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what programs to launch in order to open particular types of files, so if youfind that you re often having to do something manually, you can go into thisdialog box to automate the process of accessing file types you use all thetime. Surfing the WebMozilla is your viewing window into the wonderful World Wide Web. Mozilla sprimary purpose is to fetch Web pages on your command, download all theirgraphics and related files into your computer s memory, and, finally, renderthe page for your interactive viewing pleasure. If you re used to using Internet Explorer or Netscape, using Mozilla should bea snap. It has all the familiar navigation tools, such as an address bar; Back, Forward, Reload, and Stop buttons; and a feature that stores links to yourfavorite Web sites (bookmarks). Mozilla, like Netscape, also has a Sidebar feature press F9 to show andhide it (see Figure 9-3) which you can use to find sites related to the oneyou re visiting, search for a word or phrase on the Internet, access book- marked Web pages, or access a Web page you recently visited (through theHistory option). SidebarWeb pagesFigure 9-3: Mozilla withthe Sidebaropen, inFedora Core 3.173Chapter 9: Using the Internet14_

Privacy & Security:Network security has become a very big issue foreverybody connected to the Internet. Although the typically nontechnicalmedia often sensationalizes this issue, security should still be a considera- tion for all users of the Internet. Every time you send an e-mail or click aWeb site, you re exchanging information across a network. Although youdon t need to lose sleep over it, you should be conscious of every requestyou make on the Internet. Even though completely securing your informa- tion is impossible, you can feel reasonably confident that your exchangedInternet information is safe because of the default options that Mozilla hasprovided. See the Popup Windows portion in particular for how to keepthese annoyances from cluttering your screen! Advanced: This category provides options that affect the entire Mozillauser environment. Options include whether you want to enable Javaapplets or XSLT Web pages. This area is also where you can flush yourcache your browser s memory of what you ve been doing and whereyou ve been, but not your bookmarks and establish your proxy set- tings in the Cache and Proxies submenus. (If you ve never before beentold to use a proxy, you don t need one.) Them dad-gum browser plug-insDo you ever get irritated at those Web sites that insist that you download aplug-in,or additional piece of software, just to view the site? The differencebetween a plug-in and an external program is this: A plug-in displays the resultsin the browser, and an external program runs outside the browser. Althoughthese plug-ins are annoying if you re just looking for some basic information, they can provide some pretty cool stuff, such as streaming video and musicthrough your Web browser. Plug-ins provide browser capability extensions,which are programs that inter- face with the browser to provide nonstandard features, such as sound andvideo. The digital age is still in its infancy, so the industry hasn t yet adoptedthese multimedia formats as standard. In turn, the developers have chosennot to build support into the Mozilla browser. Rather, the plug-in architectureenables software developers to innovate without requiring the supportingbrowser to know what to do with newly emerging media formats. Chapter 12 explains how to add the popular plug-ins (like Macromedia s Flashplug-in) to your system for each of the distributions covered in this book. You may also be interested in is helper applications, (programs Mozillalaunches to handle particular types of contents, like PDF viewers) which youcan configure in the Preferences dialog box by opening up the Navigatormenu and choosing Helper Applications. This section lets you tell Mozilla172Part II:Internet Now!

Underneath Navigator, you can also check out: History: The History text box enables you to designate how many daysyou want your browser to remember where you ve been. You can clickthe Clear History button to clear the history manually at any time, orclick the Clear Location Bar button in this same dialog box to removethe list of sites it suggests whenever you re trying to type a new URL. Languages:No, this option doesn t automatically translate the contentof a Web page into the preferred language. Rather, some Web pageauthors provide their Web pages in more than one language. If it s anoption, this one merely lets you decide language preference. Helper Applications:In this table, you designate applications to interceptspecial file types. An example is a .pdffile, which requires the AdobeAcrobat Reader in order to view it. You can specify the application andoptional arguments that need to be passed to the program. Smart Browsing:With this option, you can set the characteristics of theWhat s Related tab, which is on the Sidebar (located in the left pane ofthe browser window). The What s Related tab provides a drop-downmenu listing sites that may be related to the displayed Web site. Internet Search:Search engines have become an integral part of Webbrowsing. To accommodate searching, Mozilla can integrate yourfavorite search engine right into your browser. You can click the drop- down button under Default Search Engine and choose your preference. Tabbed Browsing: You can customize how your tabbed browsing func- tions, if you like to play with this feature. Downloads:Mozilla provides you with a helpful download manager thatlets you watch the progress of multiple files, all in a single window. Youcan even see the last items you downloaded. Other preferencesOther preferences you may want to check out before you start using Mozillainclude Composer:If you like to build Web pages, you may want to check outMozilla s Composer feature and its preferences. Of course, other Webpage-building programs are out there. Your version of Linux probablyoffers one or more of the following: Bluefish (http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/), N|Vu (www.nvu.com/), Quanta Plus (http://kdewebdev.org/), or others. Mail & Newsgroups:If you intend to use Mozilla for your e-mail andnewsgroups (the default in Linspire and Xandros), you can set up cos- metic and other look-and-feel issues for how these features behave inthis section. However, you actually tell Mozilla what your e-mail accountis and what newsgroups to read, among other things, elsewhere. 171Chapter 9: Using the Internet14_

New Tab:Specify what to do if you have your browser/Navigator set to use tabbed browsing and open up a new tab or choose File.New. Navigator Tab. Tabbed browsing reflects the latest craze in Web browsercapabilities, especially among those who hate having their desktop clut- tered with windows. It allows you to have multiple surfing destinations, all in one window, and change between them by clicking tabs. See laterin this same section for more on tabbed browsing. After you ve selected which item you re configuring, you can then choose oneof the following for its default behavior when it launches: Blank Page:Open this item without opening any pages. Home Page:Open this item to my home page. Last Page Visited:Open this item to a copy of an open page or the lastone I visited. In the Home Page section, you can specify the home page to use for the timesthat you want to have a default page loaded. You have one of the followingoptions for choosing this page: Enter the URL you want to use in the Location text box. Click Choose File and browse to the file (on your computer) that youwant to use as your default and then click Open to add it to the Locationtext box. Surf to the page you want to use for your home page and click the UseCurrent Page button to add it to your Location text box. Open up multiple tabs and, in each of them, surf to the pages you wantto open by default. Then click Use Current Group to have all these tabsadded to the Location text box. (It actually says Home Page Group IsSet in the text box.) Change the home page back to the last setting you had by clicking RestoreDefault. For me, it defaults to the hard-coded Fedora Project page. Finally, in the bottom section, you can choose which buttons should show up in your top two Mozilla toolbars, from Bookmarks (lower toolbar), Go(upper toolbar), Home (lower toolbar), Search (upper toolbar), and Print(upper toolbar). You can actually control what s in the lower toolbar with quite a bit of detail, by choosing Bookmarks.Manage Bookmarks and then changing what youfind in the Personal Toolbar Folder. That s a really fun option to play with! 170Part II:Internet Now!

Finally, the bottom section of this dialog box allows you to make a few morecustomization tweaks: Show Tooltips:When you hover your mouse pointer over a Mozillaoption, a little tip pops up onto your screen. Show Web Site Icons:Grabs and uses the tiny little icons some Websites put next to their URLs, showing them in your bookmarks next tothe labels. Smooth Scrolling:Makes sure that when you scroll, you re doing so. Available in Fedora Core 3 but not Linspire or Xandros. Resize Large Images To Fit In The Browser Window:Doesn t force youto scroll around a big image to see the whole thing at once, but insteadfits it into the window. Underneath Appearances, the remaining menuentries are: Fonts:Enables you to set your preferred typeface. For desktop resolu- tions of 1024 x 768 and higher, I recommend jacking up your font sizesimmediately. (Otherwise, become very familiar with the key combina- tions Ctrl-+ to make all the fonts in the browser bigger, and Ctrl- tomake them smaller. Use the + and on your number pad and not yourmain keyboard.) Colors:Sets your text colors and whether you want to override explicitWeb page settings. This setting is an important one for color-blindpeople. Themes:Allows you to put a custom paint job on your Mozilla installation. Languages/Content:Allows you to set the sidebar preferences of yourbrowser to a particular locale s language. If you aren t sure about how to use a particular setting, click the Help buttonto open the Mozilla help interface. Navigator preferencesThe Navigator category (see Figure 9-1) enables you to select the behavior ofyour browser when it s first started. These settings are divided into three sec- tions: Display On, Home Page, and Select The Buttons You Want To See In TheToolbars. In the first section, the first thing you do is choose which aspect ofMozilla you re setting by choosing one of the following from the drop-downlist box above the radio buttons: Navigator Startup:Specify what to do when the main browser windowopens. New Window: Specify what to do if you click a link that launches a newwindow or choose File.New.Navigator Window. 169Chapter 9: Using the Internet14_

Appearance preferencesSelecting the Appearance main menu option Figure 9-2 allows you todetermine how you want Mozilla to look and act when it loads. Its basic setupis governed by three separate sections: When Mozilla/Internet Suite StartsUp, Open; Show Toolbars As; and the miscellaneous section at the bottom. The first section determines what parts of Mozilla should launch when youstart up the browser. The options here are Navigator:The browser itself. This one is selected by default. Composer:The Web page creation part of Mozilla. Mail & Newsgroups:The e-mail and newsgroups part of Mozilla. (Thisone is only available in some distributions by default.) You can have more than one of these selected at a time, and all the ones you vechosen start when you open your browser. Or, you can choose to launch theadditional pieces separately through the Window menu, just when you needthem. The second section allows you determine how you want to see your toolbars: Pictures and text:Show buttons on your Mozilla toolbars and text withthem. Text only:Don t bother showing the pictures. Pictures only:Don t bother showing the text. Figure 9-2: The MozillaAppearancePreferenceswindow inFedora Core 3.168Part II:Internet Now!

2.Choose Edit.Preferences. The Preferences window appears, as shown in Figure 9-1. While thisdialog box may look different from distribution to distribution, I vedouble-checked that all the options are the same and point out anyplace where they aren t. Notice that many configuration options are available. Throughout therest of this chapter, I guide you through configuring a few of the essen- tial settings. In addition, I encourage you to explore the many otheroptions available along the way! 3.Use the left pane of the Preferences window to access the variouspreferences categories. You can expand any of the major categories by clicking the small plussign (+) or right arrow next to them, and contract them again by clickingthe small minus sign (-) or down arrow. Each category has a main menuand submenus, so don t forget to click the category names as well as thesubcategories. 4.If you get tired of reading through menus, just click OK (if you madechanges you want to keep) or Cancel (if you made no changes or don twant to keep your changes) at any time to close the Preferencesdialog box and get back to surfing. Figure 9-1: The MozillaPreferenceswindow inFedora Core 3.167Chapter 9: Using the Internet14_

A number of graphical Web browsers are available for Linux. The defaultbrowser included with each of the distributions covered in this book is: Fedora:Firefox (www.mozilla.org/products/firefox, based onMozilla) Knoppix:Konqueror (www.konqueror.org), though Mozilla is alsoincluded by default Linspire:Customized Mozilla Mandrake:Konqueror, though Mozilla and Epiphany (www.gnome.org/ projects/epiphany, which is based on Mozilla as well) are also bothincluded by default SuSE:Konqueror Xandros:MozillaYou can easily add the browsers that aren t included by default to most ofthese distributions (see Chapter 12). Another popular browser in Linux isOpera (www.opera.com). Many browsers are based on Mozilla, aren t they? And Mozilla is a branch offof Netscape. Because Mozilla is included with so many of these distributions(and can be easily added to the rest), I focus on it here. Mozilla is actuallymore complex than both its Epiphany and Firefox love-children, and so you llfind those other options easier to figure out and Epiphany and Firefox alsowork very similarly to Mozilla. In fact, Firefox doesn t have the same hugepile of configuration routines in its Preferences dialog box because it doesn thave mail and news to contend with. Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera are all available for Windows and OS X as well! Configuring MozillaYou can start surfing right now, if you want. You don t need to customize yourbrowser. However, you may want to take a moment to tell Mozilla your prefer- ences, such as the default Web site to show when it starts up, what font sizesto use by default, what colors to use, and many other options. The following steps introduce you to the Preferences window, where all theMozilla configuration parameters are stored: 1.Start Mozilla. How you start Mozilla depends on which distribution you re using. Typically it s either a shortcut on your Panel (Knoppix, Linspire, andXandros) or is available in the Internet portion of your main menu. Bepatient; Mozilla is a large program, and it usually takes a few seconds to start up. 166Part II:Internet Now!

Figure 8-7: The end of aset ofresults fromthe tracerouteutility. Figure 8-6: Sampleresults ofthe pingcommand. 163Chapter 8: Connecting to the Internet13_

other hand, if you can ping another machine in your house or office but youcan t ping a machine elsewhere on the Internet, then something may bewrong with your connection to your ISP. Latency,or the amount of time it takes for a signal to travel on the Internet, has little to do with physical distance. Rather, factors such as network traffic, bandwidth, and network hardware all contribute to a slow latency. These fac- tors determine whether a pingto your neighbor s computer takes longerthan pinging a host at the South Pole. For example, try pinging Yahoo! by opening a command prompt (see Chapter 14) and typing the following command: ping www.yahoo.comPress Ctrl+C to stop the ping; otherwise, your computer continues to pingthe target. The output, as shown in Figure 8-6, provides information about what pingisdoing. If the ping can t reach the host, you receive a message that the host isunreachable. If the ping can reach the host, you receive feedback that provideshow long it takes in milliseconds (ms) for the signal from your computerto get to the destination computer and back again the lower the numbers, the better. For computers connected through Ethernet, a pingtime of 1 ms to 3ms is an acceptable response time. For dial-up connections, expect somewherearound 150 ms. When you start seeing pingtimes climbing to 900 ms or higher, the network is likely under heavy use (or you have something wrong with yourcables). Following in your traffic s footsteps with tracerouteAnother fun command is traceroute, which allows you to see all the com- puters your data goes through on its way to a destination. Simply type thecommand traceroute hostname, such as traceroute bob.example.comortraceroute 192.168.1.5. After a few moments, you receive a list of allcomputers between you and the designated hostname and how long it tookfor the data to travel to each one of them in turn, as shown in Figure 8-7. Try Yahoo.com! again as an example. Open a command prompt (see Chapter14), type tracerouteyahoo.com, and press Enter. It can take a moment forthe data to start filling in, but when it does, each line of your tracerouteresults represents a hop.Each hop represents a physical machine your datamust travel through in order to get where it s going. You can identify heavynetwork congestion and other problems by making note of the larger num- bers in the list. 162Part II:Internet Now!