ch61.htm

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

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<P>Heed the caution remark at the start of the file, and don't edit this file unless

you absolutely must--for example, if you accidentally overwrite it (a rare but not

an impossible thing for a dyslexic touch typist such as me). The preferences file

is rather long and is not really meant to be edited by the user. Your selections

in the Options menu and dialogs are reflected in the <TT>preferences</TT> file.</P>

<P>You can specify which types of menus you want to display by turning checkboxes

on or off in the Options menu. The location box should usually be kept open because

it allows you to directly type the URL of where you want to go. If you would rather

have the screen space, you can choose File | Open Location to get the dialog shown

in Figure 61.6. Local files can be retrieved via the Open File option.

<H6></H6>

<P><A NAME="Heading20<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx06.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.6.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"> </FONT><I>The Open URL dialog.</I>

<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading21<FONT COLOR="#000077">Bookmarks</FONT></H3>

<P>Your favorite URLs can be saved as bookmarks. When you are at a location you would

want to come back to, just select Options | Add Bookmark. All your previous options

are listed in the drop-down list shown when you select the Bookmarks option.</P>

<P>The drop-down selection list can be very long and quite unmanageable. Also, items

are appended to the end of the list when you add a bookmark. This causes bookmarks

of different topics to be interleaved. You can use &quot;folders&quot; to manage

your bookmarks for you. A folder simply contains other URLs or folders. Navigator

provides an easy way to manage your bookmarks with its Bookmarks window. Choose Window

| Bookmarks. You are presented with a floating window from which you can drag and

drop entries into folders to create your own custom menus.</P>

<P>The History option on the Windows menu presents you with a window listing the

sites you have been to during your session. You can select items in this dialog to

add them to your bookmarks file. The bookmarks file can be saved as an HTML file

as well.

<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading22<FONT COLOR="#000077">Directories Used</FONT></H3>

<P>Navigator uses a <TT>.netscape</TT> directory in your home directory. This directory

includes the current lock files to prevent more than one Navigator application from

being used per user at one time. If you try to run Navigator while a lock file is

in place, it bails out with an error message. In the case of leftover lock files

from a crash or something, all you have to do is remove the lock file and restart

Navigator.</P>

<P>The <TT>.netscape</TT> directory contains several other files. Here is a directory

listing of these files:</P>

<PRE><FONT COLOR="#0066FF">$ ls -l ~/.netscape/

-rw------    1 khusain  users         296 Nov 29 07:16 address-book.html

-rw------    1 khusain  users       16435 Dec 10 08:04 bookmarks.html

drwx------  34 khusain  users        1024 Oct 13 20:23 cache

-rw------    1 khusain  users        4096 Aug  8 11:46 cert-nameidx.db

-rw------    1 khusain  users       13312 Aug  8 11:46 cert.db

-rw------    1 khusain  users       40960 Dec  9 16:11 cert5.db

-rw------    1 khusain  users         922 Dec 10 08:30 cookies

-rw------    1 khusain  users     1323008 Dec 10 08:30 history.db

-rw------    1 khusain  users       16384 Dec  9 16:11 key.db

lrwxrwxrwx   1 khusain  users          19 Dec 10 07:30 lock -&gt; 204.251.103.1:28668

-rw-r--r--   1 khusain  users         131 Jun 13  1996 mailcap

-rw-r--r--   1 khusain  users         101 Nov 17 10:41 newsgroups &#194;genetics.upenn.edu

-rw-r--r--   1 khusain  users      139600 Nov 29 07:07 newsgroups-news.onramp.net

-rw-r--r--   1 khusain  users          21 Dec 10 07:30 plugin-list

-rw-r--r--   1 khusain  users          21 Dec  9 16:15 plugin-list.BAK

-rw-r--r--   1 khusain  users        3506 Dec  9 16:28 preferences

</FONT></PRE>

<P>The HTML files are used to track your preferences such as bookmarks and the address

book. The lock link is present because I am already running Navigator. The preferences

are also listed here.</P>

<P>The cache directory is used to hold HTML files and images so that you do not have

to go to your network connection every time you reload a page. Navigator's cache

area can take up only a few megabytes. For example, in my machine, the <TT>du</TT>

command revealed that I use about 4.5MB of the cache area. The size of the cache

can be set with the dialog presented in the Network Preferences menu option in the

Cache tab. See Figure 61.7.

<H6></H6>

<P><A NAME="Heading23<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx07.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.7.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"><I> </I></FONT><I>Setting the cache size. </I><BR>

<BR>

The cache page also lets you flush the cache, thereby forcing Navigator to go and

retrieve the files from the network instead of using a local copy. Do not set the

cache size to an inordinately high value unless you have disk space to spare.

<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading24<FONT COLOR="#000077">Reading News</FONT></H3>

<P>Netscape's Navigator comes with a great news reader. You can start it with the

Netscape News command on the Options menu. You are presented with the window shown

in Figure 61.8. Your Internet Service Provider should be willing to provide you with

a news feed for you to be able to read news. You have to set up the information for

the news server yourself. You can get the setup dialog via the Options | Preferences

menu item. The dialog for this initial setup for the news reader is shown in Figure

61.9. After you have set up the news server information, you can read the news with

the News button. The configured news servers are shown as icons in the pane for the

news reader. Double-click the icon for the server and get all the messages for newsgroups

on that server. Messages that are received for a newsgroup are displayed by subject,

as shown in Figure 61.10. Click on the subject line for each message to read its

contents in the bottom pane.

<H6></H6>

<P><A NAME="Heading25<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx08.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.8.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"> </FONT><I>The initial news reader.</I>

<H6></H6>

<P><A NAME="Heading26<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx09.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.9.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"> </FONT><I>Setting up the news server information.</I><BR>

<BR>

<A NAME="Heading27<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx10.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.10.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"> </FONT><I>Reading messages in a newsgroup.</I>

<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading28<FONT COLOR="#000077">Handling Mail in

Navigator</FONT></H3>

<P>The Navigator program provides for a pretty darn good mail handler in itself.

Figure 61.11 shows the default mail handler screen. You have to set up your own personal

items for this mail handler to work right. Choose the Options | Mail and News Preferences

menu item. You are presented with the dialog shown in Figure 61.12. The options you

set up for your mail address are found in the page for the Identity tab.

<H6></H6>

<P><A NAME="Heading29<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx11.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.11.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"> </FONT><I>The Mail Handler screen.</I><BR>

<BR>

<A NAME="Heading30<A HREF="../art/61/61lnx12.jpg"><FONT COLOR="#000077">FIGURE

61.12.</FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#000077"> </FONT><I>Setting up your identity for your

mail handler.</I>

<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading31<FONT COLOR="#000077">Where to Get Mosaic

for Linux</FONT></H3>

<P>The latest version is available from the Internet at the ftp site <TT>sunsite.unc.edu</TT>

in the directory <TT>/pub/Linux/system/Network/info-systems/www/Mosaic</TT>. Several

files can be found there, the latest of which was the May 31, 1995, version, Mosaic-linux-2.62b.Z.

Get the latest version, if any, for Linux and unzip and untar it in a separate directory.

(The 2.72 version was not specifically named as having been built for Linux, and

therefore I cannot recommend it at this time.)</P>

<P>After the dust settles from the extraction commands, you have the Mosaic file

in your directory. You also have some app-defaults files you can use to customize

your copy of Mosaic. As with other X applications, almost all of Mosaic's features

can be customized using the <TT>Xdefaults</TT> file with the <TT>Mosaic</TT> resource.

It's easier, however, to use the application's menus to set the items in the <TT>Xdefaults</TT>

file than to manually edit it. For example, to set the home page, use this line:</P>

<PRE><FONT COLOR="#0066FF">Mosaic*HomePage : &quot;http://www.ikra.com&quot;

</FONT></PRE>

<P>Alternatively, you can set the <TT>WWW_HOME</TT> environment variable to the path

previously shown. Or you can use the menu items to set the home page. Using the environment

variable is more consistent with other UNIX platforms. Using the menus and dialogs

is a whole lot easier. The distributions from NCSA include the app-defaults files

for each version of Mosaic. After you have installed Mosaic on your machine, edit

these files to customize your own files. Read the app-defaults files for all the

resources that are available to you for your version of Mosaic.</P>

<P>Now, you can fire up Mosaic from within an xterm with the command <TT>Mosaic</TT>.

(It's probably best to have Mosaic run in the background so that you won't tie up

your xterm.) When Mosaic is up, it attempts to load its default hypertext document,

called the Home Page. Basically, the Home Page is the first document you start with

and the one document that you know you can always load if you get lost while browsing

the Web.</P>

<P>Like Navigator, Mosaic lets you keep a history of where you've been. You now have

quick access to frequently used documents via two types of personal lists. History

lists are valid for a current session only. Hotlists are those lists you want to

keep for all future sessions.



<DL>

	<DT></DT>

</DL>





<DL>

	<DD>

<HR>

<A NAME="Heading32<FONT COLOR="#000077"><B>TIP:</B> </FONT>If you want to use

	a text-only browser to get faster access to data instead of looking at images, use

	the Lynx browsers. In the <TT>sunsite.unc.site</TT>, get the <TT>lynx2-6.color.ELF.tgz</TT>

	file for the latest version. 

<HR>



</DL>



<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading33<FONT COLOR="#000077">Using Mosaic</FONT></H3>

<P>The Mosaic Document View screen is where you see all the HTML documents on the

Web. The Document View window has six pull-down menus: File, Options, Navigate, Annotate,

News, and Help. The main portion of the screen is taken up by the viewing area for

the data. Mosaic shows the title of the document and its URL under the menu bar.

<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading34<FONT COLOR="#000077">The Icons in Navigator

and Mosaic</FONT></H3>

<P>In the upper-right corner of the Mosaic screen is a globe superimposed on a stylized

S. In Netscape, it's an image of a planet with an N on it. This is the official logo

for NCSA Mosaic. This icon serves two purposes in each browser:



<UL>

	<LI>When a hyperlink is activated by a click on the word or image, the globe spins

	and beams of light travel along the segments of the S toward the globe. This movement

	signifies that your document is being retrieved. This is analogous to the stars in

	the Netscape Navigator icon, which shows animated meteorites and stars.

	<P>

	<LI>You can stop a transfer by clicking on the globe icon. The beams of light usually

	stop when you do this, which in turn indicates that the current transfer has been

	aborted. In Netscape, clicking the icon warps you to Netscape's home page. You have

	to use the STOP icon to stop message transfer in Netscape.

</UL>



<P>The status line in the browser then displays a message. If part of the file was

already retrieved without the inline images, the Document View window contains the

new document; click the Back button at the bottom of the window to return to the

document containing the hyperlink.

<H4 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="Heading35<FONT COLOR="#000077">Some Common Buttons

and Actions</FONT></H4>

<P>The following list discusses some common actions you might take when using a browser:



<TABLE BORDER="0">

	<TR ALIGN="LEFT" rowspan="1">

		<TD WIDTH="127" ALIGN="LEFT">Back</TD>

		<TD ALIGN="LEFT">Returns to the previous document in the Document View window history.</TD>

	</TR>

	<TR ALIGN="LEFT" rowspan="1">

		<TD WIDTH="127" ALIGN="LEFT">Forward</TD>

		<TD ALIGN="LEFT">Returns to the document that preceded the current document. This button is dimmed

			if you have not moved backward yet.</TD>

	</TR>

	<TR ALIGN="LEFT" rowspan="1">

		<TD WIDTH="127" ALIGN="LEFT">Home</TD>

		<TD ALIGN="LEFT">Moves to your home document or home page.</TD>

	</TR>

	<TR ALIGN="LEFT" rowspan="1">

		<TD WIDTH="127" ALIGN="LEFT">Reload</TD>

		<TD ALIGN="LEFT">Reloads the current document from the server or sometimes the cache.</TD>

	</TR>

	<TR ALIGN="LEFT" rowspan="1">

		<TD WIDTH="127" ALIGN="LEFT">Open Location</TD>

		<TD ALIGN="LEFT">Opens the Open Document window to enter the URL for a file to be viewed.</TD>

	</TR>

	<TR ALIGN="LEFT" rowspan="1">

		<TD WIDTH="127" ALIGN="LEFT">Open File</TD>

		<TD ALIGN="LEFT">Opens the Open Document window to enter the pathname for a file to be viewed.</TD>

	</TR>

	<TR ALIGN="LEFT" rowspan="1">

		<TD WIDTH="127" ALIGN="LEFT">Save As</TD>

		<TD ALIGN="LEFT">Opens the Save Document window that lets you save the current document to your local

			system in different formats: HTML, Postscript, or text.</TD>

	</TR>

	<TR ALIGN="LEFT" rowspan="1">

		<TD WIDTH="127" ALIGN="LEFT">Save Frame</TD>

		<TD ALIGN="LEFT">Lets you save the contents of a frame rather than an entire window. A frame is a

			portion of the screen.</TD>

	</TR>

	<TR ALIGN="LEFT" rowspan="1">

		<TD WIDTH="127" ALIGN="LEFT">New Window</TD>

		<TD ALIGN="LEFT">Opens a new Document View window. The content of the new window is your default home

			page. You can have several instances of browsers running in one session, each pointing

			to a different URL.</TD>