[RndTbl] Internet Annoyances Needed for New Book (fwd)

-- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: gedetil@cs.umanitoba.ca Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609 -----------------Forwarded message----------------- From: Marsee Heon marsee@oreilly.com To: gedetil@muug.mb.ca Subject: Internet Annoyances Needed for New Book Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 10:30:33 -0800 Dear User Group Leader: Thanks for the great response to our call, over the last month or two, for annoyances, gripes, and complaints about Excel and PC hardware. The email we got was very useful and a lot of your members not only sent annoyances, but fixes! As always, many thanks for the input. This time around, we have yet another book in the wings--this one focusing on Internet annoyances. Some of the annoying areas: Email (and spam), connecting to the Net (via dialup, DSL, cable, configuration and all that), wireless annoyances (from WiFi hassles to hotspots to fiddling with WEP), web sites (namely creating, hosting, and maintaining your own web site), browsing and browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, and others), AOL, instant messaging, using search sites, security annoyances, and of course, shopping and auctions. Got Internet gripes/annoyances/kvetches? Send 'em our way by having your members email me (marsee@oreilly.com) with "Internet Annoyance" in the subject line and we'll put our author on the job. As thanks for sharing, we'll make sure to get copies of "Internet Annoyances" sent to your group shortly after publication. --Marsee *** An example: Pictureless Pages Predicament THE ANNOYANCE: There are some great pictures available on the Web, but certain pictures don't appear on web pages I visit. Instead I see a red X or a funny little icon where the picture is supposed to be. THE FIX: Several circumstances can keep pictures from appearing: * There's a logjam at the web server or somewhere along the miles of wires between the web server and your browser. Try refreshing the page (press F5 or click the Refresh button on the toolbar). But you probably already tried that. * Something's wrong with the web server. The picture might not be on the server, or the programmer who created the web page might have put in the wrong path to the picture. * Internet Explorer may be configured so that it doesn't show pictures, a common setup for those with slow dialup connections who don't want to waste time downloading pictures. (If this option is set, you can selectively display pictures by right-clicking the X or the icon and choosing Show Picture.) To undo this setting in Internet Explorer, choose Tools-->Internet Options. Click the Advanced tab, and in the Multimedia section, check the Show Pictures box to make your pictures appear. * An invalid value in the Windows Registry is preventing pictures from appearing. It's an easy fix, even for those who are squeamish about poking around in the Registry. (Before you mess around with the Registry, back it up as per the instructions in the sidebar on page 47.) Select Start-->Run, type in regedit, and hit Enter. In Registry Editor, navigate to \HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.gif. In the right pane, click the Content Type item; its value should be image/gif. Then check \HKEY_CLASSES_ ROOT.jpg; Content Type should be set to image/jpg or image/jpeg. For more information about this fix, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 307239. ***