ch61.htm

linux-unix130.linux.and.unix.ebooks130 linux and unix ebookslinuxLearning Linux - Collection of 12 E

<P>The <TT>movemail-src</TT> directory is really not required if you are on a Linux

machine or do not plan on using the mail handler in Netscape. Ignore it for now.

If you are tempted, get the <TT>README</TT> file in this directory for your mail

handler. Besides this, movemail is freeware and is included in Netscape in case you

run into problems locking mail files in Linux.</P>

<P>The directions in the Navigator <TT>README</TT> file are easy to read and self-explanatory.

Just copy the relevant files and binaries in known paths, and you are done.</P>

<P>The file that is very important to consider is the <TT>java_301</TT> file with

the libraries for the Navigator software. If you are the only person on this machine,

great--just run Netscape from the directory into which you just untarred files. If

you have more than one user on the Linux machine, copy the <TT>java_301</TT> file

into one of the directories listed in the <TT>README</TT> file.</P>

<P>Also, if you are upgrading from a previous version of Netscape Navigator, now

is a good time to remove any legacy files from this <TT>lib</TT> directory:</P>

<PRE><FONT COLOR="#0066FF"># rm /usr/local/lib/netscape/*

</FONT></PRE>

<P>You have to be logged in as &quot;root&quot; to be able to do this. After cleaning

up older files, I chose to copy the file into <TT>/usr/local/lib/netscape</TT>:</P>

<PRE><FONT COLOR="#0066FF"># cp java_301 /usr/local/lib/netscape

</FONT></PRE>

<P>A common problem with upgrading Navigator on Linux is that folks often forget

to copy the <TT>java_301</TT> file to the expected directories. This results in their

crashing their newer version of Navigator with the use of an older Java library.

Be sure to take this step and have at it.</P>

<P>Finally, if you have any shortcuts in your window manager, you might want to point

these locations to the newer version of Navigator. An easier route is to simply remove

the old directory and untar in the new version in a new directory with the same name

as the old directory. If you are cautious, you can simply rename the old Navigator

directory to something else and then untar your files into the directory with the

original name. This way, you will preserve any previous links to &quot;navigator.&quot;</P>

<P>Now you are ready to go. Type the following command to start the browser:</P>

<PRE><FONT COLOR="#0066FF">$ netscape &amp;

</FONT></PRE>

<P>The Netscape program took an inordinately long time to start on a DX4 running

at 100MHz with 32MB of RAM. You might have a different experience with a faster video

card. Maybe. In any event, you are presented with a license agreement as shown in

Figure 61.1. You might as well accept this license if you want to use the software.

It's not as if you have a choice, and you are not signing your life away. (You can

view the license in its entirety in the <TT>LICENSE</TT> file.)



<DL>

	<DT></DT>

</DL>



<H6></H6>

<P><A NAME="Heading6<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx01.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.1.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"><I> </I></FONT><I>The initial startup screen

for Netscape 3.01.</I>



<DL>

	<DD>

<HR>

<A NAME="Heading7<FONT COLOR="#000077"><B>NOTE: </B></FONT>To navigate the

	web of information, start the transfer with a single click of your left mouse button

	on the words or images shown in color or underlined, which are the hyperlinks between

	documents. 

<HR>



</DL>



<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading8<FONT COLOR="#000077">Getting Around</FONT></H3>

<P>The main scene when Navigator comes up is shown in Figure 61.1. Clicking anywhere

on the window forces the browser to load its default home page. The first thing you

will notice when using your new browser is that it defaults the home page to Netscape.

If you are not connected to the Internet, this might cause Navigator to wait for

a long time. You can easily stop the attempted transfer and set up a local file as

the default home page instead.</P>

<P>This is an annoying but easily fixed problem. Select Options | General Preferences.

You are presented with the dialog shown in Figure 61.2. In the Home Page Location

text field, change the text to <TT>http://localhost</TT>. This is, of course, assuming

that you have a local httpd server running on your machine. If you would rather open

a file, append the string <TT>file://</TT> to the filename. For example, a possible

startup page for me could be <TT>/home/khusain/linux/book/index.html</TT>. Make sure

that the file and directory you set here are readable by Navigator. For example,

in the dialog shown in Figure 61.2, I have set the default home page to <TT>http://localhost</TT>

because I have an httpd server running on my machine.<BR>

<BR>

<A NAME="Heading9<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx02.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.2.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"> </FONT><I>Setting the default home page.</I>

<BR>

<BR>

The other options available in this dialog include those relating to default fonts,

applications, and image display. Images can be displayed as they are being downloaded

or after they are completely downloaded.

<H4 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading10<FONT COLOR="#000077">Fonts and Appearance</FONT></H4>

<P>One of the first things I noticed when I brought up Navigator was that I was missing

some fonts. The error messages were a bit annoying at first but were not really a

problem. I did, however, have a problem with my <TT>.xinitrc</TT> file, because I

was too stingy in loading fonts when starting X. I resolved the situation by adding

the following commands to load every font that I have installed on my system:</P>

<PRE><FONT COLOR="#0066FF">xset +fp /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc

xset +fp /usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi

xset +fp /usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi

xset +fp /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo

xset +fp /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1

</FONT></PRE>

<P>The commands took care of &quot;unresolved fonts&quot; warning messages. If you

want to change the default appearance of the fonts, you can use the Appearance page

in the Options menu. A typical setup is shown in Figure 61.3. Change the font type

and so on to your liking; then click OK and you're done.

<H4 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading11<FONT COLOR="#000077">MIME Type Support

Setup</FONT></H4>

<P>Ordinarily, you would not have to modify the default MIME types. Most of the default

MIME types supported by Navigator will let you get by just fine. If, however, you

want to add some default behavior, you might want to consider setting up your own

actions for a MIME type.

<H6></H6>

<P><A NAME="Heading12<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx03.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.3.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"> </FONT><I>Changing the basic setup including

fonts. </I><BR>

<BR>

If you want to know which MIME types are supported in this version of Navigator,

check out the list in the Helpers tab. The Unknown tag refers to something that is

not handled by this version of Navigator. If you have applications that you want

to spring into life when a MIME type is encountered, this Helpers tab is where you

would set it up. Among the options available is the capability to save the incoming

file to disk. For example, if you do not have a WAV listener on Linux, you could

force Navigator to &quot;save to disk&quot; when a WAV file is encountered. Only

a few of the most common MIME types are supported for Linux. Most MIME types that

are not supported in Linux belong in the Microsoft Windows realm. Oh, well. A typical

MIME setup is shown in Figure 61.4. Pressing the Edit button brings up the dialog

that lets you choose which action to take when a certain MIME type is encountered.

You can change the behavior of what Netscape has to do given a MIME type with the

dialog shown in Figure 61.5.

<H6></H6>

<P><A NAME="Heading13<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx04.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.4.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"> </FONT><I>The default MIME types with Navigator.</I>

<H6></H6>

<P><A NAME="Heading14<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx05.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.5.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"><I> </I></FONT><I>Modifying the behavior for

a MIME type.</I>

<H4 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading15<FONT COLOR="#000077">If the Backspace

Key Doesnt Work</FONT></H4>

<P>Alas, the backspace key did not work right in any of the text widget areas when

I used Navigator with Linux and X Window. This could be a local problem on my Linux

installation, so you might not have this experience. Instead of deleting the character

to the left of the cursor, the backspace key deletes the character to the right of

the cursor. Using the ever-handy Ctrl-H combination does the trick for me for the

most part. But it's irritating as heck to find the backspace working like the old

VT-100 keyboard's Delete key.</P>

<P>The quick solution for me was to map the Delete key to the same value as the backspace

key with the <TT>xmodmap</TT> command:</P>

<PRE><FONT COLOR="#0066FF">$ xmodmap -e &quot;Delete = BackSpace&quot;

</FONT></PRE>

<P>After making this change, fire up Netscape from within this xterm. Now the backspace

should work correctly. The sad part is that the Delete key now works like the backspace

key. I told you this was a quick solution. I rarely use the Delete key when editing

text, so it's not a real problem for me. You, on the other hand, might consider this

an affront to programming. All is not lost...so far.</P>

<P>The Help menu lists a searchable list of items on Netscape. You'll find a query

and an answer for this very problem that suggests using the loadkeys program. In

my humble opinion, the loadkeys program is much too complicated to use for such a

simple task. Also, an incorrect use of the loadkeys program can lock up your keyboard

and require a power-up. It's up to you as to which version you want to work with.



<DL>

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</DL>





<DL>

	<DD>

<HR>

<A NAME="Heading16<FONT COLOR="#000077"><B>TIP:</B> </FONT>Any options you

	modify might get enforced immediately but are not necessarily saved to disk. You

	must explicitly save these options with the Options | Save Options menu item. Play

	it safe and save as often as possible. 

<HR>



</DL>



<H4 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading17<FONT COLOR="#000077">Shortcuts and Keyboard

Options</FONT></H4>

<P>Each underlined letter in a menu item is a shortcut to the action which that menu

item normally takes after the menu is open on your screen. (Again, this shortcut

worked on one Linux system and not on another. Your mileage may vary.) You must have

first selected a menu for the underlined shortcuts to work.</P>

<P>In Netscape, you can use the Alt key followed by the menu option to get the same

result. For example, Alt-N or Alt-n opens a new window, and Alt-F searches for text

in the currently viewed document.</P>

<P>The cut and paste features of Navigator do not work very well in Linux. Be careful

because sometimes the cut-and-paste operation crashes Navigator. You can select text

from the viewing area as though you are in a normal workstation or editor window.

Cut and paste into other X Window System windows as usual by pressing the left mouse

button to begin selecting text, and then holding down the button and dragging. Alternatively,

release the left mouse button and use the right mouse button to complete the selection.

See the details about this operation in Netscape's Help.

<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading18<FONT COLOR="#000077">Help!</FONT></H3>

<P>Speaking of Help, when you click on the Help menu, you can access a Frequently

Asked Questions list relating to your type of operating system. Search on the word

&quot;Linux&quot; and you should get some answers to basic problems that others have

faced with running Linux.</P>

<P>The only catch to this approach is that you must already be hooked up to the Internet

to be able to avail this feature. If getting to the Internet is the crux of your

problem, you will have to resort to some other venue to get help.</P>

<P>Nevertheless, the help in Netscape's archive is very helpful when you can get

to it. If you are using the Linux software from the back of this book, you needn't

worry about asking X11R5 questions, because you will be using X11R6. The rest of

the answers in the FAQ provide a quick insight on the level of Netscape's support

for Linux.</P>

<P>By the way, this is the URL to get help on Navigator directly:</P>

<PRE><FONT COLOR="#0066FF">http://help.netscape.com

</FONT></PRE>

<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading19<FONT COLOR="#000077">Selection of Preferences</FONT></H3>

<P>The preferences you set for your Navigator software will be set in a file in a

special directory called <TT>.netscape</TT> in your home directory. The file with

your preferences is appropriately called <TT>preferences</TT>. Shown here is a list

of some of the options in this file:</P>

<PRE><FONT COLOR="#0066FF"># Netscape Preferences File

# Version: 3.01

# This is a generated file!  Do not edit.

SHOW_TOOLBAR:  True

SHOW_URL:  True

SHOW_DIRECTORY_BUTTONS: True

SHOW_MENUBAR:  True

SHOW_BOTTOM_STATUS_BAR: True

AUTOLOAD_IMAGES: True

FTP_FILE_INFO:  True

SHOW_SECURITY_BAR: True

TN3270:   xterm -e tn3270 %h

TELNET:   xterm -e telnet %h %p

RLOGIN:   xterm -e rlogin %h

RLOGIN_USER:  xterm -e rlogin %h -l %u

MEMORY_CACHE_SIZE: 3000

DISK_CACHE_SIZE: 5000

CACHE_DIR:  ~/.netscape/cache/

VERIFY_DOCUMENTS: 1

CACHE_SSL_PAGES: False

&lt;&lt;SNIP&gt;&gt; file deliberately cut to save a tree&lt;&lt;SNIP&gt;&gt;

FIXED_MESSAGE_FONT: False

ADD_URLS:

BOOKMARK_MENU:

PRINT_COMMAND:  lpr