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The LangaList

A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa
About BrowserTune, HotSpots, Columns, and Other Activities

1-Feb-98


ISP Problems... and solutions!
I've been having a pile of ISP problems lately. (OK, I have a big mailing list, but it's a big ISP and ought to be able to handle it.)

But the quality of service has declined a lot---numerous mail failures, call cut-offs, and most alarmingly, service outages. One such outage hosed the upload of last week's LangaList; that's why some of you got duplicate copies. Others of you got munged copies---bad formatting, or the HTML attachment run into the main body of the email. My apologies!

Everything left this end fine, but once an email is in the hands of an ISP mail gateway, anything can happen. And it sometimes does.

So, even if I weren't moving soon, I'd be looking for a new ISP. Naturally, I tried to use the net for the search.

Microsoft has a "find a service provider" page at  (http://www.microsoft.com/referral/SR_DesktopPostal.asp?Service=65) but it's pretty bad. I currently live in Suffolk County NY, about 40 miles outside of NYC, and with a local county population of 2 million. Every week the local papers have an entire page of ads for ISPs.

But the Microsoft site could not find a single ISP to recommend in my area code. Riiiiiiight.

But I did find a nice ISP-hunting service: http://www.isps.com/ It's a free site that lists many, many ISPs--- it found 181 ISPs in my NY area code alone. Now that's more like it! If your ISP's service declines and you want or need an alternative, check out ISPs.Com: There's probably another service you can use.

Fred’s Super-Fast, No-Reformat Fix for Broken Windows
Last week, I told you about two tools (ERU and CFGBack) hidden on your Win95 CD; these tools let you make copies of your critical system files when your system is running fine. If---or rather, when---your system is hosed by an errant software installation or a similar problem, you can use ERU and CFGback to restore your system to a known-good state.

At least, that’s what happens in theory.

But sometimes, things don’t go that smoothly. If ERU and CFGback don’t do the trick, normally, your only option may be a time-consuming, laborious, full-blown reformat and reinstall.

But there’s a simpler alternative: A fast, easy, no-reformat full reinstall. I first wrote about this a year ago, but from the questions I’ve been getting in the mail, it’s clear a lot of new readers haven’t heard about this trick.

I'll give instructions in this week's WinMag BBS column. The column should go live during the morning (EST; GMT-5) of Monday 2-Feb-98. I don't have a final URL yet, but it probably will be this:
http://content.techweb.com/winmag//bbs/columns/archives/020298/monday/column.htm?frames=yes 

But if that doesn't work, please visit the WinMag home page at http://content.techweb.com/winmag/ and you should see a link to the column there, once the column is live.

More Hidden Tools On your Win95 CD
Last week's WinMag BBS thread also sparked one side discussion of another tool that's buried on the Win95 CD, and that most people never heard about.

It's the Win95 Resource Kit--- a compendium of extremely valuable info equivalent to a many-hundreds-pages-long book.

It's in /admin/reskit on your Win95 CD.

The reskit could be all you need to solve many problems you may experience with Windows---it's  a great place to start when you have a problem you can't figure out on your own.

Netscape Throws in the Java Towel, Pt2
I mentioned last week how I've been somewhat of a Java skeptic since the beginning. And then  Netscape threw in the Java towel, laying off an unspecified---but probably significant---number of their Java developers.

Are you tired of the Java hype, too? Or have I missed something crucial about Java’s strengths? With Microsoft’s VM now about to become the dominant variety, what does this mean for competition? Is Netscape’s move really a sign Java’s limitations--- or of Netscape’s?

Please come join the discussion starting Wednesday 4-Feb-98 at http://www.langa.com/badlink.htm.

RegClean 4.1 Arrives
You may recall from the heated IE4 discussions of the last few weeks that RegClean 4.0---Microsoft's free Registry fixer-upper---caused a number of problems with IE4. Well, there's a new version of RegClean that appears to work fine with IE4. You can read about the new RegClean at
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q147/7/69.asp
and you can download a fresh copy from:
http://support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/Regcln41.exe

I say "appears to work;" I've used it and have heard from a number of readers who have used it. No one's reported any trouble. Give it a try, and if you do run into a problem, please let me know so I can alert everyone else!

Browsers for Nothin'; Code for Free
Netscape finally acceded to the inevitable and agreed last week to give away the personal edition of Communicator for free; they'll also allow developers to use the source code for Communicator in their products. The price for the Professional Edition of Communicator will be cut to $29.  You can read the details at http://content.techweb.com/winmag//news/1998/0101/0122c.htm.

More IE4 Bugs?
New stories suggest there are still some significant issues with Microsoft's IE4, including security holes that can be used by "malicious hackers to steal users' private encryption keys and impersonate their victims." Yikes! Read the story here: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980123S0007

Reader Brent Sinclair also reports that the Microsoft newsgroup at Microsoft.public.inetexplorer.win3 is filled with "horror stories" about the installation program for the Win3.x  version of IE4.0 leaving the  OS "almost unusable."

I don't have a copy of 3.x installed, so I couldn't check this one out for myself, but if you're a 3.x user, you might want to check this out before installing IE4 on your system.

An Outlook Beta
If you are running IE4 and would like a peek at the beta of Outlook 98, it's available for free download here: http://www.microsoft.com/directaccess/outbeta2_rdr.htm

IBM Site Chokes
If you tried and failed to access the IBM SuperBowl site, you weren't alone. The site was beaten to death by too many hits. You can read the details here:http://www.abcnews.com/sections/scitech/silicon8/index.html . The same things happened at the Summer Olympics, too; let's hope IBM has beefed up the Winter Olympic site enough to handle the traffic.

BrowserTune98 and Channels
I spent the last week neck-deep in the final coding of Dynamic HTML and Channel tests for BrowserTune98---it was veeeeeery interesting, and should make for some great tests.

Take channels. Both browsers offer the ability to "subscribe" to a site. At set intervals, your browser automatically surfs to a subscribed site and downloads any new pages so you can view them, offline and locally, at your leisure. Both browsers let you view the pages as pages, as desktop wallpaper, or as desktop elements; or to get an email message that simply tells you the site has been updated and that you should surf over on your own.

Microsoft's "Active Channel" uses the Channel Definition Format to define what pages on a site to download, how to present the pages to you, and so on. CDF is like HTML but is a bit different. Microsoft provides Wizards so that a webmaster just has to answer some questions and the CDF can be generated automatically. The CDF file sits by itself on the web site, and can be called from any page with a single line of HTML.

Netscape's "Netcaster" uses something different. It's straight HTML and JavaScript. But the code is still complex enough that Netscape also felt compelled to offer Wizards to generate the code. More significantly, the Netcaster code---and it's a lot!--- resides in the page with the Netcaster link. This means every browser must download and digest the code on every visit to the page. (With Active Channel, IE4 browsers only download the code once when the channel is set up.) I think Microsoft's is the better approach.

Judge for yourself. I added both an Active Channel and a Netcaster link on my home page at  http://www.langa.com. (If you're using IE4 or Communicator4, check it out!)

Here's what I had to add to set up an Active Channel:

<a href="channel.cdf"><font size="1">Subscribe via IE4 Active Channel</font></a>

But here's what it took to set up a Netcaster Channel:

<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
function needNetcaster() {
window.open("http://netcaster.netscape.com/finder/need_netcaster.html","need_netcaster",
"width=629,height=400,titlebar=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=yes,menubar=no,
scrollbars=yes");
}
function addChannelAPI() {
needNetcaster();
}
</script> <script LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2">
var chanURL = "http://www.langa.com";
var chanName = "Langa.Com";
var chanIntervalTime = -6; //max 1380
var chanAbsoluteTime = 60;
var chanMaxCacheSize = 1024000; //max 5120000 Kb
var chanDepth = 1; //max 2 levels
var chanActive = 1;
var chanWidthHint = 640;
var chanHeightHint = 480;
var chanMode = "window";
var chanType = 1;
var getChannelObject = null;
var addChannel = null;
var nc = null;
var ncActive = 0;
var poller = null;
 
function activateNetcaster() {
nc.activate();
}
function netcasterSniffer() {
var isClientOK = (navigator.appName == 'Netscape' && navigator.appVersion.substring(0,1) >= 4 );
if(isClientOK == false) {
alert('You must be running an application that supports \n"JavaScript 1.2" to subscribe to this channel.');
return;
}
if (!components["netcaster"]) {
alert("This page requires the Netcaster component.");
needNetcaster();
}
else {
nc = components["netcaster"];
if (nc.active == false) {
alert("Activating Netscape Netcaster. \n\nPlease click the Add Channel button
\nagain after Netcaster has completed\nloading to subscribe to this channel.");
activateNetcaster();
}
else {
ncActive = 1;
addChannelAPI();
}
}
}
function addChannelAPI() {
if (ncActive == 0) netcasterSniffer();
else {
nc = components["netcaster"];
eval("import nc.getChannelObject;");
eval("import nc.addChannel;");
var chan = getChannelObject();
chan.url = chanURL;
chan.name = chanName;
chan.intervalTime = chanIntervalTime;
chan.absoluteTime = chanAbsoluteTime;
chan.maxCacheSize = chanMaxCacheSize;
chan.depth = chanDepth;
chan.active = chanActive;
chan.widthHint = chanWidthHint;
chan.heightHint = chanHeightHint;
chan.mode = chanMode;
chan.type = chanType;
addChannel(chan);
}
ncActive = 0;
}
<script><font size="1"><a HREF="#" onClick="addChannelAPI(); return(false);">
Subscribe via Netscape Netcaster</a></font>

And all that code gets downloaded and processed every time you visit the page. Yuk.

Anyway, the channel and DHTML tests for BrowserTune98 are nearly complete and should make for eye-opening comparisons!

Speaking of WWW.Langa.Com...
The site has tripled its visitation rate since it went public in late October, and has generated half a million hits. For a one-man personal site with an advertising budget of exactly $0.00,  that's not too shabby. 8-)

I've added the site and this email newsletter to an online listing of E-Zines. May I ask a favor? If you like this newsletter and my site, could you take a moment to click over to

http://www.dominis.com/cgi-sys/ZineQuery?src=main&name=langa

and vote for the site? The E-Zine site tries to track the quality of the publications it lists by asking subscribers for their opinions, and I'd be interested in seeing your opinions via that anonymous poll. Thanks!

(And if you do like what you read, how about passing your copy along to a friend? I'd appreciate any help you could give in getting more readers!)

For International Readers
I've been gratified to see the number of international readers climbing steadily. But New Zealander Tony Bishop reminded me of how provincial Americans can be:

Fred, love your newsletter.

The web is international, right? Then how come virtually all USA sites use the month-day-year numeric format when the rest of the world uses day-month-year. This is really no problem with high numeric dates 25-1-98, but 1-3-98?
Yeah I know we all hate too many standards but for the sake of international understanding could we not use an alpha numeric form, say 25 - Jan - 98? Then there is no doubt what the date means.

So you'll note that this edition of the newsletter is now dated 1-Feb-98, which should work just about everywhere. Thanks for the nudge, Tony!


See you all next week!

Fred
(fred@langa.com)


A live web version of this note is online in  the "what's new" section of http://www.langa.com.

Why are you getting this newsletter? My intention is to send this free email newsletter only upon request. There are only two ways to get on the list so if you're getting this newsletter; your name came to me through one of these channels:

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