? Here they are.
• Types of Disaster Recovery There are levels of disaster recovery: from nothing at all, to backups to a fully ready hot site.
• How To Protect Your Power I learned the hard way that it's important to give your computer clean, steady power.

FTP

FTP You can use FTP to copy files to and from your web site. It's a good, efficient tool.

• FTP Commands This is a list of some of the FTP commands which are available from the command prompt.
• Anonymous FTP Need to find some files to download from the web? Chances are you will find them on an FTP site.
• FTP- How Does It Work? Here is how FTP works and why it's more efficient than web browsing for large file transfers.

Graphics

Graphics Graphics is very important, generally not very well understood, and often the mot difficult part of creating a web site.

• Clipart There are many places on the web to get great clipart, and there are many packages available to service every desire and need.
• Colors Your colors are important, and it's critical to know how the different browsers handle color.
• Fonts Fonts are important. A good choice of fonts makes your web site look great, and a bad choice makes it unusable.
  • What About Fonts? There are several things to know about fonts in order to use them correctly: fixed vs variable, serif or sans-serif, and kerning.
• Graphics Formats Use your intelligence to choose the correct graphics format for your web pages. You can use GIF, JPEG or the up-and-coming PNG formats.
  • Graphics Formats - BMP The BMP format is the most basic graphics format. It is also the most inefficient.
  • Graphics Formats - GIF The GIF format is an excellent format for many types of graphics.
  • Graphics Formats - Animated GIFs Use animated GIFs to create moving images on your web site. Just remember not to overdo it.
  • Graphics Formats - JPG JPG is best for images with gradients, blends and inconsistent color variants. It is very efficient but parts of the image are lost by the compression scheme.
  • Graphics Formats - PNG The PNG format is a newer, better format than GIF. It may soon be the dominant format on the internet.
• Graphics Utilities Here are some utilities that will help you use and design web graphics.
  • Graphics Editors In this section I've described some graphics editors which you might find useful.
    • Paint Shop Pro Paint Shop Pro is a great graphics editor.
      • Paint Shop Pro Picture Tubes Paint Shop Pro has the ability to use a cool feature called Picture Tubes. This makes creating unique graphics incredibly simple.
  • Animation Utilities If you need to edit or create animation for your web pages, here are some utilities that may help.
  • Graphics Optimization Graphics optimization is an important part of creating and maintaining your web site. You can increase the odds that your visitors don't hit the back key by reducing load times.
  • Cool Tools Want some cool graphics utilities? Here is the place to find them!
    • Cool Tools - Omatic This service allows you to create graphic ribbons (and other things) for your web site.
• Graphics Plug-Ins There are many plug-ins available which will make your pages look great, but may annoy your visitors.

Home Pages

Homepages You should consider creating a home page. It's fun, simple and rewarding in many ways. You can create a personal site about your hobbies, books, religion, photo album or whatever else you want.

• Free Host Reviews Here are reviews of some of the free hosts that are available.
• Paid Host Reviews This is a list of hosts which have a large variety of services for a small fee.
  • Paid Host Reviews - Hostrocket Want a bad hosting company? Like downtime, ignored trouble tickets and support people who make continual errors - try Hostrocket.
  • Paid Host Reviews - Site5 Want to go with a hosting company with lots of features without spending a fortune? Give Site5 a chance.
• Web Host Tips Looking for a hosting company? Here are some tips to help you out.
  • Choosing A Web Host Are you trying to find a good web host? Here are some helpful hints to make it go a little better.
• Backup Your Site Maintaining a web site? You'd better make a backup if you haven't already. You never know what could happen to your host or your hosts computers.
• Empower Your Site- Pay Your Host Put your site on a free host and you are just a small fish in a large tank. Put it on a paid host and you start to become a professional.
  • What Makes For A Good Host? Looking for a web host? Here are some attributes that you should be looking for.
  • Moving to a New Host I have now changed hosts three times. This article lists some of the issues that I had to address.
  • What Makes For A Bad Host? Bad hosts are like smelly, rotten garbage. They serve no purpose but to stink up the place. Sometimes, however, even the worst garbage starts out as the best food...
  • Web Host Ethics In these days of impending recession and failed dot coms, it is a good idea for web hosting companies to understand who their customers are, and to treat them right.
  • Some Advice On Bandwidth How much bandwidth is enough? My advice is to purchase as much as you can afford.
• Dedicated Servers Is your site getting a huge amount of traffic? Do you need lots of disk space? Hosting a bizillion sites? Then perhaps you need a dedicated server.
• Set Up Your Own Newsfeed Want to set up an automatic newsfeed from your site to hundreds (or even thousands) of others? Here's how you do it.

Multimedia

Multimedia You have lots of multimedia choices available, including video, sound, powerpoint and graphics.

• How to include Multimedia Files This is how you include a multimedia file in your document.
  • You can use the EMBED tag to add multimedia A simple way to add multimedia to your web site is to use the built-in HTML tag called EMBED
• Here's how to do sound in an HTML document Want to know how to add sound to your document? Here are some tips.
  • Using Sound In A Web Site Want to include sound on your web site? Here are some good ideas.
  • MIDI files MIDI files are a great way to add sound to your web pages.
  • WAV Files WAV files allow you to quickly create sound files and add them to your web site.
  • Real audio Real audio allows you to create very highly compressed sound files.
  • Background Sound You can put background sound in your website, but think twice about it as it can chase away visitors fast.
  • Crescendo Crescendo is a plug in which will allow you to have sound on your web site.
  • Sound Utilities Here are some great utilities to help you with your sound.
    • Winamp Winamp is one of the great sound players!
    • Windows Media Player CD Copying Windows media player can copy CDs, and can copy protect that which it copies.
• Here's an overview of video Want to add video? Here's how.
  • AVI Video format
  • MPEG video format
  • Quicktime Video format The Quicktime video format is produced by Apple, works on Windows and Macintosh platforms and has a very clean and easy install.
  • Real video format The Real audio/video format is very popular and produces extremely compressed video (and sound). However, it does require a very commercial plugin.
  • Video Codecs A major issue with uncompressed audio and video files is they take up huge amounts of space. In fact, uncompressed multimedia files are generally much too large for most systems and for most download speeds.
    • More About Codecs Ever get a strange error when you try and play a video on your PC? Perhaps you need a codec ...
    • I.263 Codec 
• Here's how to use VRML How to add VRML to your web site

Newsgroups

Newsgroups Newsgroups are a great way to communicate with a large group about various subjects.

• Newsgroup Browsers There are several browsers available with a very wide variety of features. Choose the one that's best for you.
• Newsgroups - Cancelbots When a newsgroup administrator wants to delete a spam or flame newsgroup posting, he will send out a cancelbot.
• Newsgroup Prefixes The names of the newsgroups explained
• Newsgroup Questions and Answers Here are the answers to questions that you might have about newsgroups
• Newsgroup Security It's important to protect yourself properly when posting to newsgroups or you could get burned.
• Messages are tracked when posted Reading from newsgroups is generally untraceable, but your posts to newsgroups can and are tracked.
• Newsgroups - Crossposting It's great to be a subscriber to many different newsgroups, but watch the multi-posts and crossposts.
• Newsgroups - Quoting It's a good idea to include a few lines of test from the message to which you are replying. It's not a good idea to include hundreds of lines. Trim it down and your readers will thank you.
• Newsgroups - Servers Okay, so where can you get access to newsgroups? Your ISP is a good place to start, and if that fails, try one of the paid services.
• Newsgroups - Replies Believe it or not, there is a right way to reply to a newsgroup and a wrong way.
• The Exchange 2000 Server If your company needs a way to communicate and you run IIS servers, perhaps you could just use Microsoft's news server.

Surfing

Surfing the web Everything you need to know to have a great time surfing the net.

• Buying on the internet Be careful when you purchase on the internet. There are many scams and people who want to harm you.
  • Purchasing on the internet Shopping on the internet? Use safe shopping practices or take the risk of losing money.
• Ecards Ecards are free, and they are an excellent way to send a greeting to a friend or a loved one.
• Being Part Of Groups Do you like to socialize? Then join and contribute to an internet social group!
• Let the webmaster know what you think of his site Remember that the internet is all about communication, so communicate. One good way to do so is by signing signing guestbooks. This way you let the webmaster know what you think of his site.
  • Graphics in guestbooks are cool If you want, you can leave a small graphic in a guestbook to add some class.
    • Using Photoloft for your images If you are leaving presents in guestbooks, it's important not to steal bandwidth. Photoloft is an inexpensive way to leave presents without being unethical.
• Choosing an ISP Picking a good ISP is critical for having a good time on the web.
• Password Safety If you are like most people, you haven't thought much about password safety. Well, perhaps you should.
• Portals Portals are a great way to get to a lot of different sites on the web.
  • Yahoo Reluctantly Takes A Stand Yahoo recently decided to ban certain types of materials from it's auction sites. This is great as we do not need to promote evil. If you promote something you are granting it power, so let's resist the temptation to do that.
  • Napster Was Napster a good thing? It depends on your viewpoint...
• The internet is a great research tool The internet is probably the greatest invention for research that has ever existed.
  • Finding Out What You've Been Up To Your computer system keeps lots of records about what you've been doing. This article tells you where a lot of it is stored.
  • Medical Resources A couple of years ago I became desperate for medical information on the web. Here are some sites that I found which helped ...
• Using search engines There are many hundreds of great search engines available on the net. Don't restrict yourself to just one - use whatever is appropriate for what you are doing.
  • Most search engines support expressions to make your searching more effective Try it with your favorite to see if it works.
  • Where to find an answer Where do you find the answers you need? Here are some suggestions.
• Start Pages Setting up a good start page is a great way to improve your surfing experience.
• Statistics How can you find out about he internet in general? Here are some of the tools you will need.
• Truste If you want to be sure that your privacy is not being invaded by a web site, make sure they have the TrustE logo showing.
• File Formats on the web Here is a table with a list of many of the common file formats and how you can handle them on your pc. Formats include 'au, aiff, bin, cda, doc, exe, gif, gz, hqx, jpg, jpeg, mid, midi, mim, mpg, mpeg, qt, mov, movie, pdf, ps, rar, sit, sea, tar, tiff, text, txt, uu, uue, wav, z and zip'.
• Webcams This weekend I installed a webcam. It was an interesting experience but worth the trouble.
  • Webcam Links There are hundreds and hundreds of webcam sites all over the web.
• Is surfing the internet safe at work? If you are like most people, you use the internet at work for personal reasons. Perhaps you should think twice about that.

System

All the data you need to know about setting up for the internet There are many things that you can do to your computer system to improve your surfing experience.

• Accessing the Internet - DSL, Cable Modem or dialup You need a way to get to the internet, and if you are lucky you have some choices: DSL, cable or dialup.
  • Modem Lights Ever wonder what those strange little lights mean on the front of a modem?
• Backing Up Your stuff - Part 1 Backup may seem to be a pain, but it's one of the most important things that you can do to protect your system.
  • Backing Up Your stuff - Part 2 Backups are critical, and it's wise to spend some time researching the various devices available before you make a purchase.
  • Backing Up Your stuff - Part 3 Once you've picked out your hardware, you need to decide which software to use for your backups.
  • Backing Up Your stuff - Part 4 It's wise to keep everything you need to rebuild your entire system available just in case.
  • Backing Up Your stuff - Part 5 Now that you've got backup hardware and software, you need to know where you stuff is ... so you can save it and restore it.
  • Backing Up Your stuff - Part 6 Do you know where your system stores stuff? This article may help.
  • Backing Up Your stuff - Part 7 So where does the computer put stuff anyway? And once you know, what do you do with it?
• There are many different file formats on the web There are hundreds of different file formats on the web. You'll need to be able to convert now and then and here's how you do it.
• Laptop systems Picking the right laptop is very important. These things can be very tricky so spend a little more to get a good one.
• You can improve your computers internet performance There are lots of things that you can do to improve your systems internet performance.
  • Hidden Files On Windows Windows hides some files from view. This is not for any evil purposes, it's simply an attempt to make your computer faster and more useful.
• DSL If you can get it, DSL is probably one of your best choices to speed your internet access.
  • Review of PacBell DSL Pacific Bell DSL (now called SBC) is generally fairly stable. Most problems seem to revolve around installation.
• You can modify the registry on Windows to improve your system You can modify files in the registry to make your system perform better, be more reliable or to turn on (or off) special features. Be careful though, this can damage your system!
  • Automatically Open Folders After Shutdown I don't know about you, but I would like Windows to remember what folders I had open before it was shut down. Here's how to do it.
  • Backing Up The Registry Before you make any changes to the registry, you'd better get a good backup. These could save your computer!
  • Cause Notepad to Remember Settings Notepad is a simple and useful editor. One of the major annoyances, is it does not remember settings. Here's how to make it do so.
  • Changing Internet Explorer Browser Agent Want to modify the user agent field of Internet Explorer? Here's how you do it.
  • Changing Location For Saving Attachments Outlook by default temporarily saves viewed attachments into the internet temporary folder. I find this annoying, and here's how you change the location.
  • Get Rid Of "Click Here To Begin" For someone new to Windows XP, the "Click here to begin" message is important. After about an hour, though, the message can go. Here's how to get rid of it.
  • Prevent Word From Loading HTTP Images What to close a small security/privacy hole? Block the loading of remote HTTP images in Word.
  • Changing Location Of Outlook Stationary The location of Outlook and Outlook Express stationary files is contained in the registry. You can modify this value.
  • Disable the Default Image Viewer A major annoyance - Windows XP forces you to use their own image viewer and it's a pretty awful program. You can disable this with a simple registry edit.
  • Get Rid Of Balloon Tips Being driven crazy by those balloons that keep popping up with useless bits of information? Take control of them with this registry edit.
  • Speeding Up The Start Menu The Windows XP start menu has a built-in delay. This makes it "slow" to display the menu. You can change this delay and make it a bit faster.
  • Allowing executable attachments in Outlook The Outlook modification to disallow execution of executable attachments can save you a lot of grief. Sometimes, however, you need those attachments.
• Operating system There are several operating systems to choose from.
• Changing Internet Explorer Browser Agent Want to modify the user agent field of Internet Explorer? Here's how you do it.
• Your computer and fonts Need some data about how to use fonts? Here are some answers.
• Does Anyone Know What Time It Is? A ten dollar Power Puff Girls watch keeps better time than your personal computer. Here's how to solve that problem.
  • Configuring Windows XP Time Service Want your PC clock to be accurate? Use the Windows XP Time service.
  • ArgoSoft Time Service I've found the ArgoSoft time service is much superior to the Windows XP version.
• Windows XP Microsoft has a new operating system for the desktop. It's called Windows XP, and it's a fine example of what an operating system should be.
  • Setting up DNS in Windows XP Setting up DNS in Windows XP can be simple or complicated, depending upon which options you choose.
  • Improving Performance By default, Windows Xp is very pretty, but it's also a fat pig. You can speed it up with a few simple changes.
    • Clean Up Your Disk Space You can use the cleanmgr utility to clean up disk space.
• Control Your Power

Telnet

• Telnet Some web hosts will give you Telnet access to your account. This is a very powerful way to be able to change and check out your web site.
  • Cron If you have telnet access to your site, you can use CRONTAB to schedule jobs.

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