VossNet Hints

Helpful Hints for Using Voss Net Online and the Internet

In using your Voss Net Online account, the most important thing to remember is that we're here for you! Voss Net Online Customer Support will be happy to answer any questions you may have and help as best as we can. Voss Net Online support can be reached at (01753) 737-999 or by email at support@vossnet.co.uk. Currently telephone support is available Monday to Friday between 9.30am and 6pm. If at all possible please email us with your problem but please do drop us a line if you encounter any difficulties.

Quick Tips

For details on how to use the WinsockApps menu and how to go about using a different Web browser with Voss Net Online (eg. Netscape) please click on the How! icon when you are on-line.

If you see a Web address in a magazine or newspaper you want to try, you can go directly to it by clicking on the spider's web icon and replacing the text in the white box at the top with the address and then pressing RETURN.

By default only the first ten items in the 'Pathways into the Internet' menus are displayed. However, most menus have more items than this in them. To get to the other items use the scroll bar to the right of the window. We suggest that you also set the number of items to show in a list at once in the 'Options and Preferences' 'General' menu to 22.

If you only have a slow modem you can turn the pictures off on Web pages so that the page comes down a lot faster. It doesn't look as nice but most of the useful information is text based and this lets you access that much more quickly.

Don't forget that while you wait for one operation to complete you can start another operation. So, if you're waiting for a Web page to come down you can reply to an email or read the news or start fetching another Web page or do anything else within the Internaut.

Some full colour pictures in Web pages don't come out with quite the right colours. If there's a picture you want to see in higher quality then just double-click on the image and it will be displayed in a separate window with the right colours.

Make use of the on-line help facilities (the 'How' Question Mark icon in the bottom right). This has lots of useful information about using the Internet and the Voss Net Online software.

Keep an eye out for free software upgrades and bugfixes. They will be announced with a system bulletin when they first come out and in the 'Today' pages (get to them by clicking on the Voss Net 'Today' icon at the top right).

If you see a Web address you would like to try in an email or news message you can go directly to it by highlighting it with the mouse and pressing Ctrl-W.

Don't forget to download the full list of Usenet newsgroups from the 'Voss Net On-line: Information, Software, Accounts' menu.

Electronic Mail

Voss Net Online offers you access to electronic mail on the Internet. When you connect to Voss Net Online, a window will automatically pop up showing you a listing of the electronic mail (''email'') waiting for you. You can also get access to your email by clicking on the ''Mail'' icon and selecting the ''inbox'' folder. Your email address ends with @vossnet.co.uk. For example, if you are user ''hobbes'', your email address would be hobbes@vossnet.co.uk.

To write a message, click on the ''Write'' icon to the left of the Internaut software. You will need to know the email address of the people you wish to send mail to. Email addresses are generally of the form:

user@domain.domain

For example, the support email address is:

support@vossnet.co.uk

where support is the username and vossnet and co.uk are Internet domain names.

USENET Discussion Groups

The USENET ''news'' system is a collection of discussion groups on any and every topic you can imagine. There are currently over 6,000 USENET "newsgroup" discussion groups, with the number growing daily. Your Voss Net Online software is initialized with 6 groups, but we encourage you to download the full list (it may take a while!) by going into the "Voss Net Online: Information, Software, Accounts" menu and selecting a hierarchy of newsgroups to download.

If you find participation in the wide world of USENET intimidating, we suggest you start out with a toe in the waters first by participating in Voss Net Online's own chat newsgroup, which is local to Voss Net Online. Meet some of your fellow subscribers, chat a bit, and when you feel ready to step into the wider world of USENET, those discussion groups will be waiting.

The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is the Internet's newest and neatest feature. It offers a graphical, easily navigable, ''view'' of the Internet. You can get access to the World Wide Web through Voss Net Online's own web browser, which is the web icon on the right of the Internaut software. You will also see menus in Voss Net Online that have little web icons next to them. These are other points where you can step out into the web. A good way to find your way around the web is with the Yahoo index. This is available from the 'Reference Desk' menu.

File Transfers and Archie

There are a whole host of software archives out on the Internet where you can download the latest public domain and Shareware programs. To get to them go to the Internet menu and click on the 'Get Files' option. Then enter the Internet address of the archive in the 'I have a particular archive in mind' box. Click go and after a while a menu should pop up with the top level directory of that archive. If nothing happens the archive is probably too busy to let you in at the moment and you should try again later. To download a file just double-click on it's menu entry. Some good archives to try are:

ftp.vossnet.co.uk

src.doc.ic.ac.uk

wuarchive.wustl.edu

micros.hensa.ac.uk

If you are looking for a specific program or file then you can use the Archie file search facility. Just type in the filename you are looking for and click Go. A huge database containing listings from many archives will be searched for your file and the results returned to you. This service often becomes congested however so if nothing comes back first time, try again later or try a different server by clicking on the 'Advanced' button.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

IRC is a lot like CB radio except it's all done by typing and you can talk to people from all over the World! The system is split up into channels on different topics. There are often many hundreds of channels and there are constantly new ones being added and old ones dying out. To get a list of the current channels go to the 'commands' menu and click on 'list channels'. Type in a word to search for or single letters of the alphabet ('e' should yield a large list of groups) to list channels. When you see one that looks interesting just click on the 'join channel' option and type in the channel name. If it's an active channel you should immediately start seeing messages scroll up your screen. If you wish to join in the conversation just type in what you want to say. Be warned though, IRC can be VERY addictive!

IRC can be a little flakey at times, it's a very big, complicated task to allow real-time conversations between any number of people from all over the World, so don't be surprised if you don't get connected reliably every time. If you ever can't get connected it's usually just a problem with the computer that we connect into the IRC network with by default. Fortunately, it's a simple operation to go and try a different connection point. To do this just go up to the file menu and choose the 'Try a new server option'. Then, in the dialogue box, type the hostname of the server to try and the port number.

Some servers you can try are:

irc.demon.co.uk,6667

serv.eng.abdn.ac.uk,6667

irc.funet.fi,6667

slaley.ncl.ac.uk,6667

stork.doc.ic.ac.uk,6667