The Browser made-up of the following applications:

1. Navigator: a World-wide-web browser
2. Mail: an email and usenet reader
3. Instant Messenger
4. Composer: an HTML Editor
5. Profile Manager: user setup utility
6. Address Book#
7. Smart Update#
8. Net2Phone#

# = Will not be discussed in this write-up

For more information on using these browser than is provided here, start up your browser and select Help >> Help Contents. This is a very thorough tutorial on using and configuring the web browser.

User Profile Manager

As frequently happens, more than one person might be an active user of your browser and might prefer or require a look-and-feel that is different from other users of the application. Or a single user, for many reasons, might themselves need more than a single look-and-feel set.

A profile is a grouping of settings, preferences, bookmarks and mailbox. When a user starts the program, they will select a profile to use for that session of browsing.

Profiles are managed by the 'Profile Manager'. When Navigator is started, you will be asked to select a profile to use for this session. If no profiles have been created, the Profile Manager will be invoked automatically and you will be asked to create a new profile (this is the same as if you had pressed the 'New' button in the 'Profile Manager' application directly). To run Navigator, at least one profile must exist.

The Profile Manager has three buttons: Manage Profiles, Start Netscape/Mozilla, and Exit. Manage Profiles opens a new window where you can add, edit and remove profiles; Start Netscape/Mozilla invokes Navigator once a profile has been selected; Exit quits the Profile Manager.

Creating a new profile is easy. The first window is wholly descriptive; read it and hit Next.

1. In the second window, enter:
     New Profile Name: Choose a name for you profile
     Folder: Use default, unless you have a specific folder you want to use
     Region Selection: Choose your language settings
   Hit Finish.

When you first open your browser, it will ask for activation information. You can enter information if you like, as this registers with Netscape for a Netscape account, but it is entirely optional. If you wish to bypass the screen, hit CANCEL and then CANCEL on the next window. Netscape/Mozilla should then start up.

To create or modify profiles, just go back to the Profile Manager through the start menu.

Configuring your browser for Mail and News

Netscape/Mozilla inherits information for its mail and news settings from the profile under which the session is run. To modify these settings or to configure them if they were not completely supplied when the profile was created:

Setting Up Mail

1. Start your browser
2. At the bottom left hand corner of the screen should be a group of icons. The second from the left should look like a piece of mail. Click that to begin the mail program.
3. If this is the first time you run the mail program, you will get a New Account Wizard screen. This screen will walk you though your account setup. To follow through the steps, continue to the next step. If you have already setup your account, you will not be presented with this screen.
4. Pick the type of account you want to setup.
     Click ISP or email provider.
   Hit next.
5. Enter
     Your name: <your name>
     Email address: <your login>@greenapple.com
   Hit Next.
6. Enter
     Server Type: POP Mail Server
     Incoming Server: mail.greenapple.com
     Outgoing Mail [SMTP]: mail.greenapple.com
   Hit Next.
7. User Name: <your login>
   Hit Next.
8. Account Name: defaults to your email address, but can be whatever you like.
   Hit Next.
9. Verify that your username and email address are correct.
   Hit Finish.

Setting Up Newsgroup Access

1. Pick the type of account you want to setup.
     Newsgroup Account.
   Hit next.
2. Enter
     Your name: <your name>
     Email address: <your login>@greenapple.com
   Hit Next.
3. Server Name: news.greenapple.com
   Hit Next.
4. Account Name: defaults to news server, but can be whatever you like.
   Hit Next
5. Verify your email address are correct.
   Hit Finish

Using your browser.

The Navigator display is divided into five regions. From top to bottom they are: a row of pull-down menus, the Navigation Toolbar ,a Personal Toolbar, the Page window / My Toolbar, the status bar and the taskbar.

The pull-down menus are located at the top of the Navigator window and start with 'File' on the left and end with 'Help' on the right. A full description of the pull-down menus may be found in the section following this one.

Along the pull down menu is the bookmark list. Bookmarks are used to keep, on a permanent basis, a list of URLs that are frequently visited. The Bookmarks icon displays a pop-up menu with links and menu commands to add/edit your bookmarks (on Mac OS, this bookmarks are only available through the menu select Window >> Bookmarks). Bookmarks are a convenient means of page retrieval which can help you personalize your Internet access.

The Navigation Toolbar is the strip of buttons starting on left with the 'Back' arrow and ending on right with the 'Stop' button. These are click-able buttons to help you quickly with tasks you'll most commonly carry out. All the buttons on the toolbar have an equivalent found in a pull-down menu. To go to a known site, enter the web address on the Location line. A web address is more commonly called a URL, a Universal Resource Locator. Typically a URL will begin with the prefix 'http://' (e.g., http://www.greenapple.com); this may be omitted, however, when specified on the location line (e.g., www.greenapple.com). Moreover, this version of Netscape/Mozilla will attempt to match a URL as it is being typed with URLs that exist in its history folder. To hide/show the Navigation Toolbar, select View >> Hide/Show Navigation Toolbar.

Besides directly entering a URL on the Location line, most pictures and underlined text will be links to other web pages. These are called hyperlinks. To move through a hyperlink, click on the image or underlined text.

The Personal Toolbar (not available on Mac OS) is located below the Location line. Here you can create buttons to link to your favorite websites and discussion groups. The default set of buttons link to pages on Netscape's website. Those buttons are Home, My Netscape, Net2Phone (if installed), Download and Customize.

The HTML viewer takes up most of the Netscape/Mozilla frame and is the region in which homepages are displayed.

The My Toolbar area of the screen allows you to look up customized, up to the minute information. To turn it on/off, go to the VIEW pull down menu and click on My Toolbar.

When Navigator is downloading (i.e. retrieving a homepage or a file), comets will fly past the 'N' located in the upper right corner. Also on the status bar at bottom, Navigator will give a percentage of download completion at left and indicates this percentage visually by a bar at the bottom left.

The taskbar is located at the below the status bar. There are five icons: Navigator, Mail, Instant Messenger, Composer, and Address book. Each of the icons in the taskbar start up a different Netscape/Mozilla application.

Pull-down Menu Items

Across the top of Netscape/Mozilla Navigator are a row of pull-down menus, starting with 'File' on the left and ending with 'Help' on the right. Below are descriptions of those menu items.

Using Mail

Mail is the application used to send and receive email. To start Mail, select it within a Netscape/Mozilla application, such as Navigator, select Tasks >> Mail or click on the letter icon on the taskbar.

The Mail Mailbox is divided into seven regions: a row of pull-down menus across the top, the Mail Toolbar, the folders list, the message list, my sidebar, the message display window and the taskbar.

The pull-down menus are located at the top of the Mail window and start with 'File' on the left and end with 'Help' on the right. A description of the pull-down menus may be found in the section following this one.

The Mail Toolbar is the strip of buttons starting on left with the 'Get Msg' button and ending on right with the 'Stop' button. These are click-able buttons to help you quickly with tasks you'll most commonly carry out. All the buttons on the toolbar have an equivalent found in a pull-down menu. To hide / show the Mail Toolbar, select View >> Toolbars >> Mail Toolbar.

By default there are six folders: Inbox, email received; Unsent Messages, email waiting to be sent; Drafts, email being worked and not ready to be sent; Sent, copies of all email that has been sent; Trash, messages which have been deleted are moved into this folder where they are kept until deleted from there when they then are deleted from the hard drive and are unrecoverable; Samples, sample messages that may be composed and sent using Mail. To switch from one folder to another, click on the folder name being displayed or click on the down arrow on the right to display a drop-down box of folders.

Each message within a folder line is listed by subject, sender and date / time in the Preview Pane. To read an email, single click on one of the items listed in the Preview Pane. The complete message will then be displayed in the Message Viewer.

Pull-down Menu Items

Across the top of the Mail Mailbox is a row of pull-down menus, starting with 'File' on the left and ending with 'Help' on right. Many of the items are identical in form and function to the menu items given in the description of Navigator above. Below are menu items important to Mail not given in the description of Navigator's pull-down menu items:

Composing and Sending An Email

To compose and send an email, you must bring up the email composer. From the Mail window, click on 'New Msg' on the Toolbar or select Message >> New Message from pull-down menu.

The email composer is divided into seven regions. From top to bottom they are pull-down menus, Mail Toolbar, Message Addressing Area, Subject Line Formatting toolbar, message text area, and status bar. As with other toolbars in Netscape/Mozilla, the functionality of the buttons on the Mail Toolbar are also available in the pull-down menus.

As an example, let's suppose we wanted to send a simple hello to our friend Joe who has an email address of joe@joes.com. We also want to send the same hello to our friends Betty and Sal having email addresses of betty@bettys.com and sal@joes.com, respectively. But we do not want Joe and Betty to know we are sending the same message to Sal. "Cc" indicates "Carbon Copy", or an exact duplicate of the message the first friend is receiving. "Bcc" indicates "blind carbon copy", an exact duplicate sent to this party without the knowledge of the first recipients. Once you are done typing in the first address, hit your ENTER or RETURN key to move to the next address. You can click on the pull down list to select the type of address, such as cc:, bcc:, etc.

The message header and message text of the composer window would look like:

To: joe@joes.com [Press enter. On next line change 'To:' to 'Cc:']
Cc: betty@bettys.com [Press enter. On next line change 'To:' to 'Bcc:']
Bcc: sal@joes.com
Subject: Hello there

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Joe,

Hello there. Hope things are well for you and Betty. (I have sent her a carbon copy of this email).

All the best.

John

-----------------------------------------------------------------

To send this email, you would select File >> Send Now or hit the 'Send' button on the Toolbar.

Email Attachments

Mail can open files and pages sent along with an email as an attachment, and it also can send an attachment to an email of your own.

Attachments that are image files or web pages can be viewed in two ways: inline (within the body of the message) or as a link. All other file types are attached as links. To view inline, select View >> View Attachment Inline. To view as links, deselect View >> View Attachment Inline or click directly on the paper clip shown in the header of any message that contains a linked attachment.

To send attachments to outgoing email, select from the 'New Message' page, depending on the type of attachment:

1. File >> Attach File >> [choose a file] >> Open, or..
2. File >> Attach Web Page >> [add URL] >> OK

Even easier is to just click on the attachment window of the message, you will be prompted for the file to add or click on the attach icon on the message toolbar.

The email composer of Netscape/Mozilla Mail is capable of more functions than have been described here, such as posting to newsgroups, creating html documents for email transmission, and using an address book. For these features and others, please see the help pages available with Netscape/Mozilla (Help >> Help Contents).

Using Mail for Usenet News

Mail is used to read Usenet news. Usenet news is a collection of discussion groups. Although the number of groups varies in time as groups are added and removed, the total number is safely over 50,000. Each group is called a newsgroup. The topics which are discussed within a particular newsgroup will be loosely governed by those implicit in its title. For example, a newsgroup called 'soc.history.ancient' will have discussions going on within it that are concerned with aspects of ancient history. Discussions take the form of articles and responses to articles. On any given day, a particular newsgroup might have anywhere from zero to a couple thousands of articles posted to it.

As the total number of newsgroups is so large and the volume of articles within a group so heavy, you will want to restrict the number of newsgroups you actively follow. Reducing the number of newsgroups you follow is done through a process called subscribing. In general, you will find your news reading pattern to be something like:

1. Initially, build a list of subscribed newsgroups, that is, a list having the newsgroups you want to read with some regularity
2. Often, read articles within the newsgroups you have subscribed to
3. Periodically, unsubscribe to one newsgroup and subscribe another

To start Mail, select it within a Netscape/Mozilla application, such as Navigator, select Tasks >> mail or click on the Mail icon on the taskbar.

You will notice, starting Mail, first opens your Mail Center (also gotten using Tasks >> Mail). You will see here a list of mailbox folder (i.e. Local Mail) and news servers.

To get a list of all newsgroups on a server, highlight the news server name, and select File >> Subscribe or hit the 'Subscribe' button on toolbar. If you have never done this before, Mail will take a moment to download the full newsgroup list from the server. As there so many groups available, this may take a few minutes.

After downloading is complete, the window will show a list of all discussion groups to which you can subscribe. Many newsgroups will not be immediately viewable, but will be grouped together in folders, called news categories. To view the full list of all groups within a news category, highlight that category and click on 'Expand All' (or change to '+' which precedes the category name to a minus '-'); to see the category only, click on 'Collapse All' (or changing the preceding '-' to a '+').

You may view the newsgroup list in one of three manners

• by all available discussion groups
• by searching through newsgroups list using a keyword
• by listing only new discussion groups (since your last browse)

To subscribe to a newsgroup, highlight that group and hit Subscribe' or put a checkmark to the right of the newsgroup name. When you have gone through the list and marked the groups to which you want to subscribe, click 'OK'.

The server/newsgroups list now shows only those newsgroups you have subscribed to. To read from a particular group, double click on its name. This will download from the news server a list of articles posted to that group and start up the news browser window. This window, you will recognize, is identical in form and function to the Netscape/Mozilla Mail window. For information on using this, please refer back to the discussion above on Netscape/Mozilla Mail.

Using Netscape/Mozilla Composer for HTML Documents

Your browser includes an HTML editor, Netscape/Mozilla Composer. HTML is a display programming language and is used to create the documents (also known as homepages or web pages) that are viewed in web browsers. It is the programming language of the world-wide-web.

Netscape/Mozilla Composer incorporates WYSIWYG (or What You See Is What You Get) elements into document creation capabilities. With this technique, you see your page exactly as it will appear when published as you are creating it. The Composer editor includes editing and formatting Toolbars, and also 'cut and paste' and the 'drag and drop' processes to create HTML documents for the Web, emails and newsgroups.

To start Composer, select it within a Netscape/Mozilla application, such as Navigator, select Tasks >> Composer or click on the Composer icon on the taskbar.

Basics on Composer

To Create Web pages from Template:

1. Select File >> New composer page
2. Once page is on browser, select File >> Edit Page and it will appear in the Composer

To Edit the Page you're currently Browsing:

1. Select File >> Edit Page/Frame
2. The current Navigator Window becomes a Composer Window

To Open and Edit an Existing Document:

1. Open Composer
2. Select File >> Open Page

The Composer window consists of two types of Toolbars: the composition and the formatting. Below the standard row of pull-down menus lies the Composition Toolbar. Each of the buttons on this Toolbar can be found in the pull-down menus as well. These buttons assist you in creating, opening and saving web pages, publishing to your remote server, viewing your page on the browser, standard editing tasks, creating links and targets, inserting images, horizontal lines, and tables, and spell checking. The Formatting Toolbar lies below this, just above the word processing screen. This Toolbar helps you with paragraph formatting, fonts, sizes and styles, text color and text alignment.

The Pop-up menus appear when you right-mouse click on a particular area of the page. The commands available differ depending on where the cursor is when you right-mouse click. For example, if the pointer is on text, the menu can: Change character, paragraph or list properties, insert a new ink, or paste from the clipboard. Different menus occur when you click on facets such as an A link, image, horizontal line, HTML tag marker, or table.

Some Comments on Publishing HTML Documents

1. To publish an HTML document is to use FTP, file transfer protocol, to send files from your machine to the server. The publish facility in Netscape/Mozilla is a little awkward and we would recommend learning an FTP application, such as Ws-Ftp or CuteFTP for Windows and Windows95/98 platforms or Fetch on Macintosh. Documents are available on these applications in Green Apple's support library, http://www.greenapple.com/support/library/
2. Make sure your first html document, the homepage, is named 'default.htm' or 'index.htm'. This file is the lead document in a set of html documents: the one people view first.
3. When you have published all your documents, send email to 'subscribers@greenapple.com' letting Green Apple know that you have moved your pages over. Provide in the message the title you want displayed for your pages. If everything has gone correctly, you can view your homepage at www.greenapple.com/~<your login>
4. To see a list of users with homepages on Green Apple, go to: http://www.greenapple.com/content/hosted-sites/

 
This document is copyright Green Apple, Inc, 1995-2007.  Permission is granted for the free distribution of it provided that its contents, including this notice, are not in any way altered. Green Apple disclaims all responsibility of fitness and suitability of this document. User is responsible for any software they download or install. It is incumbent upon User to read and obey copyright and licensing notices of all the software they use.
 

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