Advanced Use Of Web

We can use the web in very advance manner. Some tips and tricks are described in the following sections:

Browser Use : Advanced browser configuration and features:

There are a number of browser tricks and techniques that can enhance your surfing experience like Surfing in more than one window at once, Keeping track of where you've been, Breaking a surf into two parallel copies, Saving a complex search,Getting the key half-dozen plugins, Saving web pages, graphics, images, and text,Special pictures,stats, and home pages. Please click on the above link for details discussion on browser use.

Web Tricks & Tipsss

The Internet is a large, complex space with a lot of processes and data structures intertwined all over the place. This rich soup gives rise to a range of unexpected tricks and techniques, some of better ideas are here. Please click on this link -> Web tricks for better use of web.

Cookies

Cookies are small files a web site puts on your computer to store information about you for them. Click here for know what they are, what they can do, and what you can do about them:

Downloading Software

This section provides tips on software management, references to sites providing free software, and other resources.

Management. Some software installs over the web using a custom install application, in which case you should simply follow the directions, and there is very little management required on your part.

Most applications still require you to download the software and then install it locally. There are four steps to efficient downloading and installation of software:

Download Folder. If you don't already have one, create a folder called Download Files or something similar, and store it or a shortcut on your desktop.
Download Software. Download the software into your Download Files folder.
Decompress. Open up Download Files and double-click the downloaded file. One of two things will happen:

It starts up an install program, in which case follow the directions to install the software.

It decompress a folder of files, in which case look for a file called "Readme", and if there is one then double-click it and read it. Then look for the startup file, usually called "setup", or "install", double-click it, and follow the directions to install the software. If your system needs help decompressing the file, try using the WinZip or Stuffit applications.
Delete. When the installation is finished, unless you want to save the original downloaded file to perform additional installations later, delete the file to save disk space. Sites. The following sites are good sources for free software downloads:

AnalogX
CNet -- Download.com
CNet -- Shareware.com
DaveCentral.com
Jumbo.com
Nonags.com
Simtel.Net
SoftSeek.com
Strouds CWSApps
Tucows
WinFiles.com
ZDNet Downloads

Web Archives

Internet archives maintain historical snapshots of the web. Two known sites maintain archives of the web:

Alexa.com - Maintains a large database of old web pages, and may be able to take you to the last known copy of a missing page. It also provides pages to The Internet Archive, described below.

The Internet Archive - A public, nonprofit corporation founded in 1996 to build an Internet library with free access to researchers, historians, and scholars. It also maintains historical Usenet and FTP archives.

The Internet Archive is appropriately located in Presidio, California, which was founded in the 17'th century by Franciscan Friars. It also collaborates with several educational institutions, including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution.

Buying Things On The Internet

Now there is growing sentiment to make the Internet fully commercial, removing its government subsidy and making it pay its own way... Mitch Kapor says the commercialization of Internet is needed to continue its growth and free government money for a new, higher speed experimental network. Kapor... says the Internet is the best way to bring connectivity to the general population until the nation can be wired for fiber, which will support audio and video.

Sending your credit card over the net is usually secure, especially when it is encrypted in transit. In general, buying things on the Internet is as safe as buying something by any other means. The risk of interception of your credit card number in transit over the net is very low, and almost impossible when it is encrypted. And once it gets to the destination site, it is usually as secure as with any other business that you give your credit card number to. There have been few reports of problems using credit cards with well known, trustworthy sites.

At the same time, never give your credit card number or other personal information to a site sent to you in spam e-mail, or to a site you don't know anything else about, before searching for more information about it.

If you buy a lot of things over the net, you might want to get a separate credit card for all of your Internet transactions, which will make it a lot easier to keep track of your virtual finances.

The Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) standard is the most widely used for secure net commerce. Some systems, such as ECHOnline, implement a key feature of SET and hide credit card numbers from the organization you are buying from. They authenticate your credit card number and then provide the organization with a different number to record the confirmation, without revealing your personal information. In this way you are guaranteed that your card cannot be used for fraudulent matters even by the organization sending you the ordered product. If this feature of SET becomes common and convenient, then electronic commerce will be about as secure as it can be.

Most sites that accept your credit card number also use encryption with the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to hide your financial data as it is sent from your computer to the web server. You can tell when a site is using SSL when the URL contains the prefix "https:". There is also usually a closed lock on the bottom border of the browser window.

The latest update to SSL is the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.

You should manage your web transactions something like described below:

Set up a folder called "Web Transactions", or something similar.
Create a document for each web site or company to record your transactions.
For each transaction, enter the:

- Date and time of the transaction.
- The name of the item you brought.
- The credit card or technology you used to pay for it.
- The confirmation number.
- And/or a picture of the web page confirming the transaction that usually includes most of the transaction information:

Mac: Press the three keys <Apple>-<Shift>-3 all at once, which will make the sound of a camera shutter, and leave a picture of the screen in a file with a name starting with "Picture" (why don't you try it now!). You can then insert the file into the tracking document.

PC: Press the keys <Alt>-<Print Screen>, which copies the current window, which you can then paste into the tracking document as a picture (why don't you try it now!).

UNIX: Use the built-in window snapshot capability, or a utility like XV.

Build Your Own Web Site

There are a wide range of resources to help you build your own web site.The following resources can help you author and host your own web site:

Authoring Software. Most of the free hosting sites described below provide basic web page building services directly from their web sites. For more advanced web site creation, you will need to employ a web service bureau, or build it yourself. Sites that maintain information on web authoring software are listed below:

CNet -- Web Authoring
Lycos -- Internet Authoring
Web Monkey -- Authoring Tools
Yahoo -- HTML Editors

Free Hosting. The following sites host web sites for free:

Angelfire.com
FortuneCity.com
NetTaxi.com
Tripod.com
Yahoo Geocities

FreeServers.com -- Free Web List
TheFreeSite.com -- Free Web Pages
Hypermart -- Free Web Hosting
Lycos -- Free Web Hosting
Yahoo -- Free Web Pages
Your ISP. Most ISP's will provide a certain amount of storage space for a free web site if you get your net access from them. Check the web page of your ISP, or give them a call.
Your Computer. If you have the technical know how, and a computer permanently connected to the net, you can set up your own web site on your own computer. You will need to use one of the available web site servers. You may also wish to get a domain name.

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