Geek speak - December 1997

Archie

Back in the olden days-before the Web took off like a rocket and prompted the development of powerful and easy-to-use search engines - files were distributed via Gopher and FTP sites using their respective protocols. And you used Archie to search the Internet. No, that's not a typo. Contrary to popular belief, the Internet existed long before the Web was invented.

Bandwidth

A measure of how much data can be transferred over a given pipeline in a given time.

Web browser

The program you use to view pages from the World Wide Web. You tell the browser which page you want by entering a URL or clicking on a link. When you do that, the browser goes out to the Internet and requests the page, and associated files, from the server on which the HTML file resides. The browser requests this page, using the HyperText Transfer Protocol, if you've requested a *.HTM or *.HTML document. A properly configured Web browser should be able to request other file types from other servers, using the proper protocol (which should be incorporated in the URL of the requested file). A Web browser suite can also include an e-mail program, newsreaders, HTML editors, kitchen sink...

Browser dependent features

Page features that different browsers display differently. In theory, this shouldn't happen. In practice, different browsers may not just display things differently, but fail to display at all, or crash when confronted with a browser dependent feature not of its own making. Avoid these problems in pages you write, by using standard HTML, or by testing your pages on a range of browsers (different browsers and different (older) versions of the main browsers).

Browser cache

A special disk cache used for storing HTML documents and the elements that make up a Web page. By caching a local copy, you can view a page again more quickly than if you had to retrieve it all over again via the net. A proxy cache does the same thing, for your ISP. You set limits for total size and the frequency of checks, in your browser set up. Be conservative with your settings, an active Web surfer can fill a couple of gigabytes of hard drive space in no time.

Frames

A relatively recent addition to HTML's bag of tricks. This technique enables Web page developers to create different elements of a single displayed page into separate HTML documents. This means you can keep some elements constant within your site, while changing others (see panel, You've been framed).

Freeware

Software that programmers distribute for use, free of charge. Like shareware, you will find it on BBS and Internet sites (compare shareware).

GIF

An acronym for Graphic Interchange Format, it was developed by CompuServe as an efficient way to exchange images. It is now one of the main image file formats used on the Web. GIF images are compressed, to enable faster transfers. (GIF is the subject of the Web generation's "you say tomayto, I say tomarto, conundrum. Some say it's pronounced with a hard "g", as in gift, without the "t", others say it's a soft j-like "g" as in jiffy, without the "y".

Gopher

Like Archie, gopher was one of the workhorses of the pre-Web Internet. Before HTTP, gopher protocols was one of the primary ways of distributing text documents. Gopher sites still exist. If you find one with the files you want, use it. It may be faster than retrieving the same file from an Web site. (Hint, you'll need to configure your Web browser to handle gopher requests.)

Hits

When a browser requests a Web page from a server, each file that makes up that page, from the actual text (HTML) page to all the graphics, icons, sound files, video clips, etc. is also requested. Each request represents a hit.

Internet Explorer

Microsoft's Web browser.

JPEG (or JPG)

The initials come from "Joint Photographic Experts Group" the group responsible for developing this graphic image format. Like GIF files, JPEG files are compressed files used on the Web. You can vary the amount of compression, thus juggling compression (and speed of transfer) against acceptable image quality.

Lynx

Before Internet Explorer, before Netscape, even before Mosaic, there was Lynx. This little speedster was the first, popular Web browser. And despite repeated reports of its demise, Lynx is still used. It's distributed by the University of Kansas. It runs on the UNIX OS. It displays text only. Now, for Lynx afficionados, this is a benefit, not a defect. Because, of its text only interface, Lynx sets a blistering pace. You should be able to understand and navigate standards-compliant Web pages that include graphic elements, although to view the images, you must download the graphics files and view them with a standalone file viewer. In contrast, non-compliant pages look like the wrong end of the dog's breakfast when viewed with Lynx.

Mosaic

The first graphical Web browser-the one that fanned the spark that set the net on fire. Mosaic was developed by National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign (UIUC) in 1993. Some of the developers (students and staff) that worked on Mosaic went on to form Netscape Communications (Netscape's founder Marc Andreesen, for example).

Netscape

A Web browser, and the flagship product of Netscape Communications.

Page views

A measurement technique that aggregates all the hits that constitute a Web page, and is therefore a better estimate of a page's or site's popularity than hits.

Shareware

Programs made available by developers on a "try before you buy" agreement. The understanding is that if you use the product, you will pay the developer a registration fee, for the privilege of continued use. Authors/developers usually offer incentives to register, such as more detailed documentation, additional features, disabled nag screens or free upgrades (compare freeware).

You've been framed!

Your first visit to a web site using frames may be a bit disconcerting. Although frames can be good navigational aids, especially for large, deep and complex sites. Frames can also leave a novice web surfer staring at the screen and feeling like a stunned mullet.

As defined in this month's Geek Speak, frames are an HTML device for aggregating pages. The screen you view is made of a number of separate HTML pages. Links within different frames work differently (that's where the confusion comes in to the picture). A common arrangement for sites that use frames is to create one static frame, in which you'll find a table of contents, or other navigational devices. A second frame will hold the variable information called up by the links in the static frame. Links in this second frame may call up additional variable information from the same site, or another site (naughty, naughty, shame on you if you don't get permission to do this first) or launch a new Web browser window. A third frame might hold an advertisement. And so on.

Other aspects of frames that can be confusing:

How to save or print the section you want from a site with frames
How to bookmark or favourite a specific page within a framed site.

N one of these is difficult once you get use to frames. The key to understanding what's going on is to recognise that no matter what it looks like on your screen, different sections of the web page are actually discrete HTML documents, each with its own unique URL. "No-frame" frames make it harder to distinguish where you are, because you don't actually see boundaries between the frames. The static portion of the page is a dead giveaway though.

So the first step towards taking control of framed sites, is being able to tell your browser that you're giving it an instruction about one of the individual URLs, rather than for the URL that designates the aggregate of frames that make up the screen view at the "main entrance" to the site. Until you do, you're liable to be frustrated by printing the (static) navigation frame or "favoriting" the main entrance to a framed site, over and over again. It's a good thing to have a bookmark/favorite for the main entrance, but if you've found some indispensable bit of information hidden layers deep in a site with thousands of pages, you probably don't want to have to navigate to that page every time you want to revisit it.

So log on, grab your mouse, fire up your browser, navigate to a site with frames and follow along after me. You'll need your mouse because as far as I know, there's no way to do this using keystrokes alone. (I've tried.) Alas, Bill, Marc and their combined multitude of minions are part of the point and click generation. Navigation sans mouse is becoming a lost art.

Instructions

Note: These instructions are for Netscape Navigator Gold v 3.1 (NNG) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) v 3.0. If the most recent versions of both browsers use the same techniques, good on ya guys. If Bill and Marc's merry minions have come up with something entirely new and different, would one of our trend-setting members dash off a set of instructions for the latest versions for us to run in the February issue of PC Update? Please.

NNG
To save or print a frame:

Left click on any non-active part of the frame (that is to say, not a link or an image map) then click on File, Save Frame As to save, or File, Print Frame to print.
Netscape will prompt you with a frame name, which is handy if you want to reconstruct a framed screen view, and don't want to rename files. Netscape also offers a Print Preview option, which helps frugal types (like yours truly) check if the last page is worth printing.

To bookmark a frame:

Right click on any non-active part of the frame, a menu will pop up, from which you select Add Bookmark.

To bookmark the site's main entrance:

Left click on any non-active part of the screen view, then Bookmark and Add Bookmark.

MSIE
To save or print a frame:

Left click on any non-active part of the frame, then click on File, Save as File, to save the frame. To print the frame, left click on any non-active part of the frame, then File, Print.

M SIE doesn't prompt you with the frame's actual file name. If you want to use that, you can right click on the frame in question, then Properties from which you can cut and paste the file name. Or left click, then File, Properties, again, from which you can cut and paste the file name.

To add a frame to your list of Favorites:

Right click on the frame in question. A menu will appear. Select Add to Favorites.

To add a site's main entrance to your list of Favorites:

Left click on any portion of the screen view. Then select Favorites, Add to Favorites. MSIE makes it much easier to organise Favorites because the Add to Favorites dialog box includes the Create in option. Netscape simply adds the bookmark to the end of the list.

Reprinted from the December 1997 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia