When you access the
internet the software application you are using is called a
"Browser". This software is usually furnished free by your
computer manufacturer, your internet service provider, on CD Rom disks
you get in the mail from people who want to be your internet service
provider and as part of just about any software application that wants
you to link to their website to pay your taxes, shop on line etc.
They are highly
competitive with each other to the point of law suits and appeals for
anti trust actions from various government agencies. It is a certainty
that you have one of these (most likely IE since it comes with the
Microsoft Windows Software) and there is a good chance that you might
have both. To further complicate your life they are constantly
"improving" their products so you may have versions that
range from 2, 3, 4, etc. The current standard versions are IE Version
5.01 (although there are supplemental upgrades called Service Packs
that are issued to fix "bugs". Netscape Communicator (more
bells and whistles than Navigator) is at version 6.1. Both Microsoft
and Netscape are currently advocating their latest Versions (IE
version 6.0, Netscape version 7.1) as God's gift to the internet. If
you are adventurous and want to try one of these I suggest you don't
overwrite your current working version. My experience with new
versions in both browsers is occasionally they manage to break things
that worked fine in earlier versions. Subsequent versions usually
correct most of the errors so if you go to these versions make sure
you get the latest point issues and service packs.
"Resolution"
Like your TV or Newspaper photo, your computer screen is composed of
tiny picture elements called "Pixels". Each pixel is made up
of a cluster containing 3 types of florescent material that each glow
in a different color when bombarded by a stream of accelerated
electrons. In early color screens the clusters were large and so there
were fewer clusters per inch of screen. As technology improved these
clusters were able to be made smaller and smaller allowing for major
improvements in the quality of the picture on the screen. This
improvement in picture granularity also allows a wider variety of
colors to be represented. Early VGA color monitors were limited to 640
by 480 pixels and 16 possible colors. Then came the Super VGA monitors
which could handle 800 by 600 and 256 possible colors. Monitors get
bigger and better seemingly every few months, 1024 X 768, 1280 X 1024,
1600 X 1200 and on and on. The number of possible colors now becomes
almost infinite and we see settings like "billions of
colors" when setting up computers to work with these monitors.
Unfortunately most folks wind up with the low priced 800 X 600, 256
color monitor because that's what usually comes even with a brand new
PC, unless you are willing to spend as much or more for the monitor
than you did for the PC.
Another dilemma for the
webmaster? Not really, we just design all of our web sites for 800 X
600 pixels and 256 colors. So what? Well if you have your monitor set
for 1600 X 1200 you'll have a lot of screen left over.
"Graphics"
Your browser runs on your PC so in order to display something from the
internet on your screen the words and pictures have to be
"downloaded" from the web site to your PC. Web pages with
lots of fine grain pictures and animation will take longer to transfer
this information from the website to your PC. This also is where the
problems come up when you're trying to "download the
dinosaurs" for your kids. The fastest dial up modems today can
move up to 56,000 (56K) bytes per minute. A byte is about one key
stroke so 56K sounds pretty fast but some pictures can be over
1,000,000 (1MB) in size. In addition you seldom get a connection that
actually runs at 56K. On a good day maybe 40K but it is often lower if
you have a lot of static on the line or if there is a lot of traffic
on the host site or at one or more intersections on the information
highway. We try to design our sites so that the home page loads
quickly, ideally in less than 1 minute at 56K. Some supplementary
pages that contain "Photo Tours" may take longer because
they typically need to transfer a number of pictures to your PC before
the show can begin.
High Speed connections are
now becoming available in most areas. There are basically 2 types
available to residential users, Digital Service Lines (DSL) and Cable
Modems. Both of these are also affordable especially if you are
already paying $19.95 or more for your Internet Service Provider. Most
Hi speed services include internet access and connection to a
customizable home page so you can cancel the dial up service you're
now paying for.
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DSL Modems run on a
pair of copper wires from the phone company, just like your
regular telephone line. But instead of connecting to a phone jack
you connect through a DSL modem which can handle data speeds of
around 600K which is more than 10 times faster than your 56K dial
up line.
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Cable modems are at
least twice as fast as DSL modems (20 times faster than 56K
modems). They connect to your existing cable TV coaxial cable or
you can have the cable run to your house just for the internet.
There's no dialup with the cable modem it's always connected to
your PC anytime you open your browser.
"Browser Memory"
This one is both a blessing and a curse for a webmaster. You know what
I said earlier about how the words and pictures have to be downloaded
to your PC before your browser can start to show them on the screen?
Well the browser makers thought they could help shorten that time if
you went to the same web page on a regular basis. So they set up a
block of memory in your browser to save a copy of every web page and
every picture that you download. When you exceed the size of the
memory block it overwrites the older stuff. The size of the memory
block and how often it is refreshed is settable on your PC, but I
won't cover that here.
The "Blessing"
is apparent when after you finally got a slow loading page up and
running and now go off to a sub page or another site and then want to
go back to the slow poke. Magically, this time it pops right up.
That's because the browser saved all that stuff the first time you
went there.
The "Curse" is
that depending on how you set browser options it may be showing you an
old version of the site which has since changed. You can overcome this
in IE by doing a "Refresh" (on the View menu or just
hit the F5 key). In Netscape this is called "Reload".
If
you have any other questions about browsers or the internet click here
to send me E-mail.