• URL: This means the address of a homepage (http://www.servername.com).

• Email address: I hope this is pretty much straight forward but some people do not know what it means. This is a Email address (you@yourserver.com).

• Gif: This is a name for an image (usually animated, but not always). Gifs have a higher quality to them compared with JPEGs. That is why JPEGs usually load faster than GIFs, because JPEGs are lower in quality.

• JPEG: Another type of name for an image, used mostly for big images (reasons are described above in GIFs definition).

• Sometimes when you click on a MIDI file you will get a message saying something to this effect "Null, cannot open selected file" . What this means is that your cache (pronounced cash) is full and cannot open or hold any more data. If you are using a Netscape browser, go to the options menu, network preferences and cache, then you can just hit the clear memory button in cache. Make sure to hit the OK button at the bottom of the network preferences cache menu or else it will not totally clear everything. After you have done all of that your browser should reload, and you're ready to surf again!

• If you want a good free Email address, go to this site: Hotmail-this is the best free Email provider that you could ever find!

• Another OK free Email provider is Net@ddress-not as good as Hotmail in my opinion but it does have a POP3 option to it

• If something is taking forever to load, hit the stop button then hit the reload button. This should help in speeding up the loading of a particular page or image.

• Website (Web Site), Webpage (Web Page), and Homepage (Home Page) all mean the same thing.

• How can we get things for free when we know that the providers of the free service have to pay money for our free service and will still do not have to pay anything at all? Well almost all, free services have banners all over their site, these are the sponsors of the free service providers. In other words when you click on one of those banners the providers of the free service get about 3 cents from the people that made the banner that you just clicked on. So one word of advice, if you really like a free service on the Net, click the banners on the free servers site to help the providers out. If you do this enough times you might get more features on your free service to make it just a little bit better!

• All Web browsers have an option for book-marking, sometimes called hot lists or favorites. Whichever name they have, they're a list of Web pages you like to visit. This is very useful because you don't have to write down the URL somewhere then lose it the next day, also you don't have to memorize it to type out the URL every time you want to visit the site.

• (taken from Internet For Dummies calendar) Here's the official way to go to a page whose URL you have: First, choose File, Open Location (or press Ctrl+L). Then type the URL (eg. http://dummies.com) in the window that pops up. Then press Enter. However, you can save a keystroke by clicking on the Location window at the top of the Netscape window, and then press Enter.

• (taken from Internet For Dummies calendar) When you e-mail arrives, unless you are one of the lucky few whose computers have a permanent Internet connection, the mail doesn't get delivered to your computer automatically. Mail gets delivered instead to a mail server, which is sort of like your local post office. In order for you to actually get your mail, you have to go and get it. Well, actually you mail program has to go and get it. And in order for you to send mail, your mail program has to take it to the post office.

• URL= Uniform Resource Locator.

• (little tip) Some families tend to fight less when they're communicating by e-mail. When people have time to think about what they're going to say before they say it, it comes out better.

• The domain for providers in the USA and Canada usually ends with three letters (called the zone) that gives you a clue to what kind of place it is. Commercial organizations end with ".com". Educational institutions end with .edu, networking organizations end with ".gov", military sites end with ".mil", and other organizations end with ".org". Outside the USA, domains usually end with a country code such as ".fr" for France, and ".ca" for Canada.

• (Something for real newbies) When people these days talk about surfing the Net, they often mean checking out sites on the World Wide Web. The Web, unlike earlier Net services, combines text, pictures, sound and animation, and it lets you move around with a click of you computer mouse. The software used to navigate the Web is known as a browser (eg. Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera...etc.)

• An Internet system called usenet is an enormous, distributed, online bulletin board with about 700 million characters of messages in more that 12000 different topic groups flowing daily. Topics range from nerdy computer geek junk to various different hobbies to endless political arguments to just plain silliness. The most widely read usenet group is one that features selected jokes, of course most of them are pretty funny :).

• (From Internet For Dummies) The most widely used graphics file format on the Internet is CompuServe's GIF (Graphics Interchange Format). GIF is well standardized, so you'll never have problems with files written by one program being unreadable by another.

• (From Internet For Dummies) When Netscape retrieves a page you've asked to see, it stores the page on disk. If you ask for the sane page again five minutes later, Netscape doesn't have to retrieve the page again. The space Netscape uses to store pages is called its cache (pronounced "cash" because it's French). The more space you tell Netscape to use for its cache, the faster pages appear the second time you look at them.

• (From Internet For Dummies) A few years back, a bunch of digital photography experts got together and formed the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG). JPEG is designed specifically to store digitized full-color or black-and-white photographs, not computer-generated cartoons or anything else. As a result, JPEG does a fantastic job of storing photos and a lousy job of storing anything else.

• (From Internet For Dummies) DON'T SEND YOUR ENTIRE MESSAGE (EMAIL) IN CAPITAL LETTERS. It comes across as shouting and is likely to get you some snappy comments suggesting that you do something about the stuck Shift key on your keyboard. Computer keyboards have handled lowercase since around 1970, so avail yourself of this modern technical marvel and aid to literate writing.

• (From Internet For Dummies) A JPEG version of a photo is about one-fourth the size of the corresponding GIF file. (JPEG files can be any size because the format allows a trade-off between size versus quality when the file is created.) The main disadvantage of JPEG is that it's considerably slower to decode than GIF, but the files are so much smaller that it's worth it.

• (From personal experience and Internet For Dummies) Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a party line over which you can have more or less interesting conversations (sometimes for four hours) with other users all over the Earth. IRC seems to be frequented primarily by bored college students, but you never know whom you'll encounter.

• lol or LOL: Short for "Laugh Out Loud".

• *s*: Short for smile.

• :) This is just a small happy face.

• Lots more to come!

Please Email me with your comments and/or questions! Email me!


Last Updated January 02/98.