Kokomo PC Users Group
Message from the president:
There were 16 members present expecting a presentation on the subject of both MP3 and DVD. I couldn’t be there because of another wedding re-enactment. The scheduled speaker couldn’t be there either and we don’t know why. I left a message for him to call me when he returned home and I never heard from him. Marcy Young seemed to do a fine job of turning the meeting into a talk session, so all was not lost. My apologies to those of you who were disappointed and/or inconvenienced.
For our December 14th meeting Tim Kling of Kling Computers will lightly brush on the
obsolete topics of both MP3 and DVD and then go on to tell us about the things we can
expect in the year 2001. The last time Tim spoke to us his subject was Windows 98. There were more people at that meeting than any other meeting during my Presidency. Tim is both interesting and knowledgeable so I expect another outstanding turnout.
Jerry Henry, our newsletter editor is willing to serve another year. Richard Coop, our
treasurer is also willing to serve another year. We functioned, after a fashion, this year without a Vice-President. Rodney Malkoff is willing to serve another year and Marcy Young will be around in one capacity or another. Perhaps this group can function without either a President or Vice-President. Time will tell. With two guys trying so hard to be President of the United States maybe we can recruit the eventual loser to lead our group.
Just like Tina Turner’s One Last Time and Barbara Streisand’s Last Live Concert this is my third Last President’s Message. With three officers willing to continue to serve it looks like a good opportunity for someone interested in either of the top two positions. Speak up, I’m sure you’ll be heard.
Even though my E-mail is still not working. I did manage to download the wonderful STRESS-RELAX program onto a floppy disc. I gave it to Marcy Young and if you are interested, I’m sure she will either loan it to you, make you a copy or otherwise get you a copy.
I’m up to Volume 56 of Larry’s Favorites and fully expect the project to run well over 100
volumes. That’s a lot of music and a lot of dubbing time. It’s also a lot of enjoyment to
someone who loves music as much as I do.
Our experiences with Staples has lead us to dis-associate ourselves with them. We no longer recommend them and this newsletter contains no advertising for Staples.
It has been a privilege, an honor and a pain in the neck to serve as your President for the last 2 3/4 years. Now it’s over and I wish you GOOD LUCK in finding new leadership.
Larry L. Thompson
Group President ‘98-‘00
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DELETING MESSENGER FOLDERS A subscriber recently wrote: "I have often tried to delete folders from Communicator to no avail. It's easy to make or rename a folder. But short of reinstalling Communicator, dumping any folder material seems impossible. I can move files from the folders to the trash and empty the trash, but I can't get rid of a folder." Bear in mind that certain folders in Messenger are vital to its proper operation, so you can't delete them. The Drafts, Templates, Sent, and Unsent Messages folders fall under this category. You can delete them, but they reappear the next time you start Netscape. You can move, rename, and delete any other folders you create at your discretion. In the case of folders for filtering and organizing incoming mail, Netscape will create any folders involved if it doesn't find them. For example, suppose you have a filter set up to move all Topica/Tipworld mail to a folder called Tips. If you delete the Tips folder but forget to disable the filter, the next time you receive a message that matches the filter's criteria, Netscape will re-create the Tips folder and place the message there. Any other problems you have with folders may stem from a corruption of your Netscape program. In that case, reinstalling may be your only option.
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ECLEANER GETS RID OF HEADERS Diligent reader Eric Bloch informed me of a handy device for people who send and receive a lot of forwarded messages. He suggested using a freeware program called eCleaner. When you want to clean up a message and remove the angle bracket (>) characters and headers from previous forwards, highlight the text of the message and click Edit, Copy. Then run eCleaner. It removes all superfluous text from the message. You can then paste the cleaned message back into a new Netscape Messenger message. For more information or to download eCleaner, browse to http://members.tripod.com/schin26/index.
htm
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T I P O F T H E D A Y * *
Admit it. In your haste and excitement, you didn't make a startup disk when you installed Win9x. Don't worry. You can still
redeemyour self. Open the Add/Remove ProgramsControl Panel item and click on the Startup Disk tab. Then just put a diskette in your diskette drive and click onthe Create Disk button.
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T I P O F T H E D A Y * *
Right-click on the My Computer icon and select Properties from the context menu. Click on the Device Manager tab, then
the Print button. Select the "All Devices and System Summary" radio button, then click on OK. This will give you more information about your hardware, IRQs, ports, memory usage, devices and drivers than you ever wanted to know. Keep this printout handy for future reference.
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MOVING FORWARD IN REVERSE You can use the Forward and Back buttons on your Navigator toolbar to move to a page several steps away from the current page. To skip back several steps to a page you viewed a few minutes ago, right-click the Back button on the toolbar--you'll see a list of the last ten pages you visited. Select one from the list to go directly to that page--there's no need to click the Back button three or four times. The same is true for the Forward button. Say you just clicked the Back button--you can return to the page you just left by right-clicking the Forward button and selecting the last page on the list.
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DISABLE SMARTBROWSING TO COVER YOUR TRACKS "When I type a URL in the location box, Netscape autofills from some past history file. How can you clear the contents of this autofill so other users can't see where you've been? I've tried clearing Cache, History, and so on, to no avail." Netscape does this for the sake of convenience, but it can be annoying and a minor security risk. Make sure when you clear the Cache and History that you also clear the Location Bar. You'll find this button under the Navigator options of your Netscape Preferences. Do this periodically to make sure Netscape doesn't finish your sentences for you
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How do you use Rainbow Colorize in Netscape Composer?" The Rainbow Colorize feature is a simple HTML trick that would take several minutes and keystrokes to accomplish if Netscape didn't automate it. To use it, create a new page in Netscape Composer. Write some text and select it using the mouse. Click Tools, Character Tools, Rainbow Colorize. Using HTML color values, Netscape will gradually change the color of each letter in your text so the entire selected text appears as a rainbow from left to right. Viewers will notice this VERY gradual change only with at least five or six words of text. You can click View, Source to see how the HTML does this trick. If I went for this affect, I certainly wouldn't want to do it all manually. Whew
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THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF NETSCAPE "My father-in-law does not read English very well. Is there a way for Communicator 4.7 to change between English and Spanish on demand? Or can he make 4.7 strictly Spanish? Also, is there a way I can write to him in English through e-mail so he can receive it in Spanish, and he can write back in Spanish for me to receive in English?" All excellent questions. Unfortunately, Netscape does not provide all the answers. There are international versions of Netscape available. French, Spanish, and Chinese are the most popular besides English, but there are others as well. You can add language support to your existing version of Communicator. Sometimes a site will provide several versions of a page in different languages (included in the HTML source of the page). If you have installed support for more than one language AND the site you are visiting offers a version in another language, Netscape can show you the version you prefer. These options are set in your Netscape Preferences. Click Edit, Preferences and select Languages Under Navigator. You will see a list of the languages your copy of Communicator supports. To install support for other languages, click the Add button and follow the instructions. You must then sort the languages in order of preference. Netscape will present these sites in your first-choice language, your second choice, and so on. Remember, adding support for other languages is not the same as having a non-English version of the program. Visit Netscape's home page for more information on downloading a version other than English. http://www.netscape.com Because U.S. programmers wrote Netscape, it is subject to U.S. government regulations regarding security. Therefore, the non-English versions do not have the same level of encryption for secure browsing. Also, to my knowledge you cannot switch between an English and a non-English version of Communicator on the fly. They can exist on the same system, but they will certainly conflict and cause errors when you run them together. As for as your last question, we would suggest downloading or purchasing a good multilingual translator for the Web. Different companies offer several such programs. Search for references to Web translators and pick the one that's best for your needs. A translator will almost surely slow down your browsing experience, but many are quite accurate and may be just what you're looking for.
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UPGRADING COMMUNICATOR 101 Many Netscape users use older versions of Netscape -- some dating back to 3.0. That's fine, but remember: when you take the leap from 3.x to 4.x (and it's a big leap--the two versions are radically different) you need to uninstall the old version first, before you begin installing the new one. Many users have e-mailed me about superfluous folders in their Netscape program directory and erroneous data in their address book. These are usually remnants of a previous installation of Netscape. Even when you uninstall a previous version, Netscape leaves behind certain files for the new version to import. They take up very little total space and could probably stay there forever without your noticing. It's safe to delete them if you want to, but if you plan to upgrade, you'll need them so you can maintain all those Bookmarks and address book entries you slaved over for hours at a time.
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COMMUNICATOR 4.X JAVASCRIPT/COOKIES VULNERABILITY Netscape Communicator 4.x will grant remote access to local html files (including the user's Bookmark file and cache) if you have both cookies and JavaScript enabled. This is possible because a hacker can embed JavaScript in a cookie--it then gets written to COOKIES.TXT and executed. In such a case the recipient's system will treat the code as local code and allow it to interact with local data. The attacker must know the path to the user's profile directory, since the JavaScript code must specify this path. There is no fix for this problem, but as a quick work-around you could disable cookies and JavaScript in Netscape Preferences. Click Edit, Preferences and select Advanced. Uncheck Enable JavaScript and select Disable Cookies. Furthermore, make sure your User Profile is not named default. You can change the name using the Profile Manager. For more information, browse to http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1717169.html
NOT-SO-BLIND CARBON COPY A reader recently wrote: "To reduce the number of forward e-mail addresses, I have been sending under blind carbon copy (BCC) as undisclosed recipients those addresses to which I send. However, the addresses of all undisclosed recipients are appearing on the e-mail's recipients. What should I do to keep all e-mail addresses off this list?" If you are using only the BCC option, then none of your recipients can see the other addresses--the message will arrive with no recipients listed. Only names listed in the To or CC field appear to all recipients, so if you don't use To or CC, no one can see any addresses. For example, suppose you are sending a message to Tom and a BCC to Dick and Harry. In the To field of your new message, type Tom and press Enter. A new To field appears below the first. Click it and select BCC. Put Dick and Harry as recipients of a BCC. When Tom receives the message, he will see only himself as recipient. When Dick and Harry receive the message, they will see Tom listed as a recipient, but Dick will not know that Harry also received a copy, and vice versa. Furthermore, Tom will not know that you sent any other copies. You can have as many To and BCC fields as you require. If you change all To fields to BCC, none of your recipients will know who else got a copy. This technique not only preserves anonymity, but also gets rid of lengthy lists of recipients at the top of the message.
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TEMPORARY FILES A subscriber recently wrote: "When I access the Netscape Message Center, Local Mail files, I see what look like some temporary files. They have names like X0RJ6A3R.TMP AND X1V0EEPK.TMP. These files can contain many messages (one has 1376), some dating back to 1998. How arethese files created, and can I safely delete them?" Netscape most likely creates the temporary files as an archive of your sent and received messages. If you have a lot of messages still in your in-box or in your trash folder in Messenger, files like those you described store this data. Do clean out all unnecessary messages regularly. In Messenger, delete those you don't need anymore. Also delete the messages in your Sent folder unless you have a specific reason for keeping them. These are just copies of messages you have sent. When you have deleted everything you don't need within Messenger, make sure you empty the trash folder. Click File, Empty Trash On Local Mail. Then click File, Compact Folders to compress all your messages and save some hard disk space. Sometimes Netscape creates a temp file for a particular task, then forgets to delete it. If the above steps don't take care of the files you are concerned about, it's probably safe to delete them manually using Windows Explorer. But try the above technique first.
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Larry Thompson, 457-5622
Treasurer Richard Coop Sr., 459-8731
Member Services Rodney Malkoff, 453-1159
Newsletter Editor Jerry Henry 453-4144
Newsletter Distribution Marcy Young
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