--------------- TIP OF THE WEEK - Using FTP, Part 1 - (New) --------------- We're finished with our two series explaining the features of Netscape Communicator and Internet Explorer. We hope you have enjoyed them and learned a bit more about these two programs. You can find all the articles on our site and they run from Jan. 22 back to Oct. 23, 1998. http://www.erols.com/erols/news/index.html NEW SERIES This week we're going to begin a new series on using FTP and if you've never used it before, watch out! You're in for a steep (but hopefully easy to understand) learning curve. WHAT IS FTP? FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and it is the preferred method for transferring files. Many of you are probably familiar with transferring files by attaching them to an e-mail. While this usually works well with small files, and by small we mean under 500K, when you deal with larger files many e- mail programs "time out" or fail to download the e-mail. That is because they weren't designed to handle large file transfers and that's where FTP steps in. HOW DOES IT WORK? The concept of using FTP isn't much different from sending and receiving e-mail - both are sending information from one location to another. Like e-mail, you need a program in order to send and receive files. Some of the more popular programs are: WS_FTP, CuteFTP, and Fetch. Like e-mail, you need a server to transfer the files and our FTP server is: ftp.erols.com or ftp.rcn.com. (It doesn't matter which one you select.) And finally, like e-mail, you need something to send or receive like a file. YOU'VE PROBABLY USED FTP AND NEVER KNEW IT! If you have ever downloaded a file or uploaded a page to your web space, you've used FTP. If you have clicked on a link and had the window appear asking you where you want to save a program, you've used FTP. For example, if the link in the next paragraph is "clickable" and you click on it and save the file, you've just used FTP. ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Products/Windows/Windows95/CDRomExtras/OtherUti lities/olddos.exe NOTE: We don't recommend you actually install the file listed here. This is provided just as an example. That is about as far as we are going to go this week. Next week, we will show you how to use your browser (yes, your browser) to FTP files to your web space. A site that has some good information about FTP is listed here. http://www.webteacher.org/winnet/ftp/ftp.html