______ _ __ __ / ____/___ ____ ___ ____ __ __/ | / /___ / /____ _____ / / / __ \/ __ `__ \/ __ \/ / / / |/ / __ \/ __/ _ \/ ___/ / /___/ /_/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / /| / /_/ / /_/ __(__ ) \____/\____/_/ /_/ /_/ .___/\__,_/_/ |_/\____/\__/\___/____/ /_/ This Week's Contents: My Notes: 1) We've been gone again . . . 2) Doug Reed Items . . . Columnists' Corner: 1) More Linux with Harry . . . Authored by Harry Baecker (hbaecker@duncan.island.net) News: 1) Lexis Nexis Redesigns Web Presence . . . 2) Windows NT 4.0 Debuts . . . Reviews: 1) HTML: The Definitive Guide Reviewed By: Bob Johnson 2) Windows95 Interactive Training Reviewed By: Russell G. Johnston (gray@posh.internext.com) 3) Spycraft: The Great Game Reviewed By: Steve Lozowski (slozowsk@locke.ccil.org) 4) The Web Page Design Cookbook by William Horton Reviewed By: Dennis P. MacPherson (pctc@infi.net) Web Sites: 1) NetBest Yearly Awards (www.ypn.com) 2) ZDNet Offers Personalized News (www.zdnet.com) Interview: 1) None this Week ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date : August 10, 1996 |CompuNotes is a weekly publication available Issue : 49A |through email and many fine on-line networks. --------------------------|We cover the IBM computing world with CompuNotes is published |software/hardware reviews, news, hot web 4Point, Inc., |sites, great columns and interviews. We also 1315 Woodgate Drive |give away one software package a week to a St. Louis, MO 63122 |lucky winner for just reading our fine (314) 909-1662 voice |publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we (314) 909-1662 fax |are here to bring you the way it is! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Backroom Workers: |We are always looking for Patrick Grote, Managing Editor |people to write honest, (pgrote@inlink.com) |concise reviews for us. Send Doug Reed, Asst. Editor / Writer Liaison |a message to Doug Reed at (dreed@panda.uchc.edu) |dreed@panda.uchc.edu with Judy Litt, Graphics Editor/Web Master |your list of qualifications. (jlitt@aol.com) |If Doug thinks we can count ------------------------------------------|on you to make things happen I am looking for a collection of shareware|you'll receive free software reviews I put out in the 87-88 timeframe |of your choice for review. under my handle of NEVER BEFORE. I think |We like new writers! they started as NB*.ZIP. Can you look |----------------------------- on your local BBS? THANKS! | Go Dole/Kemp! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Every issue of CompuNotes ever published can be found at the following ftp site: ftp.uu.net:/published/compunotes. Thanks to UUNET! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Our Web Site is at http://users.aol.com/CompNote/ Please Add Our Link to Your Homepage! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To subscribe, send a message to notes@inlink.com with the command subscribe compunotes in the subject. To unsubscribe, send a message to notes@inlink.com with the command unsubscribe compunotes in the subject. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SYSOPS READ HERE! Wanting to make CompuNotes available on as many BBS as possible, we can't afford to call everyone's BBS every week. What we would like to do is send those interested sysops a UUENCODED version for posting on their BBS. If you can volunteer to receive the UUENCODED version, turn it into a ZIP and upload it to your BBS, we'll list you in our sysops directory. If you are interested, fill out the following lines and send them back to notes@inlink.com with SYSOPS. We'll list your BBS in our SYSOPS LIST which will be included in each version of CompuNotes we ship out. If you have a WWW link we'll throw that up on our page. BBS NAME: BBS SYSOP: BBS NUMBER: URL: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Patrick's News Being The Publisher and Managing Editor Has Its Perks! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ OK, No More Delays . . . .| --------------------------- Yes, I know it has been one month since we last published a CompuNotes. Please understand that this delay has been with me and not with Doug Reed or Judy Litt. I was working on my old job and my new job the past month and wasn't exactly successful with either. This past week I have been focusing 100% on my new position and am getting a handle on it. This means my weekends and evenings are now back to being mine! CompuNotes will be weekly from here on out! This is Issue #49A because I wanted Issue #50 to be very special! Issue #50 will be out next week with a special interview and reviews. Also, I need to let everyone know that if they have a special talent with something related to computers, I'll offer you the space for a column. Look at Harry's Linux column! ------------------- Doug's Items . . .| ------------------- Doug wanted me to let you know a couple of things . . . 1) We are OK on writers right now. The REVLIST has been discontinued. If you feel like you have something to offer in the way of writing reviews, please contact Doug directly. 2) Doug is now handling the news section. I was going to drop the news section (notice the FTP section is gone), but Doug wanted to keep it, so he is now running it. I suggest sending all press releases and news items to him and myself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Columnists' Corner - We bring you a different person each week! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Linux and Tcl/Tk August 1996 Authored by Harry Baecker (hbaecker@duncan.island.net) After the very pleasing welcome my first article on the above received from you I only hope I can retain your interest with more on the same topics. First, though, a disclaimer. I am no universal guru, even as regards Linux and Tcl/Tk. My expertise, such as it is, derives from my daily use of these tools in the ongoing construction of a ôdatabaseö system for use by fieldworkers such as archeologists and social workers and in addition the experience gained in my employment from 1956 (yeah!) until 1991 as a systems programmer or consultant therein or teacher thereof, much of that involved with Unix. Since 1991 my retired status has also been that of programmer. In all that time my little mind has encompassed very little of the whole field of computing. In order to sample the wealth of stuff available you should subscribe to the relevant Usenet newsgroups: the comp.os.linux* hierarchy (about 11 newsgroups) and comp.lang.tcl(.announce) Apart from books on Linux and Tcl/Tk there is an interesting magazine, the Linux Journal, subs@ssc.com, and there are rumors of another, Linux World, to be published in Britain but I cannot trace it. There is also an echo on Fidonet called Linux and dedicated to, guess what? Linux. Often I see remarks to the effect that ôI would try Linux if it weren'tÆt so bigö a comment no doubt prompted by the fact that Linux distributions come on CD-ROM and give the impression that it is all Linux, and that you need to install it all. Those CDs are more a measure of the sheer volume of free software available for Unix/Linux, and even so you get nowhere near ALL of it, only a small fraction of the most useful stuff on the Internet imprinted on a CD, the rest you have to get for yourself when you need it. So it is the case that the Slackware distribution of Linux includes the TeX typesetting/text processing system Many publishers of books and periodicals around the world now require that authors submit copy for publication on disk in TeX format (TeX is not restricted to the use of our Roman alphabet.) That little toy alone accounts for about 4% of the space used on the CD, including the arcane alphabets included, like the Thai. Despite the example just given of an enormous and complex program, and of what some people regard as the quintessential Unix program, emacs, the text-processor-that-does-everything-including-handling your-email-and-may-tomorrow-make-you-brea kfast the real, well, anyway original Unix idea was to have lots of little programs each of which did one little task very well indeed and then to string these together using pipes, an idea not totally unfamiliar in the MS-DOS world, to perform some gigantic complex task. Hence it is that no Unix/Linux text- or word-processor includes a spellchecker program. The original Unix program to perform this job was called spell, today we use ispell, and already the next generation product, jspell is visible on the horizon. Just remember that the spell family come free. One of the most unfortunate aspects of MS-DOS-Windows spell checking software is that in all but the most expensive products there are severe limitations on the usersÆ choice of dictionaries and on the usersÆ ability to augment dictionaries with terms encoded for high speed search in the way the original main dictionary is (often not too successfully at that.) Not only are there British English and American English spelling dictionaries for ispell, as well as ones for most Indo-European languages, but also the instructions and tools for building new ones and for incorporating your private personal and technical topic dictionaries, accredited from your own texts, into the high -speed search format of the main dictionary. Most text-handling Unix/Linux programs allow the user to call a member of the spell family. In addition to the form of piping available in MS-DOS, where the standard output of one program is piped to the standard input of another, with the difference hat execution of the two processes may be concurrent, thanks to Unix/Linux multitasking a receiving process is triggered to execute as soon as some of anotherÆs output is available for it to read, a Unix/Linux program may also open named pipes explicitly to communicate with programs named at the time the program is written. Because of Unix multitasking you may thus feed ispell small chunks of text to check rather than your whole epic at once. Fate in the kindly guise of John Ousterhout has conspired that the Unix pipeline facilities are available in the Tcl language If in Tcl you include a file open command where the filename is preceded by a vertical bar, so: |tinkerbell, the Tcl interpreter assumes you wish to execute the program tinkerbell, which must be on your PATH, or more explicitly specified with a full pathname, feeding it the rest of the statement as command-line parameters in anticipation of your program reading from and/or writing to that pipe later. The pipe may be to a compiled program or to a script executable by some interpreter or other available on your system. If, that is, the script has the right ritual at the beginning to invoke its interpreter. In the case of a Tcl/Tk script that ritual incantation is: #!/bin/sh # The -f below is only needed for a wish (Tcl/Tk) interpreter built with Tk 3.6 # The backslash makes the next line a comment too in Tcl \ exec wish -f ô$0 ô$@ö .....here goes the meat of the script..... The first line calls the shell program, sh to execute the script. Texts with the first line starting ô#!ö are recognized as shell scripts to be interpreted by the shell itself. A shell? You know, like COMMAND.COM, except that Linux and Unix offer a variety of shells, so the program name sh is always linked symbolically to the shell in use. Text lines beginning with ô#ö alone are recognized by both the shell and Tcl as comments. Hence eventually the shell executes wish which itself in turn ignores the call to exec executed by the shell as if it is part of a comment. This ritual here for obvious reasons only invokes magic shared by all the shells. If you are sure of the whereabouts of the interpreter you can invoke it directly in one line, like: #!/usr/local/bin/wish You will note that Tcl/Tk are given the courtesy of being allowed to behave like a shell. All interpreters are. Think about it. All shells are interpreters. I recall a colleague of mine who was hot on programming solutions to the Towers of Hanoi problem in as many programming languages as he could. So he did it in JCL, Job Control Language, the shell of the IBM System/360Æs OS/360 operating system. Unfortunately it is not yet very clear how much of this article is relevant to the MS-Windows and Mac implementations of Tcl/Tk . This stems mainly from the vagaries of the exec command in the several implementations. All too many things that Unix and so Linux, and so the Tcl/Tk implementations there, assumed to be part of the basic necessities of existence that are not part of the MS-Windows or Mac environment. It is all too easy to dismiss these as mere conveniences for computernerds, but the real impact is economic, how for instance, do you pipe stuff between MS-Windows programs without investing in a special-purpose tool? In Linux you can pipe between XWindows programs and scripts as easily as between command line programs. In truth the distinction does not exist. Simply because XWindows added no functionality beyond graphics and the client/server relationship to Unix, the rest, including task switching, memory management, communications, were already there, as were multiple virtual consoles instantiated in the same physical terminal. There exists a specification of the minimal properties an operating system is supposed to have according to the gurus of the IEEE Computer Society. Part of it has been adopted by the US government. The POSIX specification covers 7 areas including system calls, system utilities file systems, i/o facilities, and debugging support. The collection is very obviously derived from experience with the more popular implementations of Unix. Microsoft claims that Windows NT is POSIX compliant. Many challenge that claim. As befits the most recent implementation of Unix Linux is claimed to be the most POSIX-compliant Unix around. This claim is not easy to document, however, one distribution, Linux-FT revision 1.2, has been certified as POSIX.1 compliant. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS OF THE WEEK| This section is dedicated to verified news . . . All News (C)opyright Respective Owner - Will Only Reprint ------------------------------------------------------------------------ LEXIS-NEXIS Redesign . . .| --------------------------- PORTLAND, Ore., Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ - Inherent.Com announces the signing of two multi-year contracts: one to design a World-Wide Web Site for LEXIS- NEXIS; the other to provide Web services to Martindale-Hubbell's clients. "The LEXIS-NEXIS Human Rights Law Web will be a multi-media discussion of the Bill of Rights," said LEXIS-NEXIS's David Vandagriff, "and it will take advantage of the latest Internet technology while drawing on the wealth of information available on LEXIS-NEXIS databases." The Site will also contain information about LEXIS-NEXIS products, services, and the LEXIS-NEXIS bar association partnership program. Martindale-Hubbell's contract with Inherent.Com enables Martindale-Hubbell to offer World-Wide Web Site services to its clients. The Martindale- Hubbell(R) Law Directory, the largest and most respected attorney directory, has been available on the Internet since June. "The Internet is a key element in Martindale- Hubbell's distribution strategy," said Martindale-Hubbell Associate Publisher Carol Cooper, "and custom Web Sites are a logical extension of the services we provide our clients." Web Sites designed, developed, and hosted by Inherent.Com under the agreement include links to and from the Web-based Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory. "The LEXIS-NEXIS Site is a showcase project for us," stated Gregory Miller, Inherent.com's CEO, "and by teaming with Martindale- Hubbell, together we offer real definable Web Site products." LEXIS-NEXIS (http://www.lexis-nexis.com), headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, is the world's leading provider of enhanced information services and management tools. LEXIS-NEXIS is a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. and part of Reed Elsevier p1c, one of the world's leading publishing and information businesses. Reed Elsevier has annual sales in excess of $5 billion and 29,700 employees. It is owned equally by British firm Reed International P.L.C. (NYSE: RUK) and Dutch firm Elsevier NV (NYSE: ENL). Martindale-Hubbell (http://www.martinda1e.com), a division of Reed Elsevier Inc., is headquartered in New Providence, New Jersey. Founded in 1868, the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory is the authoritative guide to the legal profession, serving as the primary research source for information about the professional qualifications and expertise of attorneys and law firms worldwide. Inherent.Com (http://www.inherent.com), headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and with Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston offices, provides World-Wide Web Sites and other Internet and Intranet solutions for legal and financial service professionals. ----------------------- Windows NT 4.0 Debuts!| ----------------------- REDMOND, Wash., July 31 /PRNewswire/ - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced the release of Windows NT(R) Server 4.0, the latest version of the world's best-selling server operating system. This release brings customers unmatched ease of use and management, higher network throughput, and a complete set of tools for developing and managing intranets. Manufacturing of Microsoft(R) Windows NT Server 4.0 began today, with general availability anticipated within the next month. According to International Data Corp. (IDC) Windows NT Server led in server operating system shipments in 1995 and again in first- quarter 1996, outselling other server operating systems including NetWare 3(R), NetWare 4 and all versions of UNIX combined. Windows NT Server growth is most evident in its year-over-year sales increase of 154 percent from first-quarter 1995 to first-quarter 1996. Windows NT Server 4.0 is the only server operating system to include built-in Web services that provide a complete, integrated intranet solution. Windows NT Server 4.0 includes Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) version 2.0, currently in use by more than 200,000 users. Other intranet features include the Microsoft FrontPage(TM) 1.1 Web authoring and management tool, the latest version of the tool for creating and managing Web sites, and Microsoft Index Server, a content indexing and querying search engine (available from the Web). Analysts believe Windows NT Server 4.0 is positioned to capture a significant percentage of intranet server sales, which will fuel its strong growth. According to a recent study conducted by MSI International Inc., an independent marketing research firm, adoption of intranets will grow by 150 percent by year end. "The concept of the intranet is dominating the thoughts of IT managers trying to improve both employee productivity and the competitive performance of their companies," said Rob Enderle, senior industry analyst at the Giga Information Group. "With this release, Microsoft has effectively targeted these intranet needs with a highly integrated, low-cost platform. As a result, we expect Windows NT Server 4.0 will be the preferred choice for most IT organizations." "Windows NT Server 4.0 is a major milestone in our development. It is substantially faster, much easier to use and incorporates significantly new intranet functionality," said Jim Allchin, senior vice president, desktop and business systems division at Microsoft. "With over 200,000 beta users, this is the most widely tested version of Windows NT. Because of rigorous testing and substantial customer feedback, Windows NT 4.0 is the most robust version of Windows NT we have ever shipped." Windows NT Server 4.0 offers scalability improvements of up to 33 percent, yielding more linear scalability on machines with eight or more processors. The additional fine tuning for the Pentium(R) Pro platforms to ensure high performance makes Windows NT Server 4.0 optimized for this type of hardware. "The combination of Pentium Pro processors and Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 delivers superb value and price/performance," said John McNulty, director of enterprise server programs at Intel Corp. "The scalability and performance of Windows NT Server 4.0 on Pentium Pro processors will continue to fuel the strong industry wide adoption of Windows NT Server and will help further drive the growth rates for Pentium Pro processors and standard high-volume servers." Windows NT Server 4.0 provides features to reduce the number of steps required for a system administrator to install, use and manage a server. It offers a set of Internet and intranet tools and improved performance as an applications, file, print and communications server. Enhancements include the following: .. The Windows(R) 95 user interface and new management wizards. These enhancements make Windows NT Server 4.0 one of the easiest server operating systems to use and manage. .. Performance and scalability improvements. Windows NT Server 4.0 offers significant scalability improvements over Windows NT Server 3.51, achieving considerably higher performance on four-processor machines and offering much more linear scalability on machines with eight or more processors. File server performance in Windows NT Server 4.0 also shows dramatic gains, achieving more than twice the throughput of Windows NT Server 3.51 (tests were performed using Netbench(TM) 4.0). .. Improved Internet and intranet communications. Microsoft Internet Information Server 2.0, the fastest Web server for Windows NT Server, offers up to 40 percent greater performance than its predecessor, version 1.0. Also added are Web browser-based remote server administration and Index Server, a searching technology that offers automatic content indexing of HTML pages and other documents stored on corporate intranet servers, such as those created in Microsoft Office. Windows NT Server 4.0 also includes Microsoft FrontPage 1.1, allowing nonprogrammers as well as experienced developers to create and manage professional-quality Web sites. The Distributed Component Object Model is one other key addition to Windows NT Server 4.0. The Component Object Model (COM) allows software developers to create component-based applications. Distributed COM in Windows NT Server 4.0 extends COM to allow components to securely communicate across the Internet. Distributed COM is a growing Internet standard, and it has been published in conformance with the format specified in RFC 1543. A completely new version of DNS includes a graphical administration utility and integration with WINS services for dynamic updates of host names and addresses. To enable the creation of virtual private networks across the Internet, Windows NT Server 4.0 offers point-to-point tunneling protocol (PPTP), a technology that extends the capacity of RAS to enable secure, low-cost private networks without the need to change the client software. Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 is scheduled to be available within the next month for approximately $1,129 for the new 10-user version. Customers with previous versions of Windows NT Server can upgrade to version 4.0 for approximately $539 for the 10-user version. Additional information on pricing for Windows NT Server 4.0 is available at http://microsoft.com/ntserver/40price.htm. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ REVIEWS OF THE WEEK | Interesting software/hardware you may need . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Product: (Book) HTML: The Definitive Guide Reviewed By: Bob Johnson Author: Chuck Musciano & Bill Kennedy Price: $27.95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ So now you want your own homepage. But just where do you start? How about right here with this book! HTML is a fairly easy language to learn and this title will make it even easier. This book is under 400 pages long (including index) which makes it easy to get through and easy too go back to find what you may have forgotten. You will first learn a little of the history and the possible future of HTML. The book will also give you a very small primer on the Internet, but that is not the focus of the book and it is VERY small. Chapter 2 will take you to a quick start in HTML programming. This is something I think everyone will like. Instead of spending hours or even days studying HTML before attempting to write some code, the authors take you right to the heart of the matter, encouraging you to begin writing some simple HTML code right off the bat. All you need to get started is the book and a text editor that can handle ASCII text file format. The first HTML document that you will create is quite simple indeed, but you will amazed with the feeling of success that you will feel after producing and viewing it in the window of your browser. You will also learn a little about various tags and the building of hyperlinks in this chapter, but the main purpose of the chapter is to teach you to write simple text documents using HTML. Chapter 3 delves a little further into simple tags and the overall appearance of your document. You will learn more about the basic tags used in HTML such as , , and <body>. You will also learn about ending tags, and the proper nesting of tags. The authors also explain to you why your document looks different when using different browsers. Chapter 4 will guide you on text formatting and layout. You will learn how to create headlines and how to align them. You will also learn about using special characters in your text. The book goes on to describe paragraphs and line breaks and how to add certain attributes to your text, such as italics and bold text. By the time you get through this chapter you will feel quite comfortable laying out and producing simple text documents in HTML. Chapter 5 begins with instruction on horizontal rules and inserting images into your documents. It will also explain to you the use of colors and background images in you documents. Now you're really starting to have some fun! Want to add some background sound to your web page? That is also covered in the chapter, along with animated text and a small section on applets. On to chapter 6 and an in-depth study of hyperlinks. While this part of the process may not be fun it is definitely important. How many web pages have you seen that don't contain any links? Not to mention the fact that if you have several documents (and you will) you will have to know how to link them together. Chapter 7 teaches us about lists that we can use in our documents. You know, the long lists often using bullets or that look like some kind of book report outline. This is pretty self-explanatory, but if you want to add lists to your documents this section will help. Back to having some fun! Chapter 8 will teach you how to create forms and surveys. While most of the forms that you encounter on the WWW are created using CGI scripting, they can be created using simple HTML. The authors even try to help you create forms that will appeal to people encountering them out there on the Internet. Some of the programming gets a little tricky here, but anyone with normal intelligence will have no real problems. Chapters 9 and 10 deal with tables and frames. These items can really add spice to your document with very little work. You will find yourself designing like a real pro by this point. Chapter 11 deals with server push documents. While most of you will not really need the information in this chapter it is there for those that decide to implement it. Chapter 12, the final chapter, will teach you some neat little tricks to make your pages stand out among the rest. These include marquees, custom bullets and multiple columns of text. The rest of the book includes some appendices that cover HTML grammar, a quick reference to HTML tags, Document Type Documentation, character entities, color names and values, and of course an all inclusive index. You will also find a tear-out desktop reference card with all of the most used HTML tags. In conclusion I would recommend this book to anyone that has not used HTML and wants to, and also people that are familiar with the language and wants to learn more or just needs a good reference for those tags and such that they don't use often enough to become rote. O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 103 Morris Street Suite A Sebastopol, CA 95472 (707) 829-0515 WWW: http://ora.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Product: Windows95 Interactive Training Reviewed By: Russell G. Johnston (gray@posh.internext.com) Reviewed on: Pentium 120, 16 MB RAM, Windows 95 Requires: 386SX, 4 MB RAM, Win 3.1, 3.11, NT or 95, 1xCD; sound board or CD audio jack, VGA, 9MB hard disc space Recommended: 486, SVGA (800x600), 2xCD ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This tutorial on two CDROM's is a series of lessons designed to familiarize the user with the Windows 95 interface. As you can see in the above, it can run under Window's 3.1, or Windows for Workgroups. Most lessons contrast performance of tasks within the 3.1 environment with the same task under 95. Thus the program is aimed at those migrating from 3.1 to 95. There is also a network version available for enterprise-wide upgrades. Users with some Windows 95 experience and new users with little or no experience on either platform will find this program instructive as well. The installation program on the first CDROM performed without problems, both on my home system, running Windows 95, and on the Windows 3.11 workstation at the office. The version I received for evaluation included a floppy disk with a software update, which replaced a couple of program files previously installed on my hard drive. Development obviously took place prior to the release of Windows 95. Try and run the program without the update and an "Unpardonable Sin" dialog will cut short your tutorial session. Actually that experience in itself is a useful lesson in following the directions included with your software. The uninstall program worked well, unless it was run close on the heels of the tutorial session. As you might already know, Windows 95 will not allow access to recently-used program components. While certain library files remain in cache memory, they are designated "in use." If this happens, the uninstall program informs you that "certain elements" of the program could not be removed, and that you should remove them individually. This is a trifle unsettling, since it doesn't tell you what or where the elements are. A reinstall-uninstall sequence will do the trick, should this happen. The video portion of the program consists of three windows. At startup a "Contents window" presents the course structure listing the lessons and topics covered on the two discs. Each new user signs in to maintain a record of his or her own progress through the lessons. A check appears next to each completed lesson, as you work your way through the series. This feature simplifies returning to the program and resuming where you left off. I suppose one could say that if you don't remember where you left off, you weren't paying very close attention. But one has other things on one's mind. Now what was I saying? Oh, yeah..the windows. The second of the three program windows is a graphic of the Windows 95 desktop. This is the place where the examples are presented and where you are instructed to work through the exercises. This demonstration area is fixed in size and fills a monitor at 640x480 resolution. The reason this is significant, and the reason I found it best to run the program at 800X600, is that the third window overlaps the demonstration area in 640x480 resolution. Though this "Control window" is small, it tends to get in the way as you click and drag your way through the lessons. Running under 800x600 or greater allows you to place the "Control window" out of the way above or below the demonstration area. Available on the control window are flow-control functions, e.g." back", "next concept", "pause to get beer." Included with these buttons is a text window. Should you be unable to understand what the instructor expects of you, in the form of a keystroke or mouse movement, a clue appears here. So you start lesson number one with the "demonstration area" and the "control area" on screen. The music starts and Monica and Jim alternate the lecturing duties. There is intermittent badinage, but it never becomes overly cute or irritating. The speakers are a bit dizzyingly positive about Windows 95, but there's logic in that. A less uplifting approach might further discourage a worker who has been told that Windows 95 is coming to Acme Industries, like it or not. Not to wander too far afield, but the first time I encountered the style of alternating male and female voices was in the late 60's on Radio Havana. I had a Fiat with a short-wave radio, and not much to do during summer evenings. It was unusual then, but is now commonplace, in fact sort of a cliche. I don't know why I find it annoying. I think it's, as they say, just me. I learned most of what I know about Windows 95 from all the computer-mag articles like "314 Win95 Secrets Bill Gates Doesn't Even Know." So you can imagine all the minutiae I have managed to accumulate (and forget). My wife learned Window's 95 in self defense when she sat down to balance the checkbook, and was greeted with the user-friendly Windows 95 desktop. I had spent most of the previous night "upgrading" the computer. Each of us managed to carry away quite a bit after spending two hours or so with the program. It contains general advice: "Don't store files on your desktop." It offers non-obvious details like how to format a floppy in Windows 95. Quick; no peeking in the Help files; where is it? It's possible to lock the program up by anticipating the mouse clicks requested in the lesson. I've seen this behavior in other programs where scripting is used. It isn't a severe problem. I guess the real question that comes to mind in the end is: what sort of teaching method is most effective, and is the "follow-along" method used in this program a good one. If my point is cloudier than usual, my excuse is that I'm not a teacher. Here's an example. A friend purchased a new (first) computer, preloaded with Windows 95. She asked me to give her a brief orientation. So off I went, "Windows 95 Secrets" in hand. After I had given her an introduction to the system, I trundled home, considering a new career in new-user enlightenment. That evening she called to say that, when she tried to demonstrate her newfound expertise to her son, she couldn't remember how to do much of anything. She just stared at the desktop. Her learning had not involved enough effort, and my instruction had been too much a demonstration. Yet most people find "Windows Resource Kit" a poor introductory text. I believe this program achieves a good balance between the two extremes. I recommend it to anyone interested in becoming more comfortable with Windows 95 (a trademark of Microsoft Corporation, I suspect I should have said somewhere along the way.) LearnIt Corporation P.O. Box 7220 Gainesville, Florida 32605 Sales: 800-352-4806 Other: 904-375-6655 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: Spycraft: The Great Game Reviewed By: Steve Lozowski (slozowsk@locke.ccil.org) Reviewed On: 486/DX-33, 16 MB RAM, Double Speed CD-ROM Requires: 486/DX2-66, 8 MB RAM, Double Speed CD-ROM, VESA LB or PCI SVGA Video, DOS 6.0 or Windows 95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spycraft lets you play the part of a CIA agent in an interactive multimedia espionage adventure. Set in the current day, the story line adds fictional elements to real events. William Colby, the former director of the CIA, and Oleg Kalugin, a former Major General of the KGB, worked with Activision on the game, and also portrayed themselves in the game. Correspondent and spy novelist John Adams wrote the story plot. All told, Activision spent over four million dollars producing this game which spans three CD-ROMs. And it shows, Spycraft truly is a great game! I evaluated the MS-DOS version of the game. Since I was running it on a less than suggested machine, I decided to use the maximum hard disk install option to increase performance, which took up a whopping 47 MB of space. The recommended installation takes 30 MB of hard disk space. I initially had a problem with the default VESA driver included with the game - it hung my machine when I quit the game. But once I used the VESA driver included my video card, I had no further problems. Of course, running on a DX-33 machine, I did experience some blockiness and dropped video frames in the full screen video sequences. But it is a tribute to this game that I was not really bothered by that, at least not enough to stop playing. Spycraft may not be for everyone, as it does have some violent aspects. There are pictures of murder victims, and a graphic video assassination scene. The game also has the capability to use torture in interrogations, but there is an option to block out the torture scenes. I would say that Spycraft is a lot less violent than many games out there, and violence is part of the nature of espionage. So if you really want to live out the life of a CIA operative, you have to be ready to break some eggs. I don't want to give away too much of the story line, but I feel that I should provide some teaser. I'll just say that you'll encounter the assassination of a Russian presidential candidate, ex-CIA agents up to no good, stolen nuclear weapons, and the Russian mafia. That's only a teaser, but the story line is very believable. While full-motion video is an integral part of this game, Spycraft if not an interactive movie. It is an adventure game with a first-person viewpoint that has many facets. This game has a great interface concept. You are part of a team of agents, the others existing only in the computer. You communicate with them and other CIA personnel via a Personal Digital Assistant that allows email and video messaging and teleconferencing. I really got the feeling that there were other "players" in the game. When you complete an objective and report back to the team, you will receive messages on their progress and suggested actions for you to take next. You talk to other people you meet by selecting from a number of text sentences at the bottom of the screen. Your selection determines what they will answer, and affects your remaining options for the conversation. This is especially important in interrogations, as you may have to start over if you take the prisoner down the wrong path, and cannot get the information you want. (Of course there's also the torture "bullpen".) Spycraft contains a wealth of high-tech tools for you to use, as well as information on and from the CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, ATF and Secret Service. This is not official information, but within the universe of the game. The tools are either accessible from your PDA or your office computer in the game. The PDA contains INTELINK, which is based on the secret network used by U.S. intelligence agencies, and includes COMLINK, NEWSLINK, DATALINK, and WEBLINK. COMLINK gives you access to your video, audio, and text messages, and has an Operations Manager which tracks the to-do list for you and your team. NEWSLINK connects you to news within the Spycraft world, including the "National Intelligence Daily". By requesting news, a video news segment on that topic will appear in your COMLINK. DATALINK takes you to home pages for the intelligence agencies within Spycraft. WEBLINK is a feature only available under Windows 95 with a 14.4k or faster Internet connection through an Internet Service Provider using a 32-bit Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. WEBLINK is a unique optional feature that lets you access the Internet Spycraft WWW site from within the game. This allows you to link to real intelligence Web sites, automatically download real-time news updates which then appear in the game, chat live with other game players, and post and view messages. The same INTELINK functions are available from your computer within the game, as well as many other tools you will need. The Kennedy Assassination Tools are used to locate the trajectory of bullets. Image Analysis can help find information in photographic images, including Optical Character Enhancement to make text more readable. Mix and Match lets you revise computer sketches of suspects to match and identify one in the database. Databases such as the Science and Technology weapons database contain information necessary to complete certain tasks. Other tools allow you to identify sounds, decode cyphers, and doctor photographs. The photodoc tool took me a while the first time I used it, as you have to get the size of objects and reflected light just right. The shooting scenes are pretty basic. You move your way through a setting, with a computer-aided display to help you find or avoid enemies. Once an enemy is located, you cannot move until the fire fight is resolved. Using the mouse, you target your intended victim and shoot. Add to all these features commendable acting and a riveting story line, and you have a game that you can enjoy for many hours. I really got immersed in the world of Spycraft. Be prepared to break some laws to get the job done. I heartily recommend Spycraft: The Great Game to those who want the thrill of espionage without the real bodily danger. Activision P.O. Box 67713 Los Angeles, CA 90067 (310) 479-5644 Compuserve: GO GAMBPUB E-Mail: support@activision.com Web: http://www.activision.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: The Web Oage Design Cookbook by William Horton Reviewed By: Dennis P. MacPherson (pctc@infi.net) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I liked this book. It's well written, comes with a CD-ROM full of neat stuff, and I recommend you add it to your bookshelf with the other books about HTML and creating Web pages. The format of this book resembles that of a standard cookbook and I agree with the authors: "Good cooks learn by using the recipes of more experienced cooks." The recipes, in this case, are templates for Web home pages, and all the recipes can be found on the CD-ROM included with the book. The Web Page Design Cookbook contains 650 pages divided into thirteen chapters plus an index. Chapter 1, "The Kitchen," is all about the World Wide Web, HTML, and URLs. Browsers, TCP/IP, and the like are explained in the second chapter, entitled "Tableware and Cutlery." Chapter 3, "Cooking Lessons," begins with the book's philosophy: "The hard way to create Web pages is to spend hours trying to figure out, type in, and debug arcane HTML codes. The easy way is to find a Web page that you like, copy it, and change it around as needed." Since I disagree, in part, with this statement, I almost closed the book. I believe it's worth the effort to struggle with HTML tags first; then see what the pros are doing and learn from their expertise. In Chapter 3 the authors present a 9-step plan for creating Web pages. The plan includes making a plan, picking the templates (theirs, of course), filling in the blanks, modifying the elements, linking, and testing. In other words, get organized. Good, sound advice. Fortunately, the authors redeemed themselves in Chapter 4 which contains the templates or "Basic Recipes." In this chapter they present a template for and clearly describe the following types of Web page design: * Generic Web Page * Home Page * Contents * Glossary * How-to Procedure * Troubleshooting Procedure * Course Description * Biography * Book Description * News Release * Organization Page * Download Menu * Registration Form * Survey Form * Catalog Entry * Multimedia Sampler * Research Report Each recipe is provided in HTML format on the CD-ROM and is very easy to find and use. Plus, the book references each section of each template allowing easy lookup of how the section was created. Included with each template is the actual HTML code used to create the template. Hats off to the chefs! I was also pleased with Chapter 5, "Ingredients, " wherein the authors do an excellent job describing all the most common HTML tags. They give wonderful examples and add useful comments and tips as well. Thus, if you wish to learn how to create Web pages "the hard way, " Chapter 5 provides the tools. Chapter 6 is entitled "Nutrition" and explains in detail how to format text, work with pictures, and add sounds and moving pictures. Here the authors do a great job of defining file formats and explaining the differences between GIF and JPEG or AIFF files versus the AU format. The more advanced subjects are discussed in Chapter 7, "Haute Cuisine." Here you learn about forms, scripts, tables, and image-maps. The treatment is cursory at best, but again well written. If you need to specialize in these areas, seek out more advanced reference materials on the subjects. I found several chapters rather boring and unnecessary. Chapter 9, for example, called "International Cuisine" attempts to help the novice Webmaster create pages that will be accepted globally. Here, for example, you learn that the proverbial thumb up (in America we mean OK, cool, or nice going) 'is an invitation to insert the thumb into a private part of the anatomy' in Sicily. I agree: if your Web pages are intended for a World audience, you should be careful how you use certain symbols. On the other hand, there is no way you can possibly know all the gestures, puns, totems, and meanings of every culture on the face of the earth. Bottom line: let your intended audience guide the symbols you use. Another chapter I believe we should have been spared was Chapter 12: "Cordon Bleu." Section headings include "What are you doing?" "Where's this Headed?" and "What's My Role?" This chapter is nothing more that consultant's gobbledygook. (Note: the authors are all consultants with their own businesses). The chapter is difficult to understand and adds little value to an otherwise lucid and useful text. Before the book's index is a section (not a chapter) entitled "Resources for the Web Chef." This is a good section and a good idea, but like all resources in print, it will be surpassed and out-of-date by the time you have it in your hands. Better resources can always be found on the Net itself. All in all, I recommend this book. It makes a great reference for the hypertext markup language; the templates on CD-ROM represent an excellent place to start creating good-looking Web pages; and the book is well-written. "The Web Page Design Cookbook: All the ingredients you need to create 5-star Web pages." (http://www.csn.net/~whorton/contents.htm), ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WEBSITES OF THE WEEK! | This section is devoted to cool WebSites . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NetBest Awards . . . | ---------------------- BOSTON, Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ - The Olympics may be over, but one more award was unveiled today for the best in cyberspace. Today Your Personal Net (www.ypn.com) and MACWORLD Expo unveiled the winners of the first-ever annual NetBest Awards for creativity and excellence in Web sites. Chosen by judges from a pool of nominated sites, CyberMad, Crayon and TerraQuest were heralded as the Best-of-the-Net in three categories: Entertainment, News & Money and Living, respectively. Judges, including best-selling Generation X and Microserfs author Douglas Coupland, critic James Atlas, and NetBooks editor Kelly Maloni, selected the winners from a pool of more than 2,000 nominated Web sites. CyberMad, a cutting-edge, online pop-culture magazine, won the Grand Prize for its eclectic mix of original content and design. "NetBest is proud to recognize true excellence and originality on the Net among what some might call cyberclutter," said Michael Wolff, president of Wolff New Media and publisher of the NetBooks series. "I'm amazed at how far Web design has come, and how quickly," said Douglas Coupland. "Generation X has helped pave the way to bring information to the masses in a highly interactive way." The NetBest awards concludes a two month "people's choice" campaign and nomination process sponsored by Your Personal Net and MACWORLD Expo. In addition to Douglas Coupland, judges included Chip Bayers, executive producer of HotWired; Lee Stein, chairman, First Virtual; Michael Goff, founder and former editor-in-chief of OUT magazine; Roger Black, creative director, Home and president, Interactive Bureau; James Atlas of the New York Times; Michael Wolff, president of Wolff New Media; and Kelly Maloni, executive editor of Your Personal Net. The winning sites in this hotly contested campaign include: - NetEntertainment Category: CyberMad - (http://www.cybermad.com) - Created by Christopher Parr, CyberMad is designed to take surfers on a slick and sometimes irreverent tour of online pop in America. "CyberMad does a great job at generating an experience that takes you totally inside other people's heads," said Douglas Coupland. The hip and eclectic cyberzine includes comics, movies, art, and even America's number one online soap opera. "CyberMad is delightfully rich and original," said Roger Black. - NetLiving Category: TerraQuest - (http://www.terraquest.com) - An elegant adventure travel site featuring high quality photography and original travel essays. "TerraQuest actually gave the feeling of adventure and of having been to a strange new place," said Coupland. A joint venture between Mountain Travel-Sobek and WorldTravel Partners. TerraQuest offers surfers a window to the world through its original content written by correspondents from the far reaches of the globe. - NetNews and Money Category: Crayon - (http://www.crayon.net) - The day of free, online, customized news and information is here. "A staggering amount of resources with a gratifying result," said Roger Black. Created by Dave Maher and Jeff Boulter, recent Bucknell graduates, Crayon, short for CReAteYourOwnNewspaper, allows users to build a customized "newspaper" consisting of links to dozens of news and information sources on the Web, such as local newspapers and broadcast networks. "The site offers a good opportunity to organize the mass of information available on the Net," added Michael Wolff. Your Personal Net (www.ypn.com) was created by Manhattan-based Wolff New Media, one of the leading providers of information about the Net and the emerging Net culture. YPN, along with its companion book series the NetBooks, are general and subject-specific oriented guides to the Internet and online services. Other titles in the NetBooks series, published by Wolff New Media and distributed by Random House, Inc., include NetCollege, NetStudy, NetVote, NetChat, NetMarketing, NetMoney, NetTrek, NetSports, NetTech, NetGuide2, NetMusic, NetTaxes, NetGames2, NetJobs, NetDoctor and Fodor's NetTravel. Additional titles coming soon in the NetBooks series include NetSpy (Sept. 1996), NetKids (Sept. 1996), and NetSciFi (Sept. 1996). --------------------------- ZDNet Delivers Again . . .| --------------------------- CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 25 /PRNewswire/ - Raising the bar for free personalized news retrieval on the World Wide Web, Ziff-Davis Publishing's ZD Net, the leading source for online computing information, today launched a significantly enhanced edition of its popular ZD Net Personal View (http://www.pview.com). Introduced in October 1995 as the first free personalized news service on the Web, ZD Net Personal View has been enhanced in every way, from the range and depth of computer news resources, to the focus and flexibility of user customization, to the immediacy of news delivery. "Personal View offers ZD Net users the equivalent of a custom made newspaper, available on demand, for free," said Jim Savage, vice president and general manager at ZD Net. "Personal View is already an established, popular part of ZD Net. Now, ZD Net Personal View searches more stories about all facets of the high technology business than any other news source available. That's extremely important to ZD Net users, who come to our site because they are focused on computing technology and the digital revolution." To customize Personal View, registered ZD Net users select as many as six personalized computing topics they are interested in following. Then, whenever they access Personal View, they are provided with a separate view for each topic, with only the most relevant of the thousands of available articles and news stories displayed. Users can either create their own search topics or choose from a pre-selected list of 24 of the most popular computing topics, such as the Internet, Financial Reports, Government/Legal, Mobile Computing, Software Development, and CD-ROM. News stories are now filtered in real-time, the minute they are available from Personal View's more than 650 news sources. Previously, Personal View drew breaking news several times a day from ZD Net, Newsbytes, PR Newswire and Business Wire. News services that have been added to ZD Net Personal View now include: Reuters North American Securities Report; Reuters Business Report; Reuters Online Technology Report; IntellX, provider of full-text articles from daily newspapers, trade journals, and business magazines; and Comtex, provider of national and international news wire services including UPI, Xinhua, and ITAR/TASS. Personal View results are organized into three categories: News Flash, Week in Review and New from ZD Net. "News Flash" features up- to- the-minute news and press releases on the selected topic. "Week in Review," a great resource for users who are unable to access the web every day, contains the most relevant news and press releases for the selected topic over the past five business days. "New from ZD Net" lists the latest URLs on ZD Net that match the topic, plus it offers a customized view of articles from current Ziff-Davis magazines, including 19 domestic and 11 international titles. Ziff- Davis' domestic titles include: PC Magazine, PC Week, PC Computing, MacUser, MacWeek, Computer Shopper, Windows Sources, Family PC, Computer Life, Interctive Week, Yahoo! Internet Life, ZD Internet Magazine, Computer Gaming World, Electronic Gaming Monthly, EGM2, Internet Underground, P.S.X., CyberSports, and Intelligent Gamer's Fusion. In addition to its real-time news filtering capability, Personal View was designed as a research tool. Its sophisticated search engine lets users launch custom full-text searches through archived articles and press releases. In addition, on top of each article is a button called "Find Related Articles," an innovative search tool that instantly retrieves the most relevant articles from Personal View's magazine and news archive to provide related background information on the selected news story. ZD Net Personal View was developed in association with Paracel Online Systems, Inc. (http://www.online.paracel.com), a Dallas-based creator of customized news products for the World Wide Web, Lotus Notes, and other electronic platforms. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTERVIEW WITH ????? | Weekly Interviews with the Movers and Shakers! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ No Interview This Week! --END OF ISSUE--