INTERNET 201
P Weather in the nation's capital is finally changing, and winter seems to be fading from short-term memory. What better place to pursue change-of-season interests than the Internet. Here are some favorites to review. 1. Weekend Gardener http://www.chestnut-sw.com/weekend.htm Here's a nice World Wide Web page with clean graphics and valuable information
P> Weather in the nation's capital is finally changing, and winter seems to be fading from short-term memory. What better place to pursue change-of-season interests than the Internet. Here are some favorites to review.
1. Weekend Gardener
http://www.chestnut-sw.com/weekend.htm
Here's a nice World Wide Web page with clean graphics and valuable information formatted to make it user-friendly. The opening screen sports a table array with a sample Spring GrowGuide Table. It refers to carrots, cucumbers, melons, et al, informing the determined gardener that the last chance for Chinese cabbage passed in February.
I can't quite figure out what they are trying to sell, but the newsletter is in Adobe's pdf format. You can get the reader from this page, as well.
2. Internet Explorer 3.0
Developer's Kit
http://www.microsoft.com/devonly/
Hang on to your hard drive! Here's a 12.5 Mb zipped file (msasdk.zip) that expands to 25 Mb for the complete developer's kit for Internet Explorer 3.0. There's lots that's new and different, but don't bother messing with IE3.0 just yet; very little is implemented. Be forewarned! If you do try to install IE3.0, it will overwrite IE2.0 and you'll have a mess on your hard drive.
On another note, there's a nice (conceptually) add-on for PowerPoint users, Internet Assistant for PowerPoint. The add-on converts your presentation into HTML so you can load it on a server. Two problems for me so far: One, the resolution of your monitor determines the size of the final graphics; two, I can't get it to run on my mega-turbo Hewlett-Packard OmniBook 5000CTS, which has every laptop gadget known. My point is that this will be a nice product once the moths are exorcised.
3. Intel Home Page
For competitive firms, benchmarking is the name of the game. So, you have to figure that Intel's Web site would rank right up there in the world-class category. You won't be disappointed. The opening graphic is a stunner, worth the stare. Without giving away too much, make sure you download Netscape's Live3D VRML plug-in before going deeper. The executable compressed file is 1402 Kb.
4. Tip of the Week
If you got this far, then you'll want to scurry over to this server via ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-rfced-info-quarterman-00.txt. The title? "What is the Internet, Anyway?" by J. Quarterman and S. Carl-Mitchell. Eight pages long and just released on March 20, this Internet Draft, a working document of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), is not only hand-out material, but a Web page hyperlink.
Finally, my candidate for paperback most likely to remain unattended the shortest time? The recently released "Java in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference for Java Programmers," by David Flanagan. The 438-page gem is published by O'Reilly; the ISBN is 1-56592-183-6. Cover price is $14.95.
John Makulowich writes, talks and trains on the Internet. For details of his April 23 Internet Tips and Tricks Workshop, see http://www.cais.com/makulow/workshop.html
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