Neat Net Tricks Issue #53

IN THIS ISSUE:

01.  Get out of the jam
02.  Widen the DOS screen
03.  Undo the address
04.  Ungarble the gobbledygook
05.  IE 4.0 powerful print options
06.  Optimize your CD-ROM
07.  Browser of choice
08.  ICQ99 possible security leak
09.  Set your clock
10.  Log the modem
11.  Scan in DOS
12.  Expanding the address
13.  Just the FAX


01.  GET OUT OF THE JAM.  Sometimes a web designer seems to take 
pleasure in developing a site that won't let you out of it, no 
matter how many times you click on the Back button.  If you're 
using Netscape Communicator and tire of being captive, click on 
GO on the taskbar and, from the drop-down window, click on the 
first available unchecked listing.

02.  WIDEN THE DOS SCREEN.  When you go into DOS, typically the 
window is so small a large magnifying glass would come in handy.
To display a full DOS screen, with the DOS window open, touch 
ALT + Spacebar to pop up a menu.  Select Properties, click on 
the Screen tab, and under Usage select Full Screen and click OK.
Toss away the magnifying glass.

03.  UNDO THE ADDRESS.  A slick trick with Internet Explorer, 
if you've goofed and want to return to the previous URL in the 
address box, is simply CTRL + Z.

04.  UNGARBLE THE GOBBLEDYGOOK.  At times I get EMail which has 
inserted a bunch of garbled characters like %20 or A0=A0=A0.  
That's caused by the Email client sending the message as 
"quoted printable."  A quick fix to clear up the gibberish is 
to go to http://www.webnovice.com/formpost.htm and paste the 
garbled message in that site, click convert, and no more garble.

05.  IE 4.0 POWERFUL PRINT OPTIONS.  In Internet Explorer 4.0 
at any selected site, use CTRL+P to access the Print dialog 
box.  You can print the screen exactly as you see it with "As 
laid out on the screen," or you can print only the selected 
frame, or each frame individually, one at a time.  You also 
have the option of printing all linked documents but that may 
take a lot of paper if the site has many links; or, you can 
first see how many pages that really is with "Print table of 
links." That's a lot of print power for one little window!

06.  OPTIMIZE YOUR CD-ROM.  Chances are, your CD-ROM is doing 
its best, but it wouldn't hurt to check.  Click on 
START|Settings|Control Panel|System and then on the Performance 
tab, File System, and CD-ROM. Make sure the Supplemental Cache 
is slid all the way to the right. Assuming you have adequate 
RAM, you can run it in the full setting. Finally, in the 
Optimize Access Pattern, make sure your CD-ROM speed is 
correctly shown.

07.  BROWSER OF CHOICE.  If you create shortcut links to your 
desktop pointing to favorite Web pages, you may wish to specify 
which browser should open those shortcuts.  Go to your Windows 
Explorer, click on View, Folder Options, and the File Types 
tab.  Scroll down and double click on Internet Shortcut file 
type, click on New, and enter in the Action Window "View with 
Netscape" (or whatever your choice of browser) and then browse 
to enter the path of your selected browser.  Click OK and Close.

08.  ICQ 99A POSSIBLE SECURITY LEAK.  For those 21 million or 
so ICQ users out there, Leif Gregory believes he has found a 
security hole in ICQ99A which occurs when the user has an 
activated homepage.  Check yours by clicking on Services from 
the ICQ main window, then "ICQ page" and see if "Activate 
Homepage" is checked.  Leif provides some convincing evidence 
that this enables someone who knows your IP address to access 
and pull files from your hard drive.  Now, before becoming too 
paranoid, read his report at 
http://www.0rdernet.com/VBOK/newsletter/supplement_2.htm 
(and if you're unable to just click on this link and must 
retype, be forewarned that the "0" in "0rdernet" is a number 
and there's an underscore "_" between "supplement" and "2" 
which causes me to ask once again, are difficult URLs intended 
simply to test our keyboarding ability?

09.  SET YOUR CLOCK.  If your house is like mine, every clock 
tells a different time.  And my computer clock is probably the 
most inaccurate of all.  No more.  AboutTime at 
http://www.arachnoid.com/abouttime/ provides not one but four 
atomic clocks all in sync to set your internal clock at the 
touch of a button.

10.  LOG THE MODEM.  Its sometimes helpful to have a running 
log of what my modems doing.  If you agree, right click on 
your dial-up connection icon, select Properties, Configure, 
Connection, and click on the Advanced button.  Check the Record 
log file box.  That wont immediately create the log until the 
next time you log onto the Net. Anytime thereafter, use Notepad 
or any text editor to access MODEMLOG.TXT in your 
Windows subdirectory.

11.  SCAN IN DOS.  Scandisk should be run often, to make sure 
your system is operating at peak efficiency.  Some virus 
scanners and other applications may prevent this tool from 
completing its task in Windows. Do it in DOS by shutting down 
and Restart in MS DOS mode, and at the prompt C:\Windows> enter 
"scandisk" without the quotes.  When asked if you want to run 
surface scan, press enter.  After Scandisk finishes, X to leave 
the program and type exit and enter to reboot to Windows.

12.  EXPANDING THE ADDRESS.  Although this usually isn't 
necessary, it's interesting.  Type in just the one word of a 
website's URL, for example, "neatnettricks" (without the 
quotes) in Internet Explorer's address box, then touch 
CTRL+Enter and the address is completed, to include the domain.

13.  JUST THE FAX.  For those of us who are gray enough to 
remember the golden days of radio or the early days of TV, you 
may remember Jack Webb who starred as Joe Friday on Dragnet.  
Remember how, in questioning the  ladies, he would say "I just 
want the FAX ma'am."  OH?  You say that was FACTS?  Well, never 
mind, then.

Anyway, there seems to be a plethora of free FAX programs 
surfacing on the Net now.  With http://www.efax.com and 
http://www.callwave.com , you give an assigned toll number to 
your friends and, using a conventional FAX machine, they can 
send you a message which you view in your EMail, complete with 
graphics.  A different approach is taken with the system at 
http://www.fax4free.com which allows you to send text or MS 
Word document from your computer to anyone's FAX machine 
worldwide.  How do they do this without a charge?  Through 
advertising of course, and the FAX received in the "fax4Free" 
program is bordered right and left with commercial messages; 
but, that may be a small sacrifice in view of the savings with 
free phone calls anywhere.

Copyright 1999 by Jack Teems.  All rights reserved.