Tutorial 2: Adding Hypertext Links to a Web Page

Creating a Chemistry Web Site, Continued

Additional Topics

• Using FTP
• Using USENET
• Accessing Gophers
• File Names and Case

Using FTP

FTP is still one of the most popular ways of retrieving files on the Internet. You may want to look at using FTP servers and FTP clients so that you can access an FTP server without a Web browser. Using FTP clients has the advantage of giving you access to non-anonymous FTP servers.

If you are using UNIX, you can access FTP servers using the built-in ftp command. You can get more information on UNIX's support for ftp by typing:

man ftp

at the UNIX command prompt.

Windows also provides FTP support. You can access a Windows text-based FTP client using the Run button on the Start Menu. You should:

1. Click the Start button
2. Click Run and type “ftp ftp_server.”
   Where ftp_server is the name of the FTP server you're trying to access.

Windows does not provide any documentation on its text-based ftp client, however it uses the same commands as the UNIX ftp client.

If you want to use a graphical FTP client, you can retrieve the following freeware or shareware clients for your personal computer:

Windows

• File Dog
• WS_FTP

Macintosh

• Anarchie
• NetFinder

Using USENET

USENET is one of the most popular ways of meeting people and starting discussions on the Internet. Netscape and Internet Explorer provide e-mail clients that include built-in newsreading software.

If you're using a UNIX system you can use the “rn” command to access the system's news server and retrieve messages from USENET. rn is a command-line program and you may have to spend sometime learning to use it.

If you're not interested in installing a full-featured newsreader, you can retrieve shareware or freeware programs from the following locations:

Windows

• Free Agent

Macintosh

• InterNews
• NewsWatcher

Once you've gained experience with USENET, you may find it a valuable source of information for creating your own Web pages. Here are some of the USENET newsgroups that deal with HTML:

• alt.html
• alt.html.editors.enhanced-html
• alt.html.editors.webedit
• comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html

Accessing Gophers

Before the World Wide Web, Gopher servers were popular tools for the organization and sharing of information. Gopher servers used hierarchical menus, from which the user selected a resource to access. Gopher servers are rarely used today. If you need to create a link to a Gopher server, use the URL:

gopher://gopher_server

where gopher_server is the name of the Gopher server you want to access. For example, to access the Gopher server whose address is gopher.wisc.edu, use the URL:

gopher://gopher.wisc.edu

File Names and Case

When creating links in your Web site, pay careful attention to upper and lower case letters. On Windows and Macintosh computers, hyperlinks will work even if the case of the letters in the filename don't match the case of the letters in the hyperlink. This is not true for the UNIX operating system. If you have a link that suddenly stops working after transferring your Web site from your PC to a UNIX workstation, it could be a problem with the case of the letters.