Internet Basics

Understanding the Net (Easy Version)

No doubt you've heard of a computer network, a group of computers that are wired together so that they can communicate with one another. When computers are hooked together in a network, users of those computers can send each other messages and share computer files and programs.

Computer networks today can be as small as two PCs hooked together in an office. They can be as big as thousands of computers of all different types spread all over the world and connected to one another not just by wires, but through telephone lines and even through the air via satellite.

To build a really big network, you build lots of little networks and then hook the networks to each other, creating an internetwork. That's all the Internet really is: the world's largest internetwork (hence its name). In homes, businesses, schools, and government offices all over the world, millions of computers of all different types—PCs, Macintoshes, big corporate mainframes, and others—are connected together in networks, and those networks are connected to one another to form the Internet. Because everything's connected, any computer on the Internet can communicate with any other computer on the Internet

Modems—Wherein the Lack of Speed Kills There are ways to connect to the Internet without a modem, which you'll discover more fully in "Getting Connected to the Internet." But odds are that you will start out with a modem and phone line for your Internet connection, so you must consider the capabilities of your modem in choosing or upgrading your computer for Internet access. Choosing a Computer I've told you that almost any computer—even an older one—can be used to get on the Internet, and that's true. But to take full advantage of what the Internet offers, you need a top-of-the-line computer, or pretty close to it. You see, some Internet tasks, such as email, demand little processing power from a computer and don't require a really fast Internet connection; they're neither processor-intensive nor communications-intensive. However, the main thing most newcomers to the Net want is access to the Web, and browsing the Web is just about the most processor-intensive, communications-intensive thing a computer can do. To take full advantage of the Web, a computer must be able to display and play the multimedia content—graphics, animation, video, and sound—that's increasingly built in to Web pages. Such tasks require a fast processor and plenty of memory. In fact, a Web browser capable of supporting this multimedia is about the most demanding application you can put on a PC or Mac, requiring more processing power and memory than any word processor or spreadsheet on the market. Types of Internet Accounts When you sign up with—subscribe to—an Internet service, you get what's called an Internet account. With an Internet account, you get the right to use the provider's Internet service, your very own email address (so you can send and receive email), and all the other information you need to set up your computer for accessing the Internet through the service. From most providers, you also might get any communications or client software you need, as discussed in the previous chapter. Cable Internet and DSL (Broadband)? In the last few years, a new category of personal Internet account has emerged, sometimes described as broadband because it sends and receives information so much faster than a regular dial-up account—as if the information were moving through a nice, fat, "broad" pipe instead of a slow, skinny pipe. Depending on what's available to you, you have your choice between two different kinds of broadband Internet access, described in the next sections: Cable Internet and DSL. (There are other broadband options, used mostly in business environments, but these two are the popular options for personal users.) The two options are different from each other, but have seven characteristics in common: They are much, much faster than a 56K dial-up account. Their speed enables them to carry Internet activities that are simply impractical over a dial-up connection, such as watching a movie online, high-quality videoconferencing, or using a computer somewhere out on the Net as a storage facility for your own files or backups. They allow you to use your phone line for telephone calls, faxing, or anything else while you are online. They can be set up so that you are always online. You don't have to do anything to get online each time you use the Net (as you must with a dial-up account); you just sit down and get to business. They are more expensive, on a monthly basis. They require more expensive communications hardware for your computer, rather than relying on the inexpensive modems included in nearly all computers today. Once you're online, actually using a broadband account—opening Web pages, exchanging email, and so on—takes the same steps you use on a regular dial-up account, the steps described throughout this book. Who Can I Get Dial-up Access From? You can get your Internet account from any of three main sources: A national Internet service provider (ISP) A local ISP, one that's headquartered in your city or town A commercial online service, such as AOL or CompuServe

Making Links and Editing HTML

What's in a Link?

Every link has two parts. Creating links is a simple matter of choosing a spot on the page for the link and then supplying both parts:

• The link text— the actual text (or graphic) that appears on the page to represent the link. When a visitor activates a link, he or she clicks the link text to activate the unseen URL underneath.

• The link location— the URL describing the page, file, or Internet service to be accessed when the link is activated.

What's Linkable? A link can point to any resource that can be expressed in a URL or to local files (files residing on the same server as the page containing the link). That includes not only remote Web pages and other pages and files residing on the same Web server as your document, but also newsgroups and articles within them, email messages, and FTP servers. In your travels on the Web, you've already encountered links pointing to all these types of resources. A link can point to a specific location within a Web page—even to a specific location within the same page containing the link. For example, in a long Web page, each entry in a table of contents can be a link pointing to a specific section of the page. This concept allows visitors to navigate quickly and easily within the page. The spots within pages to which a link can point are anchors. Web Pages Web pages are the most commonly linked resource, and for good reason: You can bet that anybody viewing your Web page can view any other Web page, so links to Web pages are a reliable way to provide information. Linking to Web pages also allows your visitors to apply a consistent set of navigation techniques. URLs pointing to Web pages always begin with the protocol designator http://. The protocol is followed by the Web server hostname, the directory path to the page file, and the actual HTML file of the page: http://hostname/pathname/file.HTM In some cases, you can omit the filename. Some Web servers have default files they display automatically whenever someone accesses the server or a directory without specifying a filename. For example, http://www.mcp.com/ accesses the default page for the server www.mcp.com, and http://www.mcp.com/sams/ accesses the default page for the directory sams on the server www.mcp.com. Note that the preceding directory examples end in a slash. You should always use a slash to end an HTTP URL that does not end with a filename; the slash instructs the server to access the default file (usually INDEX.HTML). Some servers can still access the default file if you leave off the slash, but some don't. In a link, use the slash, for safety's sake. Finally, always be careful to follow the exact capitalization of the URL as it would appear in the Navigator Location box when you view the page. Many Web servers are case sensitive and don't recognize the directory or filename if it is not properly capitalized. Anchors in Pages Web pages can contain predefined locations to which links can point. These spots are called anchors in HTML (and are created with the tag—A for anchor). You can add anchors to your own Web pages and then link to those anchors from elsewhere in the same page or from other pages you create. In addition, you can create links to point to any existing anchors in other pages on the Web. When you create an anchor, give the anchor a name. You create links to anchors as you do to a Web page, with one difference: You add the name of the anchor to the URL you enter for the link. Local Files Just as you can link to resources on any server, you can link to resources residing on the same server as your Web document. Obviously, you would do this when linking among the pages of a multipage presentation. But you might also choose to link to anything on your local Web server that relates to the topic of your page, such as another Web document or a text file containing related information. Creating New Links Creating a new hyperlink is a two-part job: First, you create the link text, the text that a visitor would click to activate the link. Next, you attach the URL to the link text. The following example shows how easy it is to create a new link to a Web page: Type and format the text that will serve as the link text Select the text. Although you can apply character formatting (such as fonts or italics) to the link text you create, don't do it. Just apply the paragraph style you want to use and leave it at that. Browsers usually display link text with unique formatting (usually underlining and a blue color) to help visitors instantly identify links on a page. You don't want your character formatting to make finding links tricky for your visitors by changing the link text formatting they're accustomed to seeing. Click the Link button on the Standard toolbar. In the box labeled Link To, type the complete URL. Be sure to include the http:// part at the beginning. Then click OK. Reading an HTML File "Understanding Web Authoring," that an HTML source file consists of four basic elements: The text to be displayed on the page The filenames of inline images The URLs or filenames for links (and the text or image filenames for the link source) HTML tags and attributes, which tell browsers which lines are images, links, headings, or normal paragraphs, for example Viewing the HTML Source Code of a Document A great way to learn more about HTML is to study the source code for Web pages. You can study the source code for pages you view on the Web or look at the underlying source code for pages you create in Composer. You can even view the source code for a page you're editing, make a small change with the Composer menus or toolbar buttons, and then view the source code again to see how the HTML code has been changed. Give it a try! To view the HTML source for a page you're looking at: In Internet Explorer, choose View, Source. In Netscape, choose View, Page Source. Using Composer to Insert an HTML Tag When you've built a document in Composer but need to add a tag here or there for which Composer offers no button or menu, the Composer Insert HTML Tag function allows you to do so conveniently, without having to fuss with the whole HTML source file. Click in the page at the spot where you want the object or formatting applied by the tag to go. Choose Insert, HTML Tag. Type your entry, and then click OK

Applying Filters and Retouching Your Images

Why Filters? As I mentioned, filters and plug-ins extend the capabilities of a program such as Paint Shop Pro. Many of today's imaging programs are written to be extensible, which means that they can have their functionality extended through the use of add-on software. This technology enables other programmers to write software that literally can be plugged into the main program. If you've purchased and installed a plug-in program, it should be available under the Effects, Plug-in Filters menu in Paint Shop Pro.

Where You Can Get Plug-ins

As I said earlier, some filters are included with Paint Shop Pro, and others are available from third parties. Most, if not all, of the companies that write plug-ins are on the Web, and some offer free demos of their plug-ins.

Using Built-In Filters

You've already seen examples of at least one of the built-in filters. I've used the Hot Wax Coating filter in a couple of examples to add even more texture to the woodgrain texture and to create a chrome effect. Paint Shop Pro has a few more built-in filters, though, and the nicest are the Effects filters, many of which were new as of version 6 with even more added to version 7. In fact, there are so many built-in filters available now, that I won't even list them all here. To see what's available, choose Effects from the menu and then choose a submenu, such as 3D Effects or Artistic. That should give you an idea of just how many filters come with Paint Shop Pro 7.

Buttonize Filter

The Buttonize filter (choose Effects, 3D Effects, Buttonize enables you to instantly create rectangular buttons from any image.

Using Third-Party Filters

Along with the filters that ship with Paint Shop Pro, numerous third-party filters (often referred to as plug-ins) are available.

Installing Plug-ins

Installing a plug-in package that can be used with Paint Shop Pro is a multistep process:

1. The first step is to install the software according to the manufacturer's instructions. These days, that usually involves inserting a CD-ROM into the drive and following a couple of short instructions.

   The most important point to note is where on your hard drive the plug-ins are installed.

   Normally, you'll want to keep all your plug-ins in separate folders under one main folder. For example, you might create a Plug-ins folder under the Paint Shop Pro folder and store all your plug-ins in separate folders there.

2. The second step to installing your plug-ins is to tell Paint Shop Pro where they are on your hard drive, which is the reason behind making a Plug-ins folder. After you've installed your plug-ins, choose File, Preferences, File Locations.

3. Choose the Plug-in Filters tab to bring up the Plug-in Filters options

Using the Retouching Tools Several kinds problems usually need correcting. Old snapshots often have scratches, dust spots, and bad brightness or contrast. Sometimes they have a less-than-sharp image because of the quality of the older camera lenses. You can fix the dust spots and scratches by using a combination of the Dropper, Paint Brush, Retouch, and Clone Brush tools. In addition, you can fix most brightness and contrast problems by using the Brightness/Contrast feature, and you can fix the sharpness by using the Unsharp Mask filter. Starting with version 7, you also can remove all but the worst dust marks and scratches using the new Scratch Remover tool.

Retouching to Remove Portions of an Image

Besides retouching older images, you might simply need to work on an area of a photograph to change some portion of the image. For example, you might want to remove someone's braces or make minor corrections to a person's complexion.

Working with File Formats One of the main concerns for any Web page designer is download time. The simple fact is, if your Web page takes too long to download to a user's computer, that user might get bored and simply jump to some other place on the Web. One way in which you can ensure that your page takes a reasonable amount of time to download is to compress your images. Compression is a process that shrinks a file down to essential data only. As you might suspect, compression also takes a bit of the clarity and detail away from the graphic image—although some images are affected very little by compression. As we continue through this chapter, you'll learn to identify the compression method you should use for each image (yes, there is more than one method). So how do you compress a graphic image? Well, basically, you just save the file in a file format that uses compression. During the saving process, however, you can make some small changes to the way in which the file's compressed. This allows you to retain some additional clarity (while in turn, making the file bigger than it might normally be when fully compressed in that particular format.) Due to the current limitations of Web browsers, only two formats are available for Web graphics: GIF and JPG. Each of these two formats goes about compressing an image in its own way, and as you'll see in this chapter, each format is is a viable choice given a particular type of image.

GIFs

GIF, or Graphical Interchange Format, is an image compression format originally developed by CompuServe. This format is one of the most popular formats for computer images. It also has a couple of features that make it appealing for Web graphics. Like any other format, though, it also has some shortcomings. In addition to lacking some desirable features, GIF has recently been surrounded by copyright infringement problems. The mathematical algorithm used to compress the image information, called LZW (for Lempel-Ziv & Welch, the mathematicians who developed it), is patented by Unisys. (An algorithm is a mathematical formula that can be programmed in computer language to perform a set of steps.)

Adjusting Color Depth

Color depth is a way of describing how many colors your hardware and software are capable of displaying. The buzzwords most often used are 8-bit, 16-bit, and 24-bit. Of course, color depth is sometimes described by the actual number of colors being displayed, such as 256 colors or 16.7 million colors.

Hardware is the real determining factor. Your Web browser, for example, will display as many colors as your system can use. The next limiting factor is the type of image being displayed. GIFs are capable of displaying only 256 separate colors. However, these colors can be chosen from all 16.7 million available colors. JPGs can display up to 16.7 million colors, which makes the JPG format a popular choice for photographs and other real-world images.

8-Bit Color

Eight-bit or 256 colors is what some systems use, although they are often capable of displaying more. Sometimes referred to as Video Gate Array (VGA), 8-bit is somewhat limited. With your system set to 8-bit, you're at the mercy of your browser software, as you'll see later, in the section on palettes.

16-Bit Color

Sixteen-bit color, often referred to as "hi color," is a good choice if your system's video memory is limited. Using 16-bit color is a great compromise between speed and color. With 16-bit color, up to 64,000 colors are possible (65,536 actually). With 64,000 colors, your Webviewing experience will be much more enriched. Using this color depth reduces the need for dithering.

Dithering, a process used to fool the eye into seeing more colors than are actually available, is discussed in depth a little later in this chapter.

24-Bit Color

Twenty-four–bit is the best color depth to use when creating and viewing computer images. To use this color depth, though, your video card must have at least 1MB of memory. The reason is that for each pixel you must have 24 bits (or 3 bytes) of memory available. With a little simple arithmetic, you can see that a 640x480 screen, which has 307,200 pixels (640x480), requires 307,200x3 bytes per pixel, which equals 921,600 bytes. Now that you have a basic understanding of color depth, it's time to look at palettes.

Using Palettes

Traditionally, a palette was a surface where an artist mixed colors before applying them to the canvas. In computer graphics, a palette is somewhat similar. Most graphics programs have a window where you can pick your colors. In certain circumstances, your color choices are limited. Those limited sets of colors also are referred to as palettes.

Palettes are more important when working with GIF images. Because of their limited color depth, GIF images can use only a select palette. This palette, though, can contain a different selection of colors. Sometimes you have control over the selection of the colors and, unfortunately, sometimes you don't.

Problems with Limited Palettes

One problem associated with limited palettes is that, if you choose to work with a limited palette while creating your images, many of the features of your graphics programs will not be available to you. Options such as drop shadows and blurring need to have access to the full range of colors to do their magic. The alternative here is to create your image using higher color depth and then reduce the depth.