Windows 98 Professional Reference

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Internet Browsers in Windows 98

• Overview of Browsing in Windows 98
  • How Windows 98 Integrates Browsing with the Desktop
  • The Role of the Default Browser
• Configuring and Using Browsers
• Internet Explorer 4
  • Setting Up IE4
  • Fine-Tuning Internet Explorer 4
  • Using Internet Explorer 4
• Netscape Communicator
  • Setting Up Netscape
  • Configuring Other Options
  • Using Communicator
  • Using Netcaster
• IE4 Versus Netscape: Which Is Better?
• Conclusion

If you paid any attention at all to technology news during the winter of 1997-1998, you heard about the debate between the Department of Justice and Microsoft as to the role of the browser in Windows. How important is it, and why is it worth such a hassle?

Well, it's pretty important because browsing is an integral part of Windows 98. Even the Help Engine would lose features if browsing were disabled. This chapter examines the role that Microsoft planned for the browser in Windows 98 and shows how to configure and operate the two most popular browsers--Internet

Explorer and Netscape Navigator--in the Windows 98 environment. For additional information about configuring Windows 98 for the Internet, see the following chapters:

• Chapter 28, "Setting Up Windows 98 for the Internet," describes some additional aspects of Internet configuration. Chapter 28 is closely related to the material in this chapter.
• Chapter 29, "Windows 98 as an Internet/Intranet Server," discusses how to provide Web content through Windows 98.
• Chapter 30, "Internet Security" takes a closer look at some of the security issues you have to consider when implementing Internet browsing under Windows 98.

You may also want to refer to Chapter 25, "Windows 98 with TCP/IP" for a discussion of how to set up your computer to use TCP/IP (the Internet protocol suite).

Overview of Browsing in Windows 98

Recently, Microsoft has been incorporating Web-based features into more and more of its products--even apart from the brouhaha over Internet Explorer's integration into Windows. For example, Office 97's word processor allows you to format hyperlinks so that you can create a connection between documents stored on the local computer and documents on the Web. With Windows 98, the connection has become even tighter, as instant Web access becomes possible from anywhere in the operating system.

How Windows 98 Integrates Browsing with the Desktop

In addition to making Internet Explorer immediately available from the toolbar, Windows 98 integrates browsing into the desktop.

If you upgraded from Windows 95, you'll notice that the desktop has some new features in it. By default, it looks similar to the old Windows 95 desktop--the expected array of desktop icons and the toolbar. If you upgraded from a working copy of Windows 95, you'll even find all your documents in the Documents folder, but as you can see in Figure 27.1, there are a few other changes.

The differences in the appearance of the desktop are related to the concept of the active desktop, a place with content that can be dynamically updated. For example, you can place on your desktop a link to the New York Times channel site, and update the information there as the page is updated at intervals during the day. Although this may not appear immediately different from what you can already do with a separate browser, there is a difference: You don't have to open a browser to get to the site because the link is stored on your desktop.

Figure 27.1

The integration of the Web into the Windows 98 desktop.

In addition to site links, you can also have information links, with periodically updated content. These links can follow the "ticker" format or the minibrowser format (see Figure 27.2). Either way, information links provide you with a quick way of reviewing regularly changing content, such as news or stock quotes.

Figure 27.2

Get regularly updated headlines delivered right to your desktop through information links.

The point is that the desktop can include shortcuts not only to local and network-accessible data and applications, but to Web content as well. By default, the Windows 98 desktop is a Web browser. And its live content makes it a very addictive one. (News junkies are going to love the New York Times ticker.)

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TIP: If you don't want to use the Desktop's browsing capabilities, you can disable its Web page functionality. Right-click anywhere in the open area of the desktop. A pop-up menu appears. Deselect the View as Web Page option.

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How does the active desktop work? As Chapter 1 describes, the active desktop is built in two layers: A transparent icon layer that displays all your shortcuts (including those already there if you upgraded from Windows 95) and a base HTML layer that supports any HTML content, including documents and ActiveX and Java scripts--even downloading new drivers for you from Microsoft's Web site if you choose.

You can think of it as an overlay of the familiar Windows 95 desktop on top of a new desktop engine: It looks like the old desktop (or it can--you have that option) but it doesn't work like it. Instead, it's integrated with IE4. This design is intended to make file location transparent and unimportant to the user. More than ever, you don't have to know where something is or how to get to it; you just have to set up the link. With the new browser interface, that capability is extended from the company network to the Web.

Linking to documents isn't the only new capability of the new interface, however. The desktop is a complete browser; these days, browsing means not just reading linked documents but a host of other functions. Table 27.1 explains the IE4 features now integrated into the Windows 98 desktop.

Table 27.1 Additional Browsing Features Integrated into Windows 98

We'll discuss the mechanics of how to use and set up these features in "Internet Explorer 4," later in this chapter.

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NOTE: The active desktop is available not only with Windows 98, but with Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 95 if you install IE4 with either the Standard or Full option.

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Several Windows 98 applets already include the IE4 interface. For example, when you open My Computer in Windows 98, you can see not only the local drives and network access, but from the Favorites menu, you can view connections to Web sites (see Figure 27.3).

Figure 27.3

My Computer now has some of the tools associated with a browser.

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TIP: Use the Back and Forward buttons to move between the folder you were just looking at and the one you are looking at now. You don't have to flip through a plethora of open windows any more.

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As shown in Figure 27.4, Explorer not only maintains a record of current connections and files, it also provides access to the Web sites in your Favorites folder without requiring you to open IE4 first.

Figure 27.4

Browse not only the network but your favorite Web sites with Explorer.

Help not only maintains a list of local Help files, it can also provide access to Microsoft's online support without your having to take an extra step (see Figure 27.5).

Figure 27.5

You can connect to Microsoft's online product support straight from the Windows 98 Help engine.

Those folders are already part of the IE4 interface, but almost any folder can be integrated with IE4. You can even edit a folder's appearance with the Customize This Folder Wizard, available in the View menu of most folders. When you start the wizard, you see a dialog box like the one in Figure 27.6. The option you're looking for in this case is the first one, to create an HTML document. Read the instructions in the following page, then make any changes you like in your HTML editor (for example, Notepad). When you close the editor, the changes you made are saved and applied to the folder.

Figure 27.6

Turn any folder into a Web page.

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NOTE: You cannot create a Web view for every folder, but most folders support this feature.

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The Role of the Default Browser

Even with the integration of the browser into the desktop, the role of the default browser has not changed significantly--it's still the browser used to open HTML and HTM documents. This chapter discusses both IE4 and Netscape Communicator; the user interface isn't affected whether you use IE4 or Netscape as your default browser. All the windows retain the look and feel of IE4; when you access some part of the active desktop--for example, a link to an online document accessible through Help--then IE4 is the browser used. The default browser affects only documents saved to the local machine, links in email messages, and the Favorites menu accessible from the Start menu.

Configuring and Using Browsers

You can use the browser as-is, with almost no personalizing or tuning. But IE4 and Netscape Communicator offer you such a host of options that it's a shame not to examine them.

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NOTE: Both IE4 and Netscape Communicator include not only browsing capabilities but applications that support email, newsgroups, and page authoring. This chapter focuses on their capabilities as browsers; other features are discussed in this book in the appropriate chapters.

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Internet Explorer 4

IE4 is the browser currently included with Windows 98 (unless the Department of Justice makes Microsoft offer versions of Windows 98 with and without the browser) and is available for download from Microsoft's Web site at www.microsoft.com. Before you can use the browser, however, there's the matter of setup.

Setting Up IE4

To customize the content sent to you and how your browser interacts with it, you must choose Internet Options from the View menu. When you do, you should see a dialog box like the one shown in Figure 27.7, with tabs for the various configuration options.

Figure 27.7

Setting up general Internet options.

Most of these Internet options are fairly straightforward, but some require a little explanation. The following sections explain how to accomplish various configuration tasks. Table 27.2 is a quick reference of configuration tasks and where you set them up in IE4's Internet Settings dialog box. More details about each of these tasks is provided in the following sections.

Table 27.2 Internet Configuration Tasks and their Internet Settings Dialog Box Tabs

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NOTE: Security settings (including certificates and profiles) are not discussed here, but are explained in detail in Chapter 30, "Internet Security."

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Create a New Dial-Up Networking Connection

You can run the Connection Wizard from within IE4. To do so, click the Connection tab of the Internet Settings dialog box and click the Connect button in the Connection section. To set up the connection, follow the instructions in the wizard (see Figure 27.8).

Set Up Your Computer for Use with a Proxy Server

If you're connecting to the Internet with a proxy server, be sure to check that box in the Proxy Server section of Connection page of the Internet Settings dialog box. Fill in the fully qualified domain name or IP address of the server and the port to which you'll be connecting. If your network uses more than one proxy server for different protocols, click the Advanced button to finish configuring the proxy server connection in the dialog box shown in Figure 27.9. See Chapter 28, "Setting Up Windows 98 for the Internet," for more information about connecting to the Internet through a proxy server.

Figure 27.8

You can configure all Internet settings from within IE4.

Figure 27.9

Identify the proxy server to use for a variety of protocols.

If you want to connect directly to a server without going through the proxy, enter the domain name (such as microsoft.com) in the Exceptions box.

Add a Dial-Up Networking Connection

After the Internet connection is set up, you can click the Settings button on the Connection page to configure settings for the connection: telephone number to dial in to, device to use (if you have more than one modem installed), modem settings, and logon settings. To set up a new connection from within IE4, click the Settings button on the Connection page to open the dialog box shown in Figure 27.10, and then click the Next button to create a new connection.

Let a Remote Server Configure Your IE4 Settings

Some people may have to read no further because their network administrator has installed the Internet Explorer Admin Kit, and a server on the network will download IE4 settings to their computers. If your network is set up in this way, click the Configure button on the Connection page and enter the URL of the server. By default, changes to the setting are downloaded each time you start the browser (and have a live connection to the server). If you want, you can also click the Refresh button shown in Figure 27.11 to immediately download the current settings.

Figure 27.10

Create a new modem connection.

Figure 27.11

Click the Refresh button to update IE4 settings downloaded from a server.

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NOTE: The Internet Explorer Admin Kit is Microsoft's tool for administering setup of IE4 for Windows 95, Windows NT 3.5x and 4.0, Macintosh, and UNIX Solaris. With this tool, network administrators can define sets of options (up to ten distinct sets) and download those sets to user desktops. For more information on the Internet Explorer Admin Kit--and to download the free software--go to http://ieak.microsoft.com/.

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Specify a New Home Page for IE4

The home page is the page that loads whenever you start your browser. You can return to this page at any time by clicking the Home button, so the page you pick should be something you refer to a great deal.

Type the new URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in the Address text box. If the browser is already displaying the page you want to make the home page, just click Use Current. If you want to revert to the default home page (www.microsoft.com/msoffice), choose Use Default. To load no page when you start up IE, choose Use Blank.

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TIP: If you plan to open IE4 while offline, you can choose Use Blank or specify a local document for a home page so that you don't waste time waiting for IE to try to load a page it can't get to.

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Tell IE How Often to Update Cached Versions of Previously Visited Sites

By default, when you start IE and open a Web page, IE caches the page's contents and uses the cached copy for the remainder of the session. If you move on to another page, then change your mind and return to the previous page, IE uses the cached copy so that it doesn't have to reload the page, thus speeding up the display. These copies are stored in the \Temporary Internet Files folder of your Windows 98 installation (or, if user profiles are enabled, the pages are stored in the Temporary Internet Files folder of the current user's profile directory). The cached pages are not deleted when you close IE4.

The only catch to using the cached files is that any updates to the page are not reflected because IE isn't pulling the page from the Web server again, but is using its own copy. This isn't a problem with many pages, but pages with content that changes regularly may benefit from being updated more often. Thus, if you have a fast connection and reference a lot of pages with fast-changing content, you may want to instruct IE to update pages every time it visits a page.

To do so, click the Settings button in the Temporary Internet Files section. You'll see a dialog box like the one shown in Figure 27.12.

Figure 27.12

Determining how often cached pages are updated.

The particulars of the three options are described in Table 27.3.

Table 27.3 Page Caching Options

Specify Where IE Should Store Cached Pages

By default, cached pages are stored in a subdirectory of your Windows 98 installation. You can choose to move the temporary storage to another folder on the same disk or on another hard disk.

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TIP: Move the IE cache to another disk if you have another disk that is much faster than the one on which Windows 98 is installed, or if space on that drive is at a premium.

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In the Settings dialog box displayed in Figure 27.12, click the Move Folder button to specify a new location for the cached files. You can choose any drive to which you have current access. After you make your selection, the change does not take effect until you restart your computer.

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WARNING: If you think you're going to want to move the cache file, move it before you've done much with IE. Moving the cache file deletes all the settings related to your Web subscriptions.

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Although the buttons for viewing the contents of the cache and the buttons for viewing downloaded files are next to each other, moving the cache does not affect the location of the ActiveX controls downloaded to your computer (the \Downloaded Program Files folder in your Windows 98 installation). To see these files, click the View Files button.

Set the Amount of Disk Space That Can Be Used for Cached Files

By default, IE uses 3 percent of whatever disk the cache is on to store files. You can increase or decrease this amount from the Settings dialog box. The more disk space you allot to caching, the more pages you can cache. To change the proportion of disk space, move the Amount of Disk Space to Use slider bar up or down.

Changing the cache size does not immediately affect the amount of free space on the drive; it only tells the system how much room it can have for caching. When configuring the proportion of space you allocate to the cache, keep in mind that 3 percent of a modern drive is a lot of space--on a 2G drive, that's 60M. If you are caching to a large hard drive, you can probably reduce the amount of space reserved for your cache without any ill effects.

Delete the Contents of the Cache

To empty the cache without closing IE, click the Delete Files button in the Temporary Internet Files section of the General tab (see Figure 27.13).

When you do, you are asked to confirm the exercise and also whether you want to delete all locally stored subscription information (see Figure 27.14).

When you've done so, all files in the cache (and, optionally, all local subscription information) are deleted.

Specify How Many Days IE Should Remember URLs

IE remembers the URLs of pages you've visited recently--by default, over the past 20 days. To return to one of those pages, click it in the History list.

Figure 27.13

Removing all files from the cache.

Figure 27.14

Confirm deletion of the contents of the cache.

If you decide that the default of 20 days is more or less than you need, you can set a different time by typing a new number in the History section of the General page of the IE4 options. To clear the contents of the History list entirely (for example, if you don't want anyone to know where you've been online for the past 20 days), click the Clear History button. You are asked to confirm the deletion; do so, and the list is emptied.

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WARNING: The History list may tell you that URLs take up 0 to 1K of disk space. Although technically accurate, this number doesn't tell the whole story. The FAT32 file system used by Windows 98 has clusters with a minimum size of 4K--and up to 16K or 32K I size. Therefore, each of those 1K URLs takes up at least 4K on your hard disk, and sometimes far more.

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Define the Appearance of Your Browser Output

Some Web pages are set up to have a certain appearance in terms of fonts and colors. Some pages, however, use whatever font and color selections the user defines.

Click the Colors button at the bottom of the General page to display the dialog box shown in Figure 27.15.

Figure 27.15

Editing color options.

Click the color boxes to change their color.

• If you select Use Windows Colors (it is selected by default), your color display settings are used for your browser views. Deselect this option if you want to choose colors for the text and background from the Windows palette.
• Edit the appearance of links you have followed and those you have not yet followed. The defaults are blue for unfollowed links and purple for links already viewed.
• If you want, you can highlight links when the cursor is positioned over them (an action called hovering); this can make it easier to tell when the cursor is positioned over a link. When you enable this option, you can select a color for links over which the cursor is hovering. The default is red.
• Click the Fonts button at the bottom of the General page to open a dialog box like the one shown in Figure 27.16. Select options from the lists to change the font settings. By default, these settings apply only to text that has not been directly formatted by the page's author.

Figure 27.16

The Fonts dialog box.

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TIP: If you want to use the fonts specified by the Web author, but just want to change their relative size or their alphabet, select View|Fonts and choose the size (Smallest to Largest; the default is Medium) and the language to use.

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• The default character set does not change the language in which Web documents appear (it's a pity that translation can't take place so easily). The default character set determines the characters that can be displayed. The default is Western.
• The proportional font is used to display standard text in a page. If the book you are reading were a Web page, this text would be displayed in the selected proportional font. You can choose a proportional font from all fonts currently installed on the computer.
• The fixed-width font is used to display the program font or other standard-sized text. If this book were a Web page, any program code would be displayed in the selected fixed-width font. Only Courier and Lucida Console are available for fixed-width fonts, and only Lucida Console is available for most character sets.
• The font size determines how proportionally big the font is. Medium is the default; make it bigger or smaller to make it easier to read or to make more text visible onscreen.
• The default character set is the one used when no other character set is specified. By default, it's the Western character set. To change it, select another character set and click the Set as Default button.

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NOTE: Character sets are sets of code and character mappings that tell Windows 98 how to display a given code. For example, code 063 in one character set might be the letter A, but code 063 in another character set might be the dollar sign.

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Character sets are important if you want to view Web pages written in a language other than English, as you can if you click the Languages button at the bottom of the General page (see Figure 27.17). Once again, installing another language does not translate documents for you, but it does make it possible for you to read documents written in more than one language.

Figure 27.17

You must install a character set to support the language you choose.

If you want to customize the color and font settings for all pages, including those formatted by the Web author, click the Accessibility... button on the bottom of the General page and specify the options you want to control (see Figure 27.18).

Figure 27.18

Overriding a Web author's formatting.

If you select all these settings, you override not only font and color, but any wallpaper the Web page's author used--essentially, the page will look like a text page with whatever graphics the author used. (Frankly, I find this capability a godsend for those pages with terrifically vivid wallpaper.)

Set Up Content Filters for Your Browser

You can set up filtering so that access to sex-based or violence-based pages is restricted. (Then again, you might not want to. Don't interpret this section as any kind of recommendation of what you should do about enabling access controls.)

Assuming that you want some control over what people using the browser are viewing, choose Internet Options from the View menu and click Content tab (see Figure 27.19).

Ratings are not enabled by default. To enable them, click the Enable button. You are asked to provide a password and then to confirm it. When you've provided and verified a password, you'll see a dialog box like the one in Figure 27.20.

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NOTE: Remember this password: You'll need it if you ever want to adjust your ratings settings.

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Figure 27.19

Preparing to censor user content.

Figure 27.20

Click a topic to adjust its rating.

The default settings are most restrictive, permitting you to download only sites with the following characteristics:

• No profanity; slang only
• No nudity whatsoever
• No sexual activity portrayed
• No violence (aggressive, natural, or accidental)

Highlight a topic in the list to adjust its rating as shown in Figure 27.21.

Figure 27.21

Setting ratings for violence content.

A site must participate in the rating scheme to be filtered for explicit reasons. Unsurprisingly, many sites with content that the Recreational Software Advisory Council (the group that designed the ratings used by IE4) would find objectionable have declined to be rated. Even some sites with unobjectionable content may be unrated--the New York Times Online Edition, for example. If you enable ratings, by default you're declined access to unrated sites--although you can provide the supervisor's password to get to the site. Each time you access another page within that site, you have to provide the password again.

When you've made your choices, close the Internet Settings dialog box. The ratings take effect immediately, although pages already in the cache are not affected.

If you try to access a page that contains restricted content, the page does not load and you see a dialog box informing you that you can't access the page and listing the reasons why (for example, RSACi Nudity-Level 3: Frontal Nudity Level).

As previously mentioned, IE4 comes with one ratings system. You can download other systems to use and load them into the System folder of your Windows 98 installation. To use a new rating system, click the Advanced tab of the Content Advisor dialog box.

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NOTE: In addition to providing access to rating criteria, the Content page also contains settings for security certificates, as discussed in Chapter 30, "Internet Security," for the Microsoft Wallet (a storage place for purchasing information, so that you don't have to look it up each time you buy something online), and for the Microsoft Profile Assistant (a place in which you can enter personal information for those Web sites that request it).

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Set Up Applications to Cooperate with IE4

IE4 can work in cooperation with other applications to support mail, news, Internet telephoning, calendars, and contact lists. Defaults exist for all these settings (with the exception of an Internet calendar option), but you can also choose any other installed applications from the drop-down list shown in Figure 27.22.

Figure 27.22

Choosing a new email program to use with IE4.

Fine-Tuning Internet Explorer 4

The Advanced tab of the Internet Options dialog box contains all the settings that don't fit anywhere else. Some options you may never have to touch, but some options bear examination. Table 27.4 lists these options, tells you what they mean, and specifies whether they're enabled by default.

Table 27.4 Advanced IE4 Browsing Options

In addition to the browsing options, you can also configure settings from the Advanced tab related to the following topics:

• User accessibility
• Multimedia display (sounds, images, animations, and video)
• Link display
• Java settings
• HTTP settings

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TIP: You can click a button on the Advanced tab to restore all settings to their default value.

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Using Internet Explorer 4

You've set up the options you want. Now you're prepared to use the browser's many capabilities. Table 27.5 is a quick reference to IE4's browsing capabilities and where you access them.

Table 27.5 Common IE4 Tasks and How to Execute Them

The following sections explain these tasks in more detail.

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TIP: To select from the toolbars available to you in your browser, open the View menu and enable the tools you want. To remove the menu bar entirely, choose View|Full Screen or click the Full Screen button on your toolbar.

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Open a New Browser Window

Choose File,New,Window to open a new instance of the browser. You cannot use the Back and Forward buttons to navigate between the two screens.

Open a Link

To open a link to a folder or document, choose Open from the File menu; in the Open dialog box, type the path or URL as appropriate. As shown in Figure 27.23, the dialog box remembers paths you've taken recently, so you can choose an entry from the drop-down list.

Figure 27.23

Click a previously accessed link to open it.

After you've chosen the link, IE4 shows the contents of the folder or file you selected. If you've selected a folder instead of an online document, the IE4 display changes to My Computer--the differences are not immediately obvious (for example, the options in the File|New menu are different) but present.

If you have Office 97 installed, files associated with the suite's programs appear in the drop-down list of recently accessed files. Otherwise, you can open only browser-compatible files such as HTML documents, JPG images, and text files, among others.

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NOTE: You can use the Back button in the toolbar to return to the previous window only if you opened an online document.

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Save a Web Page to Your Computer

You can save a page locally (or on the network), perhaps to use its source code as a template for something you want to do or as a sample document. To do so, choose File, Save As. You can save the document either as an .HTM document (the default) or as text (not the source code, but as the words displayed onscreen).

Print Hard Copy of a Web Page

To print a page, first check the print settings (File,Page Setup) to make sure that the page is oriented properly and that the header and footer coding prints the information you want. By default, the window's name and the page count (centered) appear in the header, and the URL and the current date are in the footer. Table 27.6 describes the codes available to you.

Table 27.6 Print Codes for Headers and Footers of Web Pages

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TIP: You can also write your own static text to appear in the header or footer, such as Printed by Joanne.

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These settings apply to all future print jobs until you adjust them.

When you have set up the page properly, click OK to set the changes and then choose Print from the File menu (see Figure 27.24).

Figure 27.24

Setting final printing options.

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TIP: You can also right-click a page to open the Print dialog box.

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Most of the information in this dialog box should look familiar: Choose the printer to which you want to send the job (the options in the figure are the boringly named Normal Printer and Color Printer), make sure that the printer is ready to go, print to a file if you want, and choose a range of pages and the number of copies to produce. The only information specific to printing Web pages is that related to the appearance of frames and to printing links.

If the page you're printing contains frames (sections visually divided from other sections), you have the option of printing all information as displayed onscreen, only the contents of the selected frame, or the contents of all frames, but separately. The option you choose depends on the page you're printing. For example, if a frame off to the left displays a table of contents for the entire site for easy navigation between documents, you may want to print only the frame with the active document; but if a table appears in a frame, you may want to print the whole thing.

By default, only the current document is printed, but the current document can contain links to related documents. You can choose either to print all linked documents in addition to the active one, or to print a table of linked documents at the bottom of the screen (a reference of sorts for people reading the printed document who may want to know where to get more information).

When the printing options are set properly, click OK; the print job is sent to the spooler.

Make a Shortcut to a Page

To quickly access a page, you don't have to add it to your Favorites folder; instead, you can add it to your desktop. To do so, choose File,Send,Shortcut to Desktop. When you click this shortcut (and you have an active Net connection), the browser opens and moves to the linked URL.

Show Someone Else a Web Page

If you want someone else to see the page you're looking at, you can send them either the page as an attachment or the link to it. To do so, choose File,Send,Page by Email (or Link by Email), fill in the email address of the recipient, and send the message.

View the Properties of a Web Page

To get basic information about a Web page (its URL, title, size, and modification dates) choose Properties from the File menu. From the Properties sheet that appears, you can also view any security certificates for the page (if any) and check it for errors.

Set Up IE4 to Work Offline

When you're not connected to the Internet and don't need to be, letting IE4 try to find online documents can waste time. If you're going to be viewing previously downloaded content, you can choose to work offline by choosing File,Work Offline.

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NOTE: If you try to access a document that is only available online, you are prompted to indicate whether you want to connect to the Internet to get the document or to forget it and keep working offline.

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Exit IE4

Choose Close from the File menu.

Copy Objects from a Web Page

Select the text or image you want to copy and choose Edit,Copy. Alternatively, right-click the selected text and choose Copy from the pop-up menu that appears.

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TIP: To select all text in a document, choose Edit,Select All.

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Find a Word on a Page

If you've performed a Web search for documents on a certain topic and chosen one to open, you may not immediately see the topic you were looking for. To find a word within a page, choose Edit, Find (on this Page) or press Ctrl+F.

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NOTE: Word searches are page specific, not site specific. To find a word within a given site, use the site's search engine, if it has one.

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Stop Loading a Page

Sometimes, after you've clicked a link or typed an URL, you realize that wasn't where you wanted to go after all. To stop loading a page, choose Stop from the View menu, or click the Stop button on the standard toolbar.

Reload a Page

IE4 does not automatically update pages that have changed, but uses the copy downloaded for local access. If you have reason to believe that a page's content has changed (for example, you've had your browser open all day and your browser was open to a newspaper's site), you can get the newest data at the site by choosing View,Refresh or clicking the Refresh button on the standard toolbar.

See a Document's Source Code

HTML documents are not created "as is" but are composed of code that a browser interprets to have a certain appearance. To view the source code for a page, choose View, Source. The coding appears in the window of an HTML editor, such as Notepad.

You can edit the source code and save the changes locally, if you want to create your own version of the Web page. The changes do not affect the original document on the Web server or the document in your cache.

Move Quickly to a Frequently Referenced Site

IE4 offers some convenient methods of getting to sites you go to frequently--either those you selected yourself or those Microsoft thought you would like. Table 27.7 outlines these shortcuts.

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NOTE: The Favorites menu is accessible from both IE4 and My Computer.

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Table 27.7 Navigation Shortcuts

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TIP: If you click the Search button, you can keep a menu of search engines in a frame on the left side of your browser.

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Save Links for Future Reference

When you find a page or site that you like, you can save its URL in a folder so you can return to it easily. Just choose Favorites, Add to Favorites and the page will be saved, listed according to its title.

When you add a link to the Favorites folder, you have three options:

• Adding the link to your Favorites folder
• Adding the link, and also subscribing to the page so you get email notification of updates to the site
• Adding the link, and also subscribing to the page so IE4 downloads the page automatically for offline viewing

If you don't expect a page's content to change or you don't care whether it does, choose the first option. Choose the second for pages that you expect to change, but don't expect to change very often--I subscribed to MSDN's online library like this. Choose the third option for pages that you expect to change often, such as news or weather sites. Pages to which you subscribe are stored in your subscriptions folder.

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NOTE: IE4 will automatically import any bookmarks you had created in another, previously installed, browser. These are stored in an Imported Bookmarks folder accessible from the Favorites menu.

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Organize Your Saved Links

Once you've added more than a few entries to your Favorites folder, or if you're sharing a browser with someone else who's also adding links, it may become difficult to find the link you want at a glance. To facilitate the organization of your link list, you can create folders and store your links in them. When you create a new entry in the Favorites folder, you have the option of creating it in the main menu, in a previously created folder, or in a new folder you create at the time you are making the link.

To organize marked links, choose File, Organize Favorites (see Figure 27.25).

Figure 27.25

Move links to existing folders or create new ones.

Folders can contain subfolders; for example, you can create a folder called Joe's Links, and then a folder within that one called Windows NT Links so that Joe can store all his Windows NT-related links there.

Find a Channel and Subscribe to It

At its IE4 site, Microsoft maintains a source of channels to which you can subscribe. To find channels that meet your needs, go to this site (choose Go, Channel Guide) and either choose a topic (see Figure 27.26) or click the Find button at the top of the screen to search for a topic.

Figure 27.26

Finding a channel based on topic.

If you click the Find button to search for channels about a certain topic (for example, if you are searching for football), you are presented with a list of channels that meet the requirements (see Figure 27.27).

Figure 27.27

Search results for football.

If you choose instead to search the Web for channels, you have two options:

• Search the Web for channels in a certain language (the default is English, and you're warned that it may be hard to find channels in any other language), from a certain country, and according to a specified topic.
• Search the Web for channels from certain page types: home pages, images, and so forth.

Thus far, I've had better luck with the Find tool to locate channels on the Microsoft Web site. I found fewer hits for football with a Web-wide search than with a Microsoft one.

Manage Channel Subscriptions

You can right-click channels and subscriptions (channels are always stored in the channel bar located on the right side of the desktop) to update them or manage their subscription properties. However, if you want to manage more than one channel, it may be simpler to open a window that lets you do it all at once. Choose Go,Manage Subscriptions to display a dialog box like the one in Figure 27.28, showing all your current subscriptions, their URLs, their last and scheduled updates, how much information was last downloaded, and so on.

Figure 27.28

Manage several subscriptions at once.

Update All Channels and Subscriptions at Once

Choose Go, Update All to make all channel and subscription data current.

Netscape Communicator

Netscape is the other popular browser on Windows-based systems. The Communicator version, available for download from http://www.netscape.com/download/index.html?cp=hmp03sdow (as are some other Netscape products) has many features in common with IE4. Once you know how to set up and configure one of these browsers, you can manage the other (allowing for some differences in setup and features).

Setting Up Netscape

Communicator stores its user settings under Edit, Preferences. Select this menu item to display a dialog box like the one in Figure 27.29.

Figure 27.29

Setting up Netscape options.

Table 27.8 is a quick reference to the configuration options offered in the Properties dialog box and where you can set them. The options are explained in more detail in the following sections.

Table 27.8 Netscape Communicator Tasks and Where to Set Them

Change the Toolbar Options

Turn to the Appearances section of the Preferences dialog box and choose the option you want in the Set Toolbar As section.

Choose a Communicator Application to Launch on Startup

Netscape Navigator, the browser, is only one of the applications incorporated into Communicator. By default, it's the only one you see because Communicator automatically starts only the browser. To change the startup application, or to start up more than one application, click the Appearances tab of the Preferences dialog box and select the applications you want to launch with Navigator.

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NOTE: As does IE4, Communicator supports channels, but you must start the Netcaster application to set them up.

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Specify a Start Page

By default, the browser navigates to the home page you've specified. Alternatively, you can tell Communicator to begin with a blank page or the last page you visited before closing the browser. To do so, click the Navigator tab of the Properties dialog box (refer to Figure 27.29) and choose the page you want to begin with.

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TIP: If you plan to work offline, tell Communicator to start with either a blank page or a locally stored page so that it doesn't waste time trying to load a page it can't get to.

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Pick a New Home Page

Most users have a home page they'd rather use than the default Netscape home page (netscape.com). To set up a new home page, click the Navigator tab of the Preferences dialog box and either type the new URL or, if you're at the page you want to use as the home page, click the Use Current Page button.

If you have a locally stored HTML document you want to make your home page, either type the path or click the Browse button to search for the document. The default directory is the Program directory in your Netscape installation.

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TIP: Make a local page your home page. Communicator starts more quickly if it doesn't have to try to load a page across the net.

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Tell Communicator How Long to Remember Recently Visited URLs

By default, Netscape remembers all URLs visited for the past nine days and stores them in a file called the History. As the links become more than nine days old, they're removed from the file. To edit the time URLs spend in the History, click the Navigator tab of the Preferences dialog box and type a new number in the box provided.

Tell Communicator to Forget All Recently Visited Sites

You can delete the contents of the History and begin afresh. To do so, click the Navigator tab of the Preferences dialog box and click the Clear History button.

Choose Language Alternatives for Netscape to Use

Some servers offer pages in more than one language (for example, in English and Japanese). By default, Netscape always requests the English version, but you can also tell it to use another language if one is available. To do so, turn to the Languages section of the Navigator tab in the Preferences dialog box and click the Add button to display a list of supported languages (see Figure 27.30).

Once you have more than one language installed, you can adjust their relative priority by selecting a language in the list and clicking the up and down arrows (see Figure 27.31). The order in which you place the languages determines which version of a page you'll see if multiple versions exist.

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NOTE: The language settings have no effect on the character set used. Even if you delete English from the list and retain only Japanese, it will have no effect if you visit a site available only in English; the site still appears in English.

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Figure 27.30

Adding support for another language.

Figure 27.31

Adjusting language preferences.

Choose New Encoding for All Documents Viewed

A character set determines how unencoded text is displayed. The Netscape default character set is Western. To change it for all documents, turn to the Fonts section of the Appearances tab in the Preferences dialog box and choose a new language from the drop-down list. This choice does not affect the words in the documents you view, but it may affect the way the document looks. For example, using the Turkish encoding makes the text in a document big and blocky, whereas using the Japanese encoding makes the font smaller. In neither case, however, does the text become unreadable in English.

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TIP: To change the encoding for the current document, choose View, Encoding and choose from the submenu of encoding formats.

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Change the Fonts Used to Display Pages

Look at the Fonts subsection of the Appearances tab in the Preferences dialog box (see Figure 27.32). The variable-width font is used for most text on a page; the fixed-width font is used for text the Web author has defined to be static in its arrangement on the page (such as code lines). You can set any locally installed font to be the variable-width font, but only fixed width fonts (such as Courier New or Lucida Console) are available for the fixed-width font.

Figure 27.32

Choosing new fonts to use with Communicator.

Specify the font size to the right of the font type: just type the size you want to use.

Many pages use dynamic fonts, or fonts specified by the page's author. Dynamic fonts take time to display because they must be downloaded to your computer, but they have the advantage of letting you see the content exactly as the author intended it, regardless of whether the fonts the author used are available on your computer. You have three options when it comes to choosing the fonts to use:

• Always download the author's fonts (the default).
• Download the author's fonts only if the fonts are not available locally.
• Use only the user-specified default fonts.

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TIP: If you have a wide variety of fonts loaded locally, you can reduce the time it takes to load pages by choosing to download fonts only when they're not available on your computer, while still seeing the page as the author intended.

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If you don't want to manually set a font size, but find the current font size too big or too small, choose View, Increase Font or View, Decrease Font.

Change the Colors Used to Display Pages

Browsers display links with different colors to help you determine whether you've already followed them. In the Colors section of the Appearances page, you can set the colors used to signify followed and unfollowed links. (If you've visited the site pointed to in a link, Netscape assumes that you've followed the link; whether you got to that page from the page with the link on it or in another way isn't the issue.) To change the colors used to mark followed and unfollowed links, click the colored boxes to open a palette of other colors. Just make sure that you do not pick the same color for both, or you won't be able to tell where you've been.

You can also change the colors used to display page text when no background color or wallpaper has been set by the Web author. You can choose colors individually by clicking them and choosing from a palette, or you can click the check box to use the colors you chose for your Windows color scheme.

If the page's author has defined a background color or wallpaper, you can override it by selecting the Always Use My Colors, Overriding Document box. Although this means that you'll miss out on some of the author's creativity, it can be easier on the eyes if you spend a lot of time online and have visited one too many sites with obnoxious wallpaper. Even those bright-white backgrounds used by many sites can contribute to the "reading print on a light bulb" effect.

Create and Edit File Associations

Netscape uses helper applications for files it can't support by itself. The helper application in question is determined by file associations set in Explorer or My Computer, but the associations are also editable from within Netscape. (Those changes apply to the rest of Windows.) Turn to the Applications subsection of the Navigator page to manage file associations within Netscape (see Figure 27.33).

Figure 27.33

Specifying helper applications.

To create a new file association (for example, when you've got a file with an extension you haven't yet registered), click the New Type button and provide the information requested (see Figure 27.34).

Figure 27.34

Creating a new file association.

Most of these fields are self-explanatory: Describe the file type as you see fit, enter its application, and provide the path to the helper application you want to use to support it.

The only field name that may need some explanation is the MIME Type field. MIME types allow files not supported by a browser to be opened by "helper applications." Not all file associations require MIME types to be specified (any application that's part of Windows 98 won't require it), but you have to specify a MIME type for any application that isn't part of the OS. MIME types are divided into two parts: their type and subtype, like this: type/subtype. The type is its type of executable and subtype is its name. Thus, if you associated an extension with Word, its MIME type would look like this: application/msword.

Editing a file association allows you to specify its MIME type, define its associated application, and determine what should be done with it (see Figure 27.35).

Figure 27.35

Editing file associations.

By default, files are associated with their helper applications when they are downloaded, but you're asked before the file is run. This precaution protects you from virus attacks because a virus program can't hurt you until it runs. If you're positive that your download sources are safe, you can choose to run helper applications as soon as the file is downloaded.

If you know you're not going to be using a file type, you can remove it by selecting it and clicking the Remove button.

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WARNING: f you remove a file type from the list, you cannot open any files with that extension until you re-create another file association for it.

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Work Offline

By default, Communicator begins in online work mode, expecting a live Internet connection. If you're not always connected to the Internet when you open your browser, you may get tired of pounding the Stop button to abort a loading action. Instead, turn to the Offline page of the Properties dialog box (see Figure 27.36) and choose either Offline Work Mode or Ask Me (to be asked whether Communicator should start in online or offline mode). You can still point your browser to online URLs when in offline mode; you just have to start up your net connection before you can access those sites.

Figure 27.36

Choosing to work in offline mode.

Configure Cookie Acceptance

Cookies are small text files downloaded to your computer that permit a Web site to determine whether you've visited their site. Shopping sites use them to let you browse pages and pick out merchandise, so that the contents of your "shopping cart" remain consistent; other sites (such as Microsoft's) use cookies to identify users of services you have to register for, such as reading premium content. If you delete your cookies (they're just text files), those Web sites can no longer tell that you've been there. Deleting cookies also removes any record of your having been at the site, empties your shopping cart, and forces you to register to read premium content.

Cookies are text files--they can't be used to download viruses to your computer, or anything like that. However, you may want to disable them for reasons of privacy. In the Advanced page of the Properties dialog box, Communicator lets you disable some or all cookies, and lets you decide whether or not you want to accept each cookie as it is offered (see Figure 27.37).

I don't recommend clicking the button to have Communicator warn you before accepting all cookies because some sites (GeoCities is famous for this) have a lot of cookies and you may have to click half a dozen times to get to a page. Disabling cookies altogether prevents anyone from knowing that you have been to their site, but it also makes it hard or impossible for you to use some features of Web sites that depend on them. If you don't want to accept all cookies, accepting only cookies that go back to the server that originated them, so that the server knows you're there, seems to be the best compromise.

Figure 27.37

Configure cookie acceptance to protect your privacy.

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NOTE: By default, your browser is set up to accept all cookies.

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Configuring Other Options

In addition to cookie configuration, Communicator stores some other settings in the Advanced page of the Properties page, as described in Table 27.9.

Table 27.9 Advanced Communicator Options

Using Communicator

Communicator has many of the same features as IE4, but they are arranged differently. Table 27.10 lists some common browsing actions and how you can do them. The following sections explain these actions in more detail.

Table 27.10 Common Communicator Browsing Functions

Open a New Instance of Navigator from Communicator

To open a new instance of Navigator from Communicator, choose File, New, Navigator Window.

Open a Page Available Either Locally or on the Network

Choose File, Open Page and enter the path or URL of the file you want to open (see Figure 27.38).

Figure 27.38

Opening a new HTML page.

If the page to open is local, you can click the Choose File button to browse for it (the default path is to the Program folder in your Netscape installation). If the page is online, you have to supply the URL. Make sure that you've chosen to open the file in Navigator (the default) and click Open.

Send Someone a Page Using Email

You can show someone a Web page by sending them a copy of the page (and a link to the real thing) using email. To do so, choose File, Send Page (see Figure 27.39) and supply the email address of the person to send it to. Click the Send button, and the page is sent. The recipient receives an email message containing the text of the page and, if his or her email program supports it, links both to the URL you sent and to links within the page.

Figure 27.39

Sending a copy of the National Marrow Donors Program main page.

Prepare to Work Offline

If you're preparing to log off the Internet but want to have the most recent online data available, don't just log off, choose File, Go Offline. As shown in Figure 27.40, you are asked whether you want to send and receive all mail and download any waiting messages in newsgroups. (Unfortunately, this option offers no interface for updating all channels and subscriptions before logging off.)

Figure 27.40

Downloading mail and newsgroup postings in preparation to work offline.

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NOTE: If you're subscribed to more than one newsgroup, click the Select Items for Download button to choose which newsgroups you want to download, if not all of them.

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After you select the options you want, click Go Offline, and your connection will be severed.

Print a Web Page

Before you print a Web page, first choose File|Pa_ge Setup to make sure that the proper settings are selected (see Figure 27.41).

Figure 27.41

Setting up a page's print options.

Most of these options are pretty obvious--you choose the items to print, configure a header and footer, and pick the margins. Most of these options can be left alone, but if you're trying for a particular effect, you can experiment with the Page Options in the upper-left corner of the dialog box.

Click OK, and the page options are set for all future print jobs until you edit them again.

Once you have set up the page, you don't have to print a test page to make sure that everything worked out as planned. Instead, choose File, Print Preview to render a sample of the page, complete with header and footer information (see Figure 27.42).

Figure 27.42

Previewing a page before printing.

Zoom in on part of the page to make sure that it looks as you think it should, or move to the next page (if there is one) to make sure that your options work as well there as they did on the first page.

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TIP: Print Preview can help you avoid cutting off text with margins, something some Web pages have a problem with because they were not formatted to be printed.

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When you've checked it out, either click the Print button to start the print job or click Close to exit the previewer and check print settings.

The Print dialog box that appears when you choose File, Print is pretty much the same as any Print dialog box. Make sure that you're printing to the correct printer, specify the correct page range and number of pages, and you're ready to go. Communicator does not allow for special printing of links, so links are printed only as underlined text. You can't create a table of links or automatically print all linked documents.

Copy Text from a Web Page

You can highlight text and choose Edit, Copy to place a copy of it in the Clipboard, or you can copy a whole page's text by first choosing Edit, Select All and then copying the text. Only the text itself is copied, not the formatting.

Find an Instance of a Word in a Page

Even after you've used a search engine to find a page that contains the text you're looking for, it's not always immediately apparent where that word appears in the document--or in what context. To quickly find a word within a page, choose Edit, Find in Page. You see a dialog box like the one in Figure 27.43.

Figure 27.43

Searching for a word within a page.

Type the word you want to look for (and specify whether or not you want the search to be case sensitive) and click Find Next. Communicator jumps to the next instance of that word in the document and highlights it. If that's not the instance you're looking for, you can either click Cancel or try again by clicking Find Next. When you've found the word you're looking for, click Cancel to close the dialog box.

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TIP: Search in both directions--up and down--before giving up. It's easy to accidentally click within a page so that you're no longer at the top of the page. Find has no "search all" setting.

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To find the same word in another document, you can just choose Edit, Find A_gain.

Search the Internet

Netscape maintains a page of links to various search engines. To access it, choose Edit, Search Internet. Either choose the featured search engine (which varies with the day) or click one of the many other links available to get to that search engine.

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TIP: Be sure to check out the Search Engines link. Some popular search engines are displayed there instead of on the main page.

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Search a Name Directory

The content of many, if not most, U.S. telephone books is online and stored in one of several directories: Four11, InfoSpace, WhoWhere, and so forth. To search for someone's contact information, choose Edit,Search Director_y.

You can search for someone based on one or more of the following criteria:

• Name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Organization (the organization providing the email services, not necessarily the organization he or she works for)
• City
• Street

Define a text string for each criterion you choose, specifying text that must be included in the criteria, that the criteria do not include, are or are not, or begin with.

To select additional options to search by, click the More button; to use fewer options, click the Fewer button. The more options you choose, the more likely it is that your search will return options that match what you're looking for. A sample return might look like the one shown in Figure 27.44.

Figure 27.44

Searching the Internet for a person.

From the results screen, you can select one of the individuals returned by the search and send him or her email, or you can add that email address to your address book.

Some searches are more complete than others, but the information in them is not always fully accurate. After searching for myself in three directories, I found only one entry using my proper email address (or one of them) and one using my proper address--and those two entries weren't identical.

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TIP: Some directory search engines are more accurate than others. If your number is unlisted, you should not appear in any directory at all. If you are unlisted and show up in one, or are not unlisted but do not want people to be able to look up your home address online, visit the home page for the search engine and ask to be removed. People with unlisted numbers should have to do this only once, but people with listed numbers will have to go back every few months and request to be removed again, because the lists are updated regularly from the telephone book.

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Other directory search engines are available when you click the Lookup button on the personal toolbar. Links grouped by topic are available when you click the Internet button next to it.

Navigate Quickly Between Pages

Typing URLs all the time is no fun at all, so Communicator includes some navigation tools to help you get around while keeping the typing to a minimum:

• Links to search engines, directory search engines, and software updates
• Lists of recently accessed sites
• Lists of bookmarked links

The search and directory engines are discussed elsewhere, in "Search the Internet." Communicator has bookmarked the software updates page so that it is accessible from Help, Software Updates.

Recently accessed sites are available in a few areas:

• If the site you want to see is the one you were just looking at, you can click the Back and Forward buttons on the toolbar. Alternatively, you can click the drop-down arrows on these buttons to see a list of URLs accessed during this Communicator session.
• The Netsite list in the top center of the screen not only shows the present URL, but also lists the last 16 URLs directly navigated to--not just during this session, but with Communicator since it was installed. (Not all links you have accessed are shown, just those you navigated to directly.)
• Links you have bookmarked are available in the Bookmarks file. To access it, choose Communicator|Bookmarks and select from the list. When you select a link in the list, you navigate immediately to it.
• The History (Communicator, History) contains all the links accessed for the past few days (nine days by default). These links are contained in a folder you can sort by name, location, dates first and last visited, when the link expires, or how many visits you've made there in the past nine days (see Figure 27.45).

Notice that URLs and locally stored HTML documents are both recorded in the History.

Figure 27.45

Contents of the History.

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TIP: If you notice you're visiting a particular page frequently, you can bookmark it directly from the History folder: Choose File, Add to Bookmarks.

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Table 27.11 lists some navigation goals and how to accomplish them.

Table 27.11 Moving Among Pages with Communicator

Mark Links for Future Reference

It's anyone's guess how many sites and pages are on the Web. Even if there were an accurate count today, by the time you have read these words the number would be out of date. If you're reading a page and realize that you're likely to need it again, you don't have to depend on being able to find it in Communicator History or in the Location drop-down list. Instead, while still on the page, choose Communicator, Bookmarks, Add Bookmark.

If you've previously organized your bookmarks into folders (see the next section, "Organize Marked Links"), you can create the bookmark in a particular folder by choosing File Bookmark instead of Add Bookmark (the latter option creates the bookmark in the main bookmark directory).

Organize Marked Links

After you create more than a few bookmarks, or if more than one person is using the same browser, you may have a tough time finding the bookmark you want with only a quick glance. If you have lots of bookmarks, it may be time to organize the links. Choose Communicator, Bookmarks, Edit Bookmarks to open the folder of marked links (see Figure 27.46).

Figure 27.46

Organize bookmarks so that you can find your favorite links more easily.

I've previously created a couple of different folders for bookmarks: one for Scott and one for my Windows NT information. To create a folder, position the cursor in the folder in which you want to create the folder (folders can contain other folders) and choose File, New Folder. A dialog box like the one shown in Figure 27.47 appears.

Figure 27.47

Creating a new bookmark folder.

Describe the folder if you want (you don't have to) and click OK.

You can now add new bookmarks to that folder directly. But what about bookmarks already made? Move bookmarks to that folder by clicking and dragging them into the folder.

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TIP: You can organize bookmarks within folders by dragging them to change their order, or by sorting them according to the criteria in the View menu: name, location, creation date, or date last visited.

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When you're done organizing bookmarks, exit the Bookmark folder as you would any other Windows folder. All changes are saved automatically.

Examine a Page's Source Code

Get an idea of how that well-executed page was put together by choosing View, Page Source. This option opens an instance of an HTML editor (such as Notepad) in which you can see the coding used for a page--and can even make changes to that code. Changes made can be saved locally but do not affect the original file.

Reload a Page from its Source

To make sure that a page is working from current information instead of a cached copy of the page, choose View, Reload or click the Reload button on the toolbar.

Stop a Page from Loading

If you click a link and realize that you don't want to go there after all, you don't have to wait for the page to load and then click the Back button. Instead, choose View, Stop Page Loading or click the Stop button on the toolbar. The loading process ceases and you remain at the original page.

Get Information About the Current Page

Find out what structures are in a document, how large it is, where it's stored in the cache, and what kind of security is attached to it by selecting View, Page Info (see Figure 27.48).

Figure 27.48

Getting information about the current page.

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TIP: Follow a link in the Page Info window to display the file described at the bottom of the screen.

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Using Netcaster

Netscape doesn't incorporate channel connectivity into its browser as IE4 does. Instead, the channel tool is a separate part of the Communicator suite that can be loaded from the Communicator menu. Like the channel function in IE4, Netcaster provides access to channels (Web sites that deliver their content automatically to your desktop). Netcaster offers access to channels and Web sites in two places: in a ready-made list of channels, accessible from the Channel Finder bar, or in My Channels, a collection of channels to which you have personally subscribed. You can even set your favorite channel as the background for your desktop (Netscape calls this a webtop) so that you can view new information as it comes in without first activating the channel.

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NOTE: The problem with a webtop is that it covers up all the icons on your desktop. You have to close the webtop to access anything stored on the desktop.

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Netcaster isn't a great implementation of channel surfing. Its separation from the browser for browser-like functions makes it difficult to use because it makes viewing and subscribing to channels separate actions. But the real problem with the tool is that it's slow. Let's face it: Not every machine running Windows 98 is a power engine; many of them are personal desktop systems. I tested Netcaster on a 486 with 16M of RAM installed. IE4 worked fine under these conditions. Netcaster, on the other hand, flunked. Running on its own, it's slow--but running with other applications minimized onscreen, it's pretty much unusable. Until its performance is boosted, it's outclassed by the IE4 channel capabilities.

IE4 Versus Netscape: Which Is Better?

The obvious answer to the question of whether Netscape or Internet Explorer is better is the consultant's reply: "It depends." It depends on both what you're trying to accomplish and personal prejudice: Some people really like using the browser that comes with Windows, and some people really don't.

The two browsers have many of the same features, but often organize them differently or offer different supersets of the same features. For example, both offer the Work Offline option, but when you choose to work offline with Communicator, you're asked whether you want to download mail and newsgroup postings first (IE4 doesn't do that). On the other hand, IE4 offers some printing options that Communicator does not have (such as more elaborate header and footer settings and the ability to automatically print linked files). Both browsers also have access to channels, but whereas IE4 incorporates Internet channel browsing into its browser interface, Communicator implements another application, Netcaster, for channel browsing.

The biggest difference between the two browsers, unsurprisingly, is the way they're incorporated into the operating system. IE4, of course, is perfectly incorporated: Using the browser, you can merrily navigate between online documents and local folders without skipping a beat. Sometimes you have to look twice to realize what part of Windows 98 you're in--you may have started out in IE4 but are now in My Computer because you needed a local file instead of an online document. Communicator is not well incorporated into the operating system. It's a browser that can cooperate well with Windows 98, but it is a separate application nonetheless. This doesn't mean that IE4 is necessarily superior to Communicator, only that IE4 was designed to be the basis of a specific operating system and Communicator was not.

Table 27.12 lists the more advanced options available to the browsers (we'll assume that both can open a new instance of the browser) and a comparison of which browser has it and which does not.

Table 27.12 Comparing and Contrasting IE4 and Communicator

Work offline with previously Yes, but does not Yes downloaded data prompt for one last download

The race looks pretty close, doesn't it? The feature lists match up pretty well, but the final response to the question of which browser is better seems to depend on two issues: stability and speed. When Netscape Communicator version 4.05 came out in April 1998, CNet published a review of the IE4 and Netscape Communicator (http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/Browsers4/ss01.html). In this poll, Netscape 4.05 won out because of its wider cross-platform availability: Netscape is available for every version of Windows 3.x and later, for the Macintosh, and for numerous flavors of UNIX. IE4 is available only for Windows, Macintosh, and Solaris, and it is fully implemented only on Windows. Regarding the issue of stability, a crash in Netscape means that the browser has died, not that an integral part of the operating system has died, as a crash means with IE4. IE4 comes out ahead in terms of performance and integration, however; the browser is faster, and all its features are available from within the browser, instead of requiring you to choose from a suite of miniapplications.

My personal experience in using both browsers extensively leads me to agree with CNet's review--but not completely. Netscape is slow to start (it takes time to load all those plug-ins), and it takes longer to load pages than does IE4. I have had more problems with Netscape crashing than with IE4 (Netscape seems to have an uneasy relationship with Eudora Light 3.05, which supports hyperlinks, but now and then when you click on one, Communicator crashes). When IE4 has had problems, I've been able to reset the desktop by clicking the recovery screen's link to restore desktop settings. I prefer the integrated interface of IE4 to the more modular one of Communicator, especially IE4's capability to display channels, marked links, search engines, and the History folder to one side of the browser display. However, Netscape Communicator has a couple features I wish IE4 had--particularly the capability to disable cookies selectively and the communication suite's independence of the Windows interface. CNet's right--it's easier to configure the entire browser from a single cascaded dialog box than by flipping through tabs with some odd organizational quirks. Netscape also fully supports Java; as of the spring of 1998, IE4 has become decaffeinated.

Netscape Communicator has one serious disadvantage when it comes to user profiles (the Windows method of providing a custom user interface to each user of a particular machine). User profiles store all user interface data (anything loaded in USER.DAT and stored in the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER)--so you can save application settings to the user profile. IE4 stores all user-specified browser configuration settings in this Registry key, as does Netscape Navigator 3.0, but Communicator also stores some settings in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to improve browser performance. Sadly, this arrangement means that you can't set Communicator preferences to be part of custom user profiles.

In short, if you're working in a cross-platform environment and want a browser that will work pretty well across all platforms, Communicator is the better choice. If you're working in a Windows 98 environment and want to take advantage of all the features of that operating system, you may be better off with IE4.

Conclusion

This chapter has presented browsing with Windows 98 in a nutshell. The two most popular PC-based Web browsers these days are IE4 and Netscape Communicator. With IE4, you can access integrated browsing in a way new to the browsing world because the Web and your computer become increasingly intermingled. Netscape Communicator doesn't offer the same degree of integration, but it has some nice features that IE4 lacks and is less likely to bring down your operating system in flames if it crashes. From the information in this chapter, you should be able to figure out which browser will work better for you and how to get the most out of the browser you select.

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