Internet

• Don't run unexpected programs that come in the email. And a "program" could be all sorts of things -- the most obvious ones are executables, i.e., files with names ending in ".exe", but there are many other kinds of runnable programs too -- bat, vbs, com, and so on. Take a look at the list of filetypes. And is your computer configured to show the file endings, or to hide them? If it's hiding some of the file endings, then "harmless.gif" might actually be "harmless.gif.exe", which is not so harmless after all. Hiding the file endings (a default setting) is one of the stupidest things Microsoft has ever done, but continuing to hide them is even stupider. You can easily change this configuration.

• Beware of email scams. People who ask for personal identity information by email generally are up to no good. If an email from your bank or your phone company asks for your social security number or something like that, the email almost certainly is not from your bank or your phone company. Major companies do not send out mail of that sort. Look at the company's website and you'll see a message about that. But don't trust a website that you're directed to by an unexpected email message -- it might be a fake website!

  In recent years scammers have been using very clever social engineering to trick people into opening bad mail. I myself was taken in once -- I think it was in early 2005 -- and I accidentally installed a virus, one that was so new that it got past my antivirus software. Fortunately I detected it and removed it before it could do any harm. But here's how I was taken in: I'm one of the webmasters for my department, so I received an email addressed to the webmaster. It said something like this (I don't remember the exact wording): "Dear Webmaster: I'm the webmaster at my company, and I've been looking at a lot of web pages to get ideas for our website. I like your web page -- it has a lot of good ideas -- but there is a bug in it that you might not be aware of. Attached is a screen shot marked to indicate where the problem is." (A screen shot is a snapshot of the screen, taken not with a camera but with the "print screen" key.) Now, this sounded like a very generous email -- this person had praised my web page, and had taken the time and trouble to try to help me fix it. I believed his message, since I've actually sent messages like this myself in the past. I felt, ahh, how nice, a kindred spirit. So, without thinking, I clicked on his attached file, which I assumed was a picture file. If I had taken a moment to look, I would have seen that it was not a picture file, but rather an executable.

• Make sure file-sharing is disabled. Don't just leave it running with password protection; hackers have found ways to get past the passwords.
  To check on this: (1) Go to Start - Settings - Control Panel - Network. Then click on "File and Print Sharing..." and make sure that both the boxes -- "I want to be able to give others access to my files" and "I want to be able to allow others access to my printer(s)" are unchecked.
  

• Turn on Windows Firewall

• Guard against spyware (also known sometimes as ad-ware, though that term also has other meanings). Spyware is software that spies on you and sends information about your computer activities (e.g., what products you are might be interested in buying) to their home companies. Perhaps the biggest penalty is not your loss of privacy (most of us really don't have anything to hide, and we don't put crucial information like credit card numbers on our computers), but the fact that these programs running in the background will slow down your computer, in some cases drastically. Generally spyware is installed without your knowledge -- sometimes as a hidden ingredient in some program that you have knowingly installed. (As far as I presently know, none of the programs listed on this website contain spyware.)

  Some of the most popular free programs that include spyware, or have included spyware in past editions, are Mattel software (including "Reader Rabbit", etc.), "Gator", "CuteFTP", "FreeZip!" (not to be confused with "FreeZip"), "GetRight", "Go!Zilla", "LapLink FTP" "Net Vampire", "NetAnts", "SiteChecker", "TUCOWS Uploader", and the "smart download managers" distributed by RealNetworks and Netscape/AOL.

  Here are some programs for detecting and removing spyware. (You can use more than one of these!)

  • Spybot Search and Destroy [14.4 mb, ver. 1.6.0.30.] This one is my favorite. It can be set up to run automatically and continuously, and to update easily when desired.
  • Lavasoft's Ad-Aware Free [18.3 mb, ver 2008 7.1.0.8].
  • WinPatrol [ v2008 V15.5.2008.0 (706 KB)]

• Install an anti-virus program. The commercial one supplied for us by Vanderbilt is quite good. For people outside Vanderbilt who are reading this, here are some free anti-virus programs:
  • AVG
  • Avast
  • ClamWin (open source!)

• Keep your antivirus program updated. Good antivirus programs include some feature for updating the program's data files. In fact, most of the better programs can be configured to update automatically, once every week or so, on some schedule, without even asking you. Some antivirus programs are configured by default for automatic updating, but some are not. Make sure that yours is set for automatic updating. Out-of-date antivirus data won't protect you from new viruses.

• Even if you keep your antivirus program updated, it can occasionally happen that a new virus gets into your computer -- one that is so new that you receive it before the people who update your antivirus program have learned about it and worked it into their database. (Be the first kid on your block to have virus X!) Naturally, you need to guard against such things by practicing safe computing -- don't open unexpected attachments, don't run unexpected executables or macros, etc. ... If you find a suspicious-looking file on your computer, and you are afraid it might be a new virus (i.e., one not yet recognized by your antivirus software), one of the things you can do is upload a copy of the suspicious file to Jotti's malware scan. This is a free service, but don't use it unless you really need it. Jotti will run your suspicious file through a wide variety of antivirus programs to see if any of them recognize it.

• Keep up to date on Microsoft's "critical updates," available through the "Windows Update" tool that came with your computer. If you've misplaced the tool, here it is: Just go to http://www.update.microsoft.com/ using Microsoft Internet Explorer as your browser. Actually, if you have your settings on your computer the way they should be, you'll never need to visit that website (except maybe the first time you use your computer), because it should be set up to automatically update itself.

  The frequent need for security patches to Microsoft software is due in part to the fact that malicious hackers have made Microsoft their primary target, mostly because Microsoft is the biggest target -- i.e., it is most widely used. But there is another reason: Unix software was designed with security in mind, right from the start (with "permissions", "administrators", etc.), whereas Microsoft software was originally designed with accessibility in mind (so that your company's computer administrators, or the Microsoft company itself, could adjust your computer for you). But the same overall design that made MS software accessible to legitimate adjustors, also made it accessible to clever hackers. This situation was discussed in more technical detail in (of all places) the May 2000 issue of Slate Magazine, an online magazine that is funded by Microsoft! (Microsoft may not be perfect, but at least they can be praised for funding a magazine that is so independent that it criticizes them.)

• HijackThis is a useful, free tool for detecting and removing malware, but really only for advanced users. It lists the contents of key areas of the Registry and hard drive -- areas that are used by both legitimate programmers and hijackers. If you can tell which things are which on the list, you can delete the bad things.
  
  
• Geeks To Go has a detailed introduction/guide to how to remove malware.

• Secure shell -- see below.

Secure shell

You can get one program (the "secure shell package" described below) that handles both secure telnet and secure ftp. Or, if you prefer, you can separate the two operations --- you can get a secure telnet program (such as "Putty", described below) and a secure ftp program (such as "Filezilla" or "Ixplorer", both described below).

This web page is concerned only with software for Windows. Macintosh users might try Fugu.

Secure shell package

Versions up to and including version 3.2.9 were available for free for noncommercial use. The program combines SSH and SFTP (secure telnet and secure ftp) in one package. The two parts interact in a convenient way: Once you've opened either half, you can open the other half as needed by just clicking on one button.

Here is a greatly abbreviated description of how to use the program. See circled items in illustration. Start with the button labeled "Profiles"; you'll need to create and then edit a profile for each remote location that you'll want to exchange files with. After you've created a profile, you can use it by clicking on "Profiles" and then clicking on the name of the profile. ... The icon of a monitor with a red diagonal line through it is the "disconnect" button. ... The two icons contained in one red circle are for starting up another ssh window or another sftp window. ... To transfer files, you can simply drag files in either direction between the local file liest (under "Local Name") and the remote file list (under "Remote Name"). You can also drag files between the remote file list and any of your local computer's file folders, if you have them displayed on your screen. ... If that's too many buttons, go to "View" "Customize" "Toolbars" and then start dragging buttons you don't want off of their toolbars. (Don't worry about accidentally deleting a button you want -- you can always click "Reset" to return the toolbars to their default settings.

The SSH package is the program I generally give to the less computer savvy members of my department when they need help with secure protocol, since this involves only installing one program and only learning to use one program. However, people who are more experimentative with their computers may prefer some of the programs listed below.

(Secure) telnet programs

One popular free secure telnet program is PuTTY [444kb, ver 0.60]. It is small, loads quickly, and doesn't take many keystrokes to get where you want to go. Its development is being continued -- it supports the latest versions of SSH. It is fairly simple to set up. For documentation see the next few paragraphs of this page, and/or see PuTTY's documentation.

Putty has two parts -- its terminal screen, which I've pictured at right, and its configuration program, which I have illustrated below. The left column of the configuration display, labeled "Category:", is a menu that stays in sight and unchanged (except for the location of the highlight) while you go through the other screens of the configuration program, choosing them from the menu. The category named "Session" is the main, initial display, which includes things like the "Load" and "Save" buttons. Other categories include "Appearance" (where you can change the font size) and "Connection" (where you can teach PuTTY your username, if you're not sharing this computer with many other people).

You can create and save a configuration for later use: Give it whatever name you like, by typing into the one-line box immediately below the words "Saved Sessions"; after you've saved it, it will also show up in the larger box below that. Go through the other categories ("Appearance", etc.) and change the settings as you wish; then go back to "Session" and click on "Save".

You can load a session that has previously been saved, by clicking on the session's name and then clicking on "Load". From there you can edit it (i.e., alter the configuration settings) and save it again under the same name or under a new name; or you can click on "Open" to start a connection to the remote computer. (However, to update a saved session, you may need to exit from PuTTY and then start it again.) For everyday use (you're usually not going to want to change the settings), just doubleclick on the name of the saved session to open the connection. Or, better yet, create a Windows shortcut that points, not just to "putty.exe", but to "putty.exe @sessname", where "sessname" is the name of your saved session configuration; then clicking on that shortcut will start up PuTTY in that configuration.

When you first connect to a new machine using PuTTY, you'll get a warning message because you're trying to make a secure connection to an unknown machine. Choose "OK" to add the machine to the list of known hosts and to continue connecting.

Copy and paste in PuTTY work a little like Unix xterm and similar programs.

• Dragging the left mouse button in a PuTTY terminal window selects text and automatically copies it to the Windows clipboard. (You don't need to subsequently press control-V or control-insert, the keys commonly used in Windows programs to copy the highlighted text.)
• Hitting the right mouse button in a PuTTY window pastes the contents of the Windows clipboard into the session as if it were typed at the keyboard. (Shift-Insert will also accomplish that.)

FTP

For most Windows users in our department, I would recommend the Secure Shell package, mentioned earlier on this page -- it includes an integrated ftp and telnet program that work together quite nicely. But some people may prefer:

"C:\Program Files\FileZilla\FileZilla.exe" profilename

A minor tool related to FTP programs: If you upload files from Windows to Unix, you'll want to check their filenames first. Windows doesn't always keep track of upper versus lower case in filenames, but Unix does; sometimes Windows even displays the cases incorrectly (see FAQ). Before uploading, you may want to rename all your files so that their names are all lower case, or something like that. There are some little tools that make it easy to change the case on a big bunch of filenames at one time. Here are a couple: Flash Renamer, Change Case; you can find more if you search under "case rename". For some of these programs, you can add the program as an association to the filetype "Folder", which will enable you to call up the program by right-clicking on the tiny little picture of an open manila folder in the upper left corner of Windows Explorer's windows.

• If you follow these instructions, you can switch easily between these clients; you can try a few and see which ones you like. You're not stuck with one.
• I recommend that you set your email client for IMAP, rather than POP. This means that messages will be stored on the server; they will only be copied to your local computer as needed. That has several advantages: You can switch easily between one mail client and another, and you can read your mail easily from any computer -- the one in your office, the one at home, the one you borrow from the people you're visiting, a "public kiosk" computer at the library, etc.
• There may be some confusion in the Vanderbilt Math Department over the fact that we used to have two email systems -- one on our department's server, and one on the university's server. The department's mail server has been discontinued. Vanderbilt Mathematics Department members now get their mail through the Vanderbilt email system -- or through outside email systems of their own choosing, such as Yahoo mail, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL / AIM mail, etc.
• Caution:The first time that you set up Eudora or any other conventional email program, when you're setting up your account profile, look through the options to see if there is an option for "Delete mail after download" or something like that. On many of these email clients, that box is checked by default, and I recommend that you uncheck it. That way you can keep your email on the server, and access it from any client at any location (e.g., from at home, from your office, and from whatever place you travel to). Also, this makes it easy to switch clients later (e.g., from Eudora to Firefox) if you want to.
• Additional information about configuring email clients for Vanderbilt University email can be found at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/vumail/configure.php.
• Most recent email clients have spam filters that are easy to learn to use. Many of them are adaptive -- i.e., they learn your preferences after a while. But in some of the email programs, the default setting is "off"; you have to turn the filter on in order to use it.

And now, here is a list of a few email clients:

• For people using our university's email system, if they're not very computer-savvy, I recommend webmail. It has the advantage that there is nothing to install. Presumably you already have a web browser installed on your computer -- preferably a recent major browser, i.e., a recent version of Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, etc. Point it at this web page: https://vuwebmail.vanderbilt.edu/. That's all.

• If you need compatibility with other programs, then your best bet may be Outlook (not free) or Outlook Express (free with Windows). I say this reluctantly, because I think the Microsoft programs are ugly and inconvenient, and moreover (because they are made by Microsoft) they are a high-priority target for hackers.
  But compatibility is sometimes worth the trouble. For instance, my cellphone is also a miniature computer, and the only way I can synchronize everything on it (appointments, contacts, etc.) with my computer is via Outlook. (By the way, if you have a cellphone that can be synchronized with your computer, I recommend synchronizing it at least once a day. Someday one of the two devices will die, and you'll be glad you have a second copy of your appointments, contacts, etc.)
  If you use one of these programs, be sure to keep up to date with Microsoft's security patches.
  
  
• Before I got this fancy cellphone that forced me to switch to Outlook, my favorite email client was Thunderbird, a free stand-alone email client from the Mozilla organization. The current version is 2.0.0.16, which is 6.44 megabytes. Thunderbird is fairly small, much smaller than Outlook, so it doesn't take up much memory or hard disk space and starts fairly fast. Also, it is easy to use, and has a nice built-in spam filter. And it is highly configurable -- you can change the way the program presents itself, and you can add your choices from among hundreds of tiny little add-on programs that people have written for Thunderbird. Thus, you can have a few really advanced and convenient features that you want, without also adding dozens of specialized features that you don't have any use for.

  Here is a tip for using Thunderbird (or Firefox): If you mess up the settings and can't figure out how to fix it, just start a new profile (i.e., a new username) and then delete the old profile. (For other tips see the Mozillazine Knowledge Base.)

• Eudora is a popular email client program named after Eudora Welty, one of whose short stories was titled "Why I Live at the Post Office." For a long time, Eudora was produced by the Qualcomm company, and was available both in commercial (full-featured) and free (limited) versions. You can still download free version 7.1 from the Qualcomm Eudora website.
  
  However, in May 2007, Qualcomm ceased handling Eudora, and turned it over to the open-source Mozilla Foundation, which is now developing it, in conjunction with Thunderbird and a new program named Penelope (for the wife of Odysseus, though I'm not sure why). Actually, there is some complicated relationship between Thunderbird, Eudora, and Penelope -- apparently one is a component of another, or something like that; I haven't understood it yet. At the time of this writing, you can get the beta release version of Eudora version 8 (more precisely, version 8.0.0b3).

• Dawn is a program for converting addressbooks from one format to another. It may be helpful if you switch clients, provided you're switching between two clients that Dawn is familiar with, in versions that it's familiar with. However, Dawn is a little old, so it might not work with the newest email clients. (Here is a simpler method that you might try first: See whether your old email client has an "export addressbook" command, and you new email client has an "import addressbook" command. If they do, each will have a list of a few file formats they can work with. See whether they share at least one filetype.)
• E-cloaker converts your email address (for your web page) to a form that still works the same way for human users, but doesn't work for the computer programs used by most spammers. Result: Supposedly, you get less spam. (I'm not sure whether this really works.) Some other programs working with the same idea are Obfusticated Email Link Creator (OELC) and Email Address Encoder.
• emailman is a list of links to all sorts of other email programs

X Window System

The copy and paste commands for Unix are not quite the same as those for Microsoft Windows.

• To copy text from the X Window screen to the Windows clipboard, drag the left mouse button.
• To paste text from the Windows clipboard to the X Window screen, click the second mouse button. (That's the scroll wheel on some mice; the middle button on other mice; the right button on mice that have only two buttons and no scroll wheel.)

VNC (Virtual Network Computing) means using your personal computer as a terminal, including graphics, for a remote server. Several free programs are available for this purpose.

Personally, I have not yet tried UltraVNC, but -- just judging from its web page -- it looks like it has been recently updated and is easy to install and to use. File transfer is one of the included features, so you might be able to dispense with your FTP / SFTP programs. Installation and usage instructions can be found at http://www.uvnc.com/install/ and in a couple of Youtube videos located at http://www.uvnc.com/download/. Version 1.0.2 can also be downloaded from that page. Version 1.0.4 release candidate 17 is also available, and is quite recent; I would guess that version 1.0.4 (final release) will be available fairly soon.

Since I have not yet tested UltraVNC, I will mention two other programs that do roughly the same thing; if one of them doesn't work for you, you might try another. One is RealVNC, which is in some sense the "original" VNC, or at least it is being developed by the original developers; its viewer has more options than TightVNC does but I don't understand all the options. I have not investigated it much either. The one program that I have tried extensively is:

TightVNC   Version 1.3.9. (235 kb). Its usage is not entirely self-explanatory. I will explain this program (including its installation) in somewhat greater detail than most, so that people in my department can install it themselves at home.

Most people will not need all components of the program; all they'll need is the "viewer" (235 kb). This program does not require installation.

Now, after you've installed the program, here's how to use it, (These instructions are just for people in the Vanderbilt Mathematics Department; people logging into other servers will need to use other instructions.)

1. Start up a secure telnet session -- not using TightVNC, but using some other program (e.g., Putty or SSH Client). Log into your account on apollo or artemis (or atlas, but I'd recommend apollo or artemis if you're going to use mathematica).
2. When the server gives you a command prompt, type "vncserver". (The idea is that you're going to run the program "vncserver" on apollo or one of the other servers, and then you're going to run a version of "vncviewer" on your Windows computer.)
3. The first time you use VNC Server on apollo (or artemis or whatever) , it will prompt you for a password. (I'd suggest using the same one you used to log into the server, since that way you don't have to remember another password.) On subsequent uses of the program on that server, you will not be prompted for a password. (That information will be stored, in encrypted form, in a hidden file named ".vnc/passwd".)
4. Wait a few seconds, and apollo (or whatever other server) will respond with a message. It will display many lines, but you can ignore most of it; all we really need to look at is the last part of the last line.

   Warning: apollo.math.vanderbilt.edu:1 is taken because of ... (etc.)
Remove this file if there is no X server apollo.math.vanderbilt.edu:1

   Warning: apollo.math.vanderbilt.edu:2 is taken because of ... (etc.)
Remove this file if there is no X server apollo.math.vanderbilt.edu:2

   New 'X' desktop is apollo.math.vanderbilt.edu:3

   Starting applications specified in /home/schectex/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /home/schectex/.vnc/apollo.math.vanderbilt.edu:3.log

   Instead of "schectex" (my username), you'll see your own username. And instead of the number "3", you'll probably see some other number. Keep track of that number; that's the only information we're really looking for.
5. Now click on the icon you put on your desktop -- i.e., the shortcut to the program TightvncViewer. It will bring up a box like the one shown in the picture at right. In the box labeled "VNC Server:", you should type

   apollo.math.vanderbilt.edu:3

   (or replace 3 with whatever was the number you found in the preceding step, above).
        Actually, in all times after the first time you do this, you won't have to type very much; the box will already be filled in with whatever value you had last time you used the program. So probably all you'll have to do is change the number after the colon.
6. Then click on the "OK" button.
7. Wait a few seconds, and you'll be prompted for your password. Type it in.
8. Wait a few more seconds, and your X-terminal session will start up.
9. Now you can use the X-terminal. Reminder: The copy and paste commands won't work quite the same as in Microsoft Windows; see my earlier discussion of this.

   How to close the session when you're done with it.

10. In your X-terminal, find the logout command. It's probably in the popup menu at the left end of the unix toolbar. Click on "Log out".
11. Close the VNC Viewer program on your Windows computer.
12. On the telnet session, type

    vncserver -kill :3

    again changing the number after the colon as needed. (Note that there is a space before the colon.)
13. If you're done with the telnet session, close that too.

If you don't like the size of the X-terminal on the screen, you can get a different size. The command "vncserver" gets the default size of 1024x768, but (for instance) the command

vncserver -geometry 940x700

gets a width of 940 and height of 700. If you're going to be using a command like this fairly often, you might want to add a line like this to the ".login" file in your apollo home directory:

alias vs 'vncserver -geometry 940x700'

After that, just typing "vs" on your telnet screen wil issue the desired command.

Html editors

• Syntax color highlighting -- different parts of the file are shown in different colors.
• Tag buttons, laid out conveniently so that you can just click on a button to insert some text such as "<BLOCKQUOTE>" ... "</BLOCKQUOTE>". Preferably, if the text that you're inserting consists of both a begin-tag and an end-tag (as in the example of Blockquote), then those tags should surround whatever you had highlighted before you clicked the button.
• I like to use a few tags that usually aren't included among the "standard" tags that appear on buttons in most html editors. (For instance, "<NOBR>" ... "</NOBR>" is for "no break", which I place around any mathematical formula.) So I prefer an editor which includes some user-customizable buttons.

Many, many html editors are available for free. Here are a few that I've selected because they look promising, though I haven't tried most of them extensively.

Name of program	syntax color high lighting?	convenient layout of buttons? (in my opinion)	user- definable tag buttons?	other comments
Top Dawg 2.8 [920kb mb]	YES	YES	YES	This is my current favorite. The buttons are arranged in a very intuitive way, to make it easy for a beginning or intermediate level web designer to write HTML. Not compatible with Windows 2000, unfortunately, but at least it will do Windows 9x and XP. No longer supported.
Max's HTML Beauty ++2004 [1.73 mb]	YES, and custom izable	YES	NO	This is my second choice, though I haven't tried it for very long. Its layout of buttons is very intuitive. This program has built-in syntax highlighting not only for HTML, but for a number of other markup and programming languages, including TEX. It doesn't have buttons for inserting tex code, but I suppose you could supplement this with the "Latex macros" program. So perhaps this program could also be used as an editing shell for latex. Personally, I don't think the advantages of having one editor for both HTML and Latex are significant; I'd rather get two separate editors that are both as good as possible. But your needs may differ from mine. The spellchecker is not internal -- it just links to Microsoft Word; and even if you have Word, the spellchecker doesn't work with tex files.
Nvu [6.57 mb, ver. 1.0]	some	okay	NO, but the button bar is somewhat configurable	This one is an open source project. Using it, you can switch between several different displays: the source file (edit the markup HMTL), preview (WYSIWYG), and two compromises between those extremes, "normal" and "HTML tags". Switching between those displays is a bit slow, but this is only a beta; maybe later versions will be faster. This program uses some ingredients taken from the Mozilla project. ... I like this program, but one peculiarity it has is that the WYSIWYG editor adds lots of extra carriage returns to the source file; you'll see them when you switch to HTML mode.
KompoZer [7.6 mb, ver. 0.7.10]	some	okay	NO, but the button bar is somewhat configurable	This is an "unofficial" variant of NVU, intended to overcome some of NVU's bugs.
HTML-Kit build 292 [2.8 mb]	YES	YES	NO, but you can copy your favorite buttons from the other bars onto a "favorites" bar	I'm not really familiar with this one. One feature is a huge collection of optional plugins -- apparently you can select which features you want to add, so the program remains small and fast but will probably still serve your needs well -- if you know what your needs are. Basic features are free; additional features if you pay for registration.
1st Page 2006 [9.4 mb]	YES	YES	NO	Can be started in "Easy", "Normal", "Expert", or "Hardcore" mode; so this might be a good program for someone who is learning html. Includes Perl, ASP, Cascading Style Sheets, Javascript, VBScript, CFML (Allaire Cold Fusion), Java. I haven't tried the new version "2006" yet.
WebDwarf v2.5 [4.1 mb; omitted from the CD]	NO	?	?	I'm not familiar with this program, but apparently it's an editor for both HTML (web pages) and SVG (scalable vector graphics). It looks very fancy and very professional.
HTML Notes 1.19 [1.17 mb; omitted from the CD]	YES, and config urable	Fair. Most commonly used buttons are on the toolbar; more commands are in the pull-down "insert" menu.	NO. You can customize 5 buttons so that clicking on each of them inserts a textfile of your choosing, but that text will replace, not surround, any text you've highlighted.	This program hasn't been updated in several years; you might prefer it if you like old-style programs or if you have an old computer. It starts very fast -- you could use this as a "notepad replacement", particularly if you're keeping an HTML file on the Active Desktop. Also, this program does a fairly good job of converting an RTF file automatically to an HTML file. See discussion of RTF elsewhere on this website.

Also noteworthy:

• OpenOffice (the office suite) includes a WYSIWYG (what you see is approximately what you get) web editor. WYSIWYG editors are easy to learn to use -- you can actually see the results on the screen while you're editing, and you don't need to learn all sorts of arcane special codes, such as the fact that <b> means "begin boldface" and </b> means "end boldface". The web pages that these programs produce look okay, but the HTML code hidden behind those web pages tends to be inefficient and "dirty". For instance, they may insert separate explicit font specifications for every line of the page. These inefficiencies mean the resulting web page may have a filesize 5 times larger than would be the case for a hand-written HTML code, so the page takes 5 times longer to load. If your recipient has a fast internet connection, that's not a problem; but if they're still chugging away on a 56K modem, they may not enjoy it. See my discussion comparing word processors and text editors.

• Xenu [545 kb, ver 1.2j] is a program for checking the links on your website, to see that none of them are broken (i.e., pointing to other web pages that no longer exist). Unfortunately, Xenu and other such programs cannot detect another common problem with websites: A link's domain may have been purchased outright and redirected; thus the link may point to something entirely unrelated to what it used to point to.

• Fastmenu is the program I used as part of the Math Department's website, during part of the time when I was its webmaster. Fastmenu creates javascript code which is inserted into your web page -- even if you don't know javascript. It's fairly quick and easy to use, though I still find myself adjusting the javascript slightly by hand to suit my taste (widths of margins, etc.) after the program is done. It has the advantage that it is compatible with most major browsers (including Konqueror, which is widely used in Europe and is part of my department's target audience; many javascript mouseover menus are not compatible with Konqueror). Fastmenu is fairly inexpensive, and it is free for schools and nonprofits.

• You may find various graphics and text editing tools helpful in editing your web pages.

• 4spell is a spell-checker which we discuss further in our section on TeX programs, since 4spell is able to spellcheck TeX files. We mention it here because it is also able to spellcheck HTML files.

MathML

Recent versions of some major browsers have been designed to display some MathML-encoded web pages, though (i) the initial offerings of these browsers concentrate on display rather than content, and (ii) in some cases the user of the browser must install additional software (e.g., fonts) that, though available for free, are not included in the default installation of the browser. To see whether your current browser needs additional fonts or other add-ons, you might try going to this test page or this online book.

My own impression is that MathML is not ready for widespread use, because you cannot yet count on your audience using a MathML-equipped browser. My recommendations for displaying mathematical content on the web are (i) use gif images, which can be viewed in any conventional browser; or (ii) use PDF documents, which at least can be downloaded by any conventional browser. I can recommend MathML for two smaller groups of people: (a) people who wish to experiment with the latest technology, and (b) people who have a more narrowly specified audience -- e.g., a researcher who is communicating with specific colleagues, or a teacher who have instructed his or her class to download, install, and use some particular web browsing software.

Browsers:   Internet Explorer & its relatives

Microsoft Internet Explorer, or MSIE for short, has become something of a Standard. I don't like to use it, because it has lots of security flaws and it crashes fairly often, and just when I was starting to get used to it Microsoft suddenly made big changes in its appearance. But some websites are designed for it and won't display properly with anything else. (One solution is to use Firefox with the "view as IE" plugin installed; see later on this page.)   I am no longer keeping a copy of Internet Explorer's installation files on the department CD, as it has simply gotten too big, and too dependent on what other programs you also have on the same computer.

If you're going to use IE, make sure you have the latest version, together with its latest updates and security patches -- that won't make you completely safe, but it will make you safer than if you don't have them. ---

If you're going to use Internet Explorer, here is a tip that you might find useful. In its default setting, when you use "open in new window" (mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago), the new window isn't maximized. I prefer to have all my browser windows maximized. Here is a way to change IE's default setting so that every new window is maximized: 1. Use "Open in a New Window" in the usual fashion (i.e., not maximized). 2. Keeping that new window open, close all your other IE windows. 3. For that one IE window that is now open, maximize it "manually", by dragging the edges of the window to the edges of the screen; do not use the square maximizing button in the upper right corner of the window. 4. Close this window, using the close box. 5. All IE windows should now open maximized. (Technically, the result you get isn't really maximized -- you can tell by the button next to the "close" button in the upper right corner of the window -- but it's the same size as maximized, so it's just as useful for most purposes I can think of.)

If you have a recent version of the Internet Explorer program installed on your computer, then -- even if you don't use that version -- some other programs can use parts of that program. A number of programs have been designed to do this. Generally they run a bit faster than Internet Explorer itself, and they may also offer extra features. Many such programs are available; here are just a few of them: Ace Explorer, Enigma Browser, Avant Browser, Maxthon, SlimBrowser.

• Netscape, new series For a while, Netscape was based on the preceding version of Mozilla. That was true up through Netscape version 7.2. In version 8, Netscape went off in a peculiar new direction -- browser only, with none of the other features (hence a smaller file size), but mixing together features from Mozilla and Internet Explorer. I have not bothered to follow the Netscape browsers since then.

• The Mozilla "suite" is an integrated combination of web browser, email client, IRC chat, and web page editor. The current version is 11.4 megabytes; version 1.7.13. But that's from April 2006; work on this program apparently has stopped. Which means that using it might be a security risk. Mozilla efforts are going into their other projects -- Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. People who want to use MathML with Mozilla should install the free Fonts for MathML-enabled Mozilla.

  Here are some tips for both Mozilla and Firefox: If your program stops working, it may be because you have installed some incompatible or defective extensions or add-ons. One way to get access to the program, so that you can disable or remove those extensions, is as follows: Go to Windows "Start" "Programs" "Mozilla" (or "Firefox") "Safe Mode". This will start the program without loading your usual extensions. --- If you still can't get it to work, here is another thing to try: Create a new profile (and then delete the old profile). To get to the profile manager, first exit the program completely (using "file...exit", not just the X in the upper right corner of the program window) Then run the program from the "Run" prompt, with " -ProfileManager" at the end of the command line -- e.g., "firefox.exe -profilemanager".

• FIREFOX (formerly known as "Phoenix" and "Firebird"). This is just a browser -- no email or other components. It's my favorite browser, and it seems to be growing in popularity among many other poeple too; it's been winning all sorts of awards. The latest "stable release" is version 3.0.1, size 7.15 mb, but it's getting minor updates fairly often.
         If you ignore Firefox's "extensions," then (in my opinion) you're overlooking the best feature of the program. To keep Firefox fairly lean and simple, its designers followed this idea: Instead of packing every possible feature into the program, build it with a few really good basics, plus the capability of adding whichever features YOU choose from a very long list. And people keep adding to the list all the time. The extensions are quite easy to install (though creating a new extension of your own would take some programming skills). Most of the extensions can be found on the "official" list at https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/, but occasionally you may see someone mention an extension not on that list. Some of my favorite extensions, for the current or recent versions of Firefox, are as follows: [this list updated 1 Nov '07]
  • Add Bookmark Here ² -- makes it easier to preserve whatever kind of folder hierarchy you've got for your bookmarks. When you want to bookmark the web page that you're currently viewing, don't just click on "bookmark." Instead, go into the bookmark folder where you want the bookmark to be added, and click on the "Add bookmark here" tab.
  • Add to Search Bar -- Any search form on any web page can be added to the pull-down search list on your browser. By the way, here are the search engines that I use most often: Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, IMDB, Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, Amazon.com, Youtube, Alternet. But you can get lots more search engines at http://mycroft.mozdev.org/.
  • Close Button - Adds a Close Tab (or Window, or Browser) button to the toolbar. There are other ways to close the tab, of course, but I like to have a close tab button too.
  • Context Search -- Highlight a word or phrase on the web page and then right-click on it. One of the items that will come up in the resulting menu is the option to search for that word or phrase in any one of the search engines that you've put in your pull-down search list.
  • deskCut -- right-click on any blank spot on a web page, and one of the options offered in the resulting menu is to put a shortcut to this web page on your Windows desktop. -- similar to Internet Explorer's "Send shortcut to desktop". (You can also make shortcuts by dragging the icon from the left end of the address box onto the desktop, but that may require resizing your browser to reveal some blank desktop space.)
  • Firefoxmenubuttons -- you can add lots more buttons to the menu bar. But only the ones you want.
  • IE View or IE View Lite -- right-click on the page that you're currently viewing in Firefox and select this option, and up will come Internet Explorer with the same page loaded. I use Firefox most of the time, but once in a while, if I encounter a page that doesn't seem to be displaying correctly, I try IEview, to see if the page displays better in Internet Explorer.
  • InFormEnter -- I store my name, address, email address, etc. in this program's little database. Then, whenever I'm filling out a form on the web (e.g., making a purchase or signing a petition), I just click in the appropriate places instead of having to type everything in. To store information (after you've installed this program), go through Firefox's main menu via "Tools" "Extensions" "InFormEnter" "Options".
  • Menu Editor -- If you use as many add-ons as I do, your context menus are going to get crowded. You may want to arrange what shows and what doesn't, and in what order.
  • PlainOldFavorites -- Use Internet Explorer Favorites directly from Firefox. No need to import, export or synchronize - the same Favorites appear.
  • Tab Mix Plus -- enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager.
  • Unwrap Text -- (1) Unwraps a multi-line URL and opens it in a new tab. (2) Unwraps a multi-line street address and opens it in Google maps.

• K-Meleon [5.42 mb, ver 1.5] is based on Mozilla. It is a trimmed down version, optimized for speed. It is customizable -- i.e., many of its features can be adjusted or turned off. Also, it has a macro language, so people with just a little skill in programming can easily add their own macros.

Other browsers

• Opera [ver. 9.5] runs smoothly -- it's done professionally. It was an ad-supported product, but as of 20 Sept 2005 the main version of Opera became a free product, with no ads. (It's supported by revenues from the versions other than the main one.) Some people say this program runs faster and more smoothly than IE or any of the Mozilla/Netscape browsers. (I haven't tried it long enough yet to give an opinion of my own.)

• Off By One browser [0.98mb, ver 3.5.d] is extremely small, and runs well even on a very old and slow computer. It never crashes. It is a bit limited in what it can do: It usually can't run Java, Javascript, plug-ins, applets, ftp, flash, or SSL. In short, it can't handle fancy web pages. But will do text, basic graphics, and simple tables, so it is adequate for many purposes.. It can download files that are posted with the "http" format (but not with the "ftp" format). It can handle some bookmarks/favorites, though not quite as conveniently as the major browsers. ... [Added 2005: new version of OB1 includes tabbed browsing. Cool!]

  By the way, if you like OffByOne, you'll want to increase the length of its Hotlist. This capability seems to have disappeared in recent versions of the documentation, but it still works. Open up the textfile "C:WINDOWS\OB1.INI" with an unformatted text editor such as Notepad (NOT with Word). In the section under "[Properties]", add a line that says "HotlistSize=20" (omitting the quotes). Or use any number you like; but 20 is a reasonable size. -- You can also edit the hotlist itself, which appears later in the same textfile; be careful to preserve the format in which the data is arranged.

• Lynx [ver 2.8.5] is a non-graphical browser -- i.e., it only does text. (Omitted from the CD.) Just imagine your favorite browser, but without the pictures. (It also can't handle various other features, such as javascript.) It's less fun than a graphical browser, but it may be adequate for much of the actual work that you need to do online. It's very fast, even on slow old computers. Available in one version for 32-bit Windows (Windows 95, 98, NT, and perhaps also 2000 and m.e.) and another version for Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS. This is a port to Windows, so for more information you may also want to look at the web page for the Unix version.