 |
 |
Page 2
As stated on the preceeding page, I just got through a teaching/learning experience by giving a course on computer basics to a group of students here on Manitoulin through Cambrian College.
I have to admit that it was my first time at the front of a classroom other than years and years ago when Christian Brothers called me up to the front of the class for a demonstration of corporal punishment. It was rather refreshing not having to bend over and have a goaltenders hockey stick applied to my bottomside.
So, .......to continue on...
E-Mail Helper Cont'd:
So what do I do?
The trick here is to install a helper to act as a front-end to your e-mail client and there are many out there to choose from. The one that I'm using right now is doing a very adequate job for me and I recommend you use it. Once installed, you get rid of your desktop shortcut to Thunderbird or whatever e-mail client you are using and you use your new "helper shortcut" to check your e-mail.
Download Pop Tray (less than a meg download). Install it and now set up the account information using the image below as a guide.
Simply modify the above to reflect your settings. Also, if you click on the Options Tab you can modify the settings to have Pop Tray automatically check for new mail - I have mine set to check every ten minutes.
So what you have is a new icon in your Systray (the area beside the clock at the bottom of the monitor) and if you have Check For Mail At Startup ticked, your e-mail announces itself whenever somebody sends you mail.
And if you have AVG anti-virus (see above) running on your 'puter it can be configured to automatically check all incoming e-mail and you get a visual of it being done as it is being processed.
So how does it work?
Keep an eye on that little systray icon and when your server finds mail you get a flashing icon. Right-click the icon and select Show Messages. Remember - this mail is still on your provider's server and this is where you can just get rid of spam and not be forced to download it to your e-mail client. So if you had 5 messages showing, you could delete them as you see fit. If you are not sure what they are you can get a look at them by clicking on individual mails (highlighting them) and hitting Delete after you Preview them.
This is the Preview above
This is the mail being deleted from the server
So once you have deleted all the spam and mail you don't want to look at it is only a matter of clicking on the Run E-Mail Client button and the remaining mail will be downloaded from the server to your Inbox. (If there was no mail left you would click the To Tray button.)
That does two things - it opens up your e-mail client and puts your Pop Tray icon back in the systray where it continues to check your mail for you at the interval you set it up for.
Pop Tray is a very sweet little tool and you'll wonder how you got along without it. Also, you can configure filters into Pop Tray so you can blacklist specific e-mail addresses. Go into Options then White / Blacklist. Just be careful with this feature - If I send you an e-mail, I expect an answer!
|
Personalize Your Browser:
I made it very clear to my students that they would be better off not using Microsoft Internet Explorer to surf the net. There are a multitude of other browsers out there that might save them time and trouble.
And why is that?
-
The primary reason is hackers seem to concentrate on Microsoft software making security a concern, and
- Microsoft does not follow accepted practices and as such websites don't always validate properly causing the browser to display differently than compliant browsers.
Internet Explorer continues to lead in usage, maybe because it is bundled into the operating system you installed on your 'puter. However, rival browsers like Opera, Netscape, Firefox and others are slowly eating into IE's lead. The pro IE school of thought says that their browser is perfectly safe as long as you have an up to date anti-virus running, a firewall, and your Windows Updates are set to automatic update. The Firefox crowd says not - it's your call which browser you wish to use. In my case, I've got most of them loaded so I can check pages I build to make sure they show the way I intend them to.
For this section, I'll be working with IE. I'll try to get around to a section on Personalizing Firefox.
Pictured below is a cut-down of a screen capture of the browser I'm using. Clicking it will load a larger picture in a new window. Ill be discussing that window so you might wish to minimize it to get back to the text that follows.
Referring back to the other window, the top section is the Title Bar that contains (left to right)
-
The IE icon
- The name of the page as designated by the web designer
- "- Windows Internet Explorer" is put there by the browser
- The extra left-pointing arrow is there as I use two monitors so it won't be there for you
- The usual Minimize, Restore and Close Buttons
Below that is the Back and Forward Button that allows you to go back to the previous page in history or go forward. Beside that is the address bar and I'll describe its contents - the url! (left to right)
-
The IE icon
- The favicon is determined by the web designer. If I didn't plug one in my code, the normal IE icon would appear there
- "http://" - the protocol tells the web browser what type server it is communicating with. You will sometimes see ftp: instead
- "www." - This part of the URL stands for World Wide Web.
- "manitoulinislandindex.com" - this is the unique domain name that every website must have. If you have ever heard people talking about IP Addresses, this is the vehicle that computers discern website locations but to make this aspect easier for us to remember these are translated into domain names. Afterall, 66.235.212.122 is not that easy to remember.
- ".com" - this is the top level domain. If somebody wanted to use my domain name they could using a different top level domain. .ca is used for a Canadian site; .edu would be used by educational institutions. Then you can get into country codes: .uk would be used by a Brirish site; and so on.
- "/" - a slash can be emplyed as a seperator
- A filename such as "newsletter" may be present or it might be "mylogo" indicating it is a picture.
- A three-digit file extension would follow and in the case of mylogo, it could be .jpg
So as you can see, there is a lot of information in that simple url. The long name, by the way, is Uniform Resource Locator. Yeah - that's why everybody calls it url!
At the end of the address bar is a drop-down arrow. Clicking that arrow will show all the addresses of web pages you have typed into your address bar. And clicking one of them will link you to that site.
Beside the drop-down arrow is the Refresh button. When you have a website showing in your browser and you click Refresh, the page is reloaded from the internet. It is possible that you are on a page and it is not the most recent version of that page - I could have just recoded that page and the information you are looking at does not reflect my new content. The page may have loaded from your Temporary Internet File, better known as cache. So if you hit Refresh, you will know that you have the up to date version.
Some web designers will build in an automatic refresh after so many seconds. If you are reading through a page and all of a sudden it flashes - that is what is happening. I refrain from doing this as it can be very irritating when reading a long piece of text.
|
|
 |
 |
Top of Page
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
" in my dreams "
I would've had this company do a web page, but Marie wasn't too keen on it.
Go ahead and call me henpecked. You weren't the guy who had to sleep with her.
We could have wiped out the Nazis in eight weeks if only we had this guy in our IT department.
I asked him but he had the idea that I was connected to a porn site.
Tony Curtis was hot, but I would never had sung to the President if this guy was born twenty years earlier.
I bet I'd still be alive too!
Yes, it's true
I sleep very soundly and when I do I am prone to talking with dead people and sponges. Don't let that scare you away - you can depend on a well-designed website and it is guaranteed not to be spooky.
I'm just a cartoon character from
Day by Day but I know a whiner winner when I see one. Visit us on our web page.
And Please...
If it's past your bedtime and you can't sleep, please think of your good friends around the world who just may or may not be in bed.
Being Indispensable
Sometime, when you are feeling important,
Sometime, when your ego's in full bloom,
Sometime, when you take it for granted,
You're the only qualified one in the room...
Sometime, when you feel that your going,
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these few simple instructions
And see how it humbles your soul.
Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up tio your wrist,
Pull it out, and the hole that is remaining,
Is the measure of how you'll be missed!
You may splash all you please when you enter,
You can stir up the water galore ~
But stop and you'll find in a minute,
That it looks quite the same as before.
The moral of this quaint observation,
Is to do the very best that you can,
Be proud of yourself, but remember,
There is only one indispensable man.
This above Is Dedicatated To The Memory Of Correctional Sergeant Hal Burchfield
12/16/47 - 6/8/85
Killed In The Line Of Duty
San Quentin State Prison, California Department of Corrections
Dang,
Looks like I gotta find some content to fill this thing up more...
'You know Bert, that POKO
sure is opinionated !'
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
