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Hepatitis from Raw Sewage
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You are probably already a hot-shot Web surfer, so most of this will be "old hat", but these are a few things we have picked up in our travels (unlike the 
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Ulan Bator
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Be aware that download times are about 1Kb per second (if you are on a 14,400 modem) on an average day on the Web, however with a "following wind" you can get 2Kb/sec or more - usually at 2am in the morning, (when only the inhabitants of Ulan Bator are online!).
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Relative versus Absolute
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If you find a good site that you want to return to later, it is a good idea to both"Bookmark" it, and ""Save" it. If you browse a "Saved" page off-line be aware that you will not be able to access the site again if the URL's are relative such as back to Home Page ? (<A HREF= "index.htm">) - at the base of this page), as it may not be "live" - unlike an absolute URL such as www.ContaminatedLAND.co.uk ? (< A HREF= "http:// www.ContaminatedLAND.co.uk"> - at the top of this page), as this contains the full URL address.
Hence the best way round this is to also "Bookmark" it as this preserves the full URL ( i.e. as an absolute rather than relative URL)
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Table of Contents
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The Table of Contents page on this Website is available in two formats:
Firstly constructed with absolute links, which can be saved and used as a "3D" Website Bookmark, to launch directly to your destination page, as it maintains a "live link" to the World Wide Web, and
Secondly one constructed with relative links, which can be saved and used off-line, as a Table of Contents when you browse selected pages that you have saved to your hard disk.
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Netscape Icons
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This site is designed to be Image free. Thanks to a "wrinkle" in Netscape, you can insert "icons" that make the site look a little more interesting without the causing the site to load at the speed of drying paint.
This incidentally also works with Sun's HotJava browser, and I heard a whisper awhile ago that Opera were planning to incorporate it in their browser.
To give you an idea of how much faster it is to browse with 'images off', Dr Hackenbush recently wrote an article for www.freepint.co.uk about sources of environmental information on the Internet. He looked at around 75 sites - using a Sun workstation with ISDN and Netscape 4, with images on, it took an hour to check all the sites. Second time round he used a 486 with a 14.400 modem with Netscape 1.2, with images off, this time it took 20 minutes. OK, OK, so he could only access 60 sites due to problems with Javascript frames and image maps, but no prizes for guessing how he uses the World Wide Web.....
The icons used are by us are as follows:-
 Local Homepage  Plain Text  Search External link  Contact us  Listings  Advert / Sponsor  Update this page  Help!
To date Microsoft has not incorporated this "tweak" into its browser, although if you run Internet Explorer version 3 with images turned on it will show most of these icons. Sods law of course means that the latest versions of Internet Explorer do not have this useful little "bug" (leading someone like Victor Meldrew no doubt to exclaim "stop debugging the bugs you little buggers!")
To get round this problem we have had to sneak in some images for users of Internet Explorer. Netscape being well brought up just ignores these, whereas Intenet Explorer gladly displays them - abit like the Tabloids saying they don't need Paparazzi photos, and then sneakily slipping in a couple to boost circulation!
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Feedback forms
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Every page has both a Feedback Form and an . The reason for this is that if you are using a machine in a Cyber-cafe, quite often the "Options" are disabled or set to a specific configuration or address (to prevent morons sending fake email or Spam using another persons email address). To get around this, you just need to load up the Feedback form, as then you can specify your own email address.
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Browser Defaults
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When you set up Netscape By default the colours used for "hyperlinks" are blue and purple. If you are colour blind this can be a pain as they don't look that much different, however you can specify the colours of "links" under the "Options" part of the Netscape menu.
You can do the same thing to alter background colours, if you have been unlucky enough to come across a page with a "blue" background and "red" text you will appreciate how useful this can be !
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File Manager
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You can use Netscape to give you an alphabetical directory listing of your Computer's "C" drive if you Save this page, and then reload it offline. This will either give you a sub-directory listing or else you can have an root-directory listing of your A, B, C, or D drive.
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Internet Overview
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A copy of the paper that we presented at the AGI 96 meeting in Birmingham in September 1996 can be seen at www.ContaminatedLAND.co.uk/sere-dip/AGI-96.htm. The paper gives an overview of the Internet to new 'surfers' who are unsure as to whether the water is warm enough yet, and are still at the 'toe-dipping' stage.
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