Web pages include clickable links to files in any public archive, with formatted text, instructions, coordinating graphics and even spoken directions. So why would anybody still want to use a system that's been around for over a decade, File Transfer
Protocol (FTP), with its endless lists of cryptic names and indecipherable directories?
First, not everybody has access to the World Wide Web. Second, and more important for Internet Explorer users, FTP archives do still hold a lot of files that nobody has gotten around to linking into Web pages yet. Likewise, Gopher and Telnet offer
access to some information resources and services that aren't yet available any other way.
If you've read the previous chapter, "Searching the Internet," you might have actually discovered a third reason, perhaps the most compelling of all. Although Web searches are very easy, they are not nearly as reliable or comprehensive as are
search engines designed solely for FTP and Gopher. It's quite easy to search every public FTP archive or Gopher site in the world at once, and after you read this chapter, you'll know how. Even when you're "just browsing," the techniques
presented in this chapter will help you explore directories packed with useful files you won't be able to find anywhere else.
The first thing you should realize about FTP is that there are two kinds of sites: public (often called anonymous) FTP sites and private FTP sites. To access FTP sites with Internet Explorer, you can simply enter ftp:// followed by the site's Domain
Name in the Address box. For example, you would enter ftp://ftp.cica.indiana.edu/pub/ to access the CICA shareware archive (see Figure 9.1).
Figure 9.1. A typical FTP site as viewed with Internet Explorer.
When you use traditional FTP software, the standard convention for getting into a public site is to enter anonymous as your user ID or username and your Internet e-mail address as your password. This isn't necessary with Internet Explorer, however.
When
you have configured Explorer with your correct e-mail address (see Chapter 11, "Using Internet Mail" for more details), the standard anonymous FTP login procedure will be executed automatically whenever you access an FTP site. When you do get
into an anonymous FTP site this way, you will only see those files and directories that are available to the public.
The particular public sites you choose to visit will, of course, depend on what you're looking for. Many Web pages contain links to related FTP sites, but just to get you started, here are a few of the most popular FTP sites on the Internet:
The CICA shareware archives: ftp://ftp.cica.indiana.edu/pub/
The Washington University Archives (over 60GB of files): ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
The Garbo PC and UNIX archives: ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi
The SimTel MS-DOS archives: ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/
The Info-Mac shareware archives: ftp://sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/
Walnut Creek CDROM (thousands of files for all platforms): ftp://ftp.cdrom.com
Here are two excellent Web-based directories of FTP sites:
C|Net's index of shareware: http://www.shareware.com
The Monster List of FTP sites at the University of Illinois: http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ftp/
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There is a down side to the popularity to some of these sites. They are BUSY! Even though these servers allow simultaneous access by as many as 1,200 people, they are often swamped with thousands of requests at a time. If you get a message saying that a server is too busy or unavailable, wait a few seconds (or minutes, depending on how patient you are!) and try again.
The most popular FTP sites also have many "mirror" sites around the world that contain all the same files. Read the welcome—or access denied—message to see if there's a mirror site closer to you. For fast service, use a mirror site located where it's the middle of the night and most local users are asleep. This is especially appropriate if you only want to look around or download a small file or two. (Lengthy file transfers from one side of the globe to the other should be avoided, however. Remember that somebody is paying for those international data lines, and it isn't you.)
To get into a private FTP site, you must have a username (or user ID) and password. These are usually assigned by the individual or company running the site. Most of the time, private sites contain files that people within the organization need access
to and allow for quick retrieval.
It was mentioned earlier that Internet Explorer automatically logs you in to anonymous FTP sites. But what do you do if you need a user ID and password? Fortunately, you can still get on. To get onto a private site with Explorer, include your user ID,
followed by a colon, your password, and the @ symbol before the FTP address. For example, if your user ID were "jdoe" and your password were "ImNoOne," you might log on to a hypothetical FTP site at ftp.nowhere.com with the following
(see Figure 9.2):
ftp://jdoe:ImNoOne@@ftp.nowhere.com
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One of the more popular uses for private FTP is for individuals to make their machines FTP servers. By installing some of the ready-made FTP shareware on your computer (and keeping it on, of course!), you can set up your machine as an FTP site. This will enable you to access all of your files quickly and easily from any other machine with an Internet connection. This can be very handy for those who work at home but who need access to files at work on a continual basis.
After you have the address of an FTP site, whether public or private, that you want to visit, just enter it in the Address box (or select File/Open from the menu), just as you would a Web address. You will also end up at many FTP sites while
exploring the Web as direct links.
Figures 9.1 and 9.2 both show FTP sites as viewed by Internet Explorer. Well, I have news for you—they all look like that. It's now time to look at these sites with a more critical eye. Figure 9.3 shows another site with all of the basic
elements that every FTP site contains: the name of the current directory (folder) followed by a list of subdirectories and filenames. The size and creation date of each file is displayed to the right of the filename. The file type is also displayed if
Explorer recognizes the last few letters of the filename as a common file extension.
Figure 9.3. Internet Explorer displays all of the information about each FTP site you visit.
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The location of the site shown in Figure 9.3 (ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg) includes not only the address of the server, but also the exact directory on that server where you'd like to go. You also could simply enter the server address (ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu) and click on the directory folders pub, then etext, then gutenberg to get to the same place.
Although the names given to directories are completely up to the people who set up each server, almost all servers have a directory named pub where most publicly accessible files and directories can be found. Software archives are usually then divided up by the type of computer or operating system that the software runs on (you might find directories named mac and pc, and within pc there might be three directories named dos, win3, and win95, for instance). Other types of archives have less predictable directory names, so you might have to just explore a bit.
Each name on the FTP directory list works just like a Web link: Click on it with the left mouse button to view its contents, or click with the right mouse button for other options (such as saving the file to your hard disk). You can also Shift+Click to
instantly open the file in a new Explorer window.
The trickiest thing with FTP sites is figuring out which file you want to see. Most sites have some INDEX, README, WELCOME, or similarly named text files that explain what the site is all about and list the files available. But there isn't any
consistent naming convention for these informational files, and you'll sometimes need to scroll through a very long list of names to find them. Even when you do locate a promising file, it might not contain the information you were after, so persistence
and patience might be necessary.
For example, if you found yourself looking at the directory list in Figure 9.3, you'd probably be wondering two things: "Where am I?" and "What can I get while I'm here?" There are several files that might or might not have the
answers to those questions: 0INDEX.GUT, INDEX100.GUT, INDEX200.GUT, INDEX400.GUT, and NEWUSER.GUT. The .GUT extension isn't exactly an industry standard, but you might try clicking on them in hopes that they are strangely named text files. If you did so,
you'd find out you got lucky—they are simple text files. Figures 9.4 and 9.5 show the results of clicking on NEWUSER.GUT and INDEX100.GUT, respectively.
It might take several attempts to get to INDEX100.GUT, but the listing there does tell you (though not exactly in plain English) which directories and files contain some excellent documents. Still, notice that no mention is made of what format those
documents might be in, or any of the other information that most Web pages would provide when referring you to a downloadable file.
Unfortunately, most FTP sites assume that you are a relatively experienced computer user who will recognize and know what to do with the plethora of file formats that populate the Internet. Don't worry, however; with time you will begin to recognize
common extensions and naming conventions just like the pros.
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You might wonder why the INDEX100.GUT text file in Figure 9.5 tells you to Do a dir *.zip or a dir *.txt to see exact names. Like many messages you'll find in FTP sites, this assumes that you're accessing the site from an old-fashioned UNIX command-line shell account. The dir *.zip and dir *.txt are UNIX commands that you would type in from such an account. You can't (and don't need to) type these commands from a modern, graphical Internet access program like Internet Explorer; it will list the exact names of the files for you automatically when you click on a directory. In general, it's safe to ignore instructions to do or type any strange-looking commands.
If you are accustomed to working with file formats such as ZIP, TAR, and Z, by all means, charge ahead and click your way through some FTP sites. But if you think you might need a bit of help turning those into more directly usable files, the next
section will guide you through the process of downloading, decompressing, and viewing an archived file.
It was a day that would live in infamy. Orson Welles somehow managed to convince thousands of people, just by reading a book over the radio, that our planet was being invaded by Martians. That book, The War of the Worlds, has become a
classic. If you scroll down a bit on the index page shown in Figure 9.5, you will see that Project Gutenberg has this book available for download. But what does the fact that this book was added to the collection in 1992 and is contained in a file called
warw10x.xxx tell you? How do you actually find it? As some (but not most) people know, the x.xxx means any letter, followed by a period, and any other three letters. Likewise, the comment at the top of the page that [These 199x etexts are now in> cd
/etext/etext9x] is meant to tell you that 1994 texts are in the etext94 directory, 1995 texts are in etext95, and so forth.
Therefore, from the directory shown in Figure 9.3, you would go to The War of the Worlds by clicking on the etext92 folder (see Figure 9.6) and scrolling down to look for files starting with warw10. (If you are still in the directory
listing shown in 9.5, simply click the Back button on the toolbar.) As Figure 9.7 reveals, there are no such files, but there are a couple named warw11.txt and warw11.zip. Index files on FTP sites are almost always outdated, so it's quite likely
that those are newer versions of files that were once named warw10.txt and warw10.zip.
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Notice that Figure 9.7 indicates that warw11.txt is 363,000 bytes (that's 363 kilobytes), and warw11.zip takes up 151K, or less than half as much space. These file sizes can tell you a lot. First of all, they are about right for a single book. (In plain text files, a single byte is a single letter, and a typewritten page is about 2,000 letters. Therefore, 363K is about 200 pages of text.) They also tell the experienced eye that warw11.zip is almost certainly a compressed version of warw11.txt because ZIP is a common compression file format that reduces text files by 30 to 50 percent of their original size. (ZIP and other compression formats are discussed in depth under "Handling Compressed Files," later in this chapter).
Before you download a large file with a different name than given in the index, it might be a good idea to at least peek at the beginning of it to make sure it's what you're after and that it's in a format you can use. Fortunately, with Internet
Explorer you can view the first part of warw11.txt without having to download the entire file. Just click on the file and let it come up in an Explorer page. Figure 9.8 confirms that it is a plain-text file, and scrolling down a bit past the introductory
notes would indeed take you to the work that frightened the living daylights out of America.
After you've seen enough to confirm the warw11.txt file's contents, click on the Stop button, then go back and Click on warw11.zip to save the compressed version to your hard drive.
If you're new to the online world, you might not be familiar with compressed files. The basic idea behind file compression is to store the information in a file in a more compact format to save storage space and transmission time. For instance, if you
could come up with a simple algorithm that replaces common words with special symbols, like * for the and # for Explorer, you could compress this chapter.
In essence, you would be replacing big chunks of information with little chunks. File compression programs employ similar techniques to eliminate repetitiveness in any data file, typically cutting the size of the file in half. Then a decompression
program is used to restore the file to its original size before viewing or using it. Programs can do these because programmers have developed compression standards that are universally understood.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few very different "similar techniques" for compressing files—and people keep coming up with better ones. Therefore, you'll find many different types of compressed files on the Internet, each of which
requires its own special software to decompress it. The last few letters of the filename (called the extension) usually give away what type of file compression was used and which program you need to restore a file. Table 9.1 shows all the compression
formats you're likely to encounter on public FTP sites.
| File extension | Decompress with | Description |
| z | compress or gzip | An aging but ubiquitous UNIX compression format. |
| tar | tar (UNIX), suntar (Mac) TAR4DOS (PC) | The UNIX "tape archive" utility. Often used in combination with compress. |
| taz (or tar.z) | A file that must be decompressed first with compress and then with tar. | |
| gz | gzip | "GNU Zip," a modern replacement for the old UNIX compress. |
| tgz (or tar.gz) | A file that must be decompressed first with gzip and then with tar. | |
| zoo | Zoo | A less successful contender to replace the UNIX compress format. |
| zip | UnZip | The most popular compression type among PC users. |
| lha, lzh | LHA | A popular and efficient compression program from Japan. |
| arj | UnARJ | A somewhat passé DOS compression format. |
| arc | UnArc | The precursor to zip. There aren't many .arc files left out there. |
| exe | Self-extracting | A DOS file compressed so that it decompresses by executing itself. |
| hqx | BinHex | Macintosh e-mail attachment format. |
| sit | StuffIt | Macintosh archive compression format. |
| sea | Self-extracting | Macintosh self-extracting archive. |
Table 9.1 is the bad news. The good news is that you probably need only one program to handle every compressed file you'll ever download. For Windows users, the shareware program WinZip will compress and decompress all the most common
formats. For Macintosh users, StuffIt Expander or StuffIt Deluxe will do the same. StuffIt Expander won't handle as many file types as its commercial counterpart, StuffIt Deluxe, but it still handles most major types.
You'll find WinZip and StuffIt on the CD-ROM in the back of this book (see the Web pages on the CD-ROM for help on installing them). Figures 9.9 and 9.10 show an example of opening and extracting a file using WinZip for Windows 95. Though the exact
menu
commands for StuffIt are, of course, different, the basic procedure is the same: Tell the program which compressed file you want to open and then tell it where to put the file after it's decompressed. With Internet Explorer, you will be asked where to
save
the file and what you would like to name it when downloading compressed files.
What you do with the files you restore from a compressed archive naturally depends on what type of files they are. In the case of The War of the Worlds, you could open the text file right in Internet Explorer to read it, or you could use
your favorite word processor or text editor, instead. If you do use Explorer, select File/Open and then enter the path of the file or click the Browse button to find it on your hard drive. After it's opened, it will appear in Explorer as in
Figure 9.11.
Before the World Wide Web existed, there was no easy way to organize all the best FTP sites in the world for a particular subject into one easy-to-use resource. Gopher was an early attempt to do just that. It started on a single server at the
University
of Minnesota (the Golden Gophers) in 1991 and quickly spread to hundreds of other sites. The Gopher servers in existence today are now far outnumbered by the number of Web servers. In addition, Web servers, as a rule, have much more up-to-date information
as system administrators let the Gopher sites "wither on the vine". Despite this, Gopher continues to be quite popular among "old timers" and people who don't have access to the Web.
At first glance, a Gopher menu might look like a directory listing of a disk drive, but the items on any one menu might actually be located on any Gopher server in the world. Therefore, a Gopher menu is not a disk directory at all, but rather a group
of
links or files that somebody somewhere thought should be listed together. Sometimes they are indeed all on one hard drive; however, half of them could be in Australia while the other half are in England, while the menu itself is stored in Canada. The
Gopher links you see in Internet Explorer represent links to other Gopher menus, not subdirectories on a disk.
Although a Web page hotlist can contain explanatory text and images to help you decide which link to follow, Gopher menus allow only for a short name and sometimes a one-line description of each link. Gopher servers do allow entire menus to be searched
more easily than some Web sites, but Web search engines are improving fast (see Chapter 8, "Searching the Internet"). By and large, Gopher sites are becoming a thing of the past as the Web becomes more and more powerful and popular. Still, there
were enough good Gopher menus produced in the last ten years that they remain a useful resource even for those who have easy access to the Web. As more and more of the information contained in Gopher sites is moved to the Web, you will have less and less
reason to enter Gopherspace.
Meanwhile, serious information hounds can use Gopher to dig into some incredible research resources that probably won't hit the Web soon. The master menu of all Gopher sites in the world is maintained at
gopher://gopher.tc.umn.edu
As you can see in Figure 9.12, Gopher menus are no prettier to look at than FTP menus, but a wealth of information still lies underneath.
Figure 9.12. Gopher menus are as "plain Jane" as you can get.
The InterNIC Directory of Gopher Servers Web page is at
http://ds.internic.net/cgi-bin/tochtml/gophersite/0intro.gophersite
The InterNIC guide is more web-like and user-friendly, and it can point you to some useful sites, such as the Smithsonian Natural History Gopher main menu (see Figure 9.13).
The somewhat technical nature of the topics listed in Figure 9.13 is typical of Gopher servers, especially now that sites oriented more toward the general public have migrated to the Web. As you click on folders to delve deeper, the Gopher menus become
even more technically advanced, such as the Paleobiology link found at the Smithsonian Institute (see Figure 9.14 for an example).
The real power of Gopher lies in what are called searchable indexes. Internet Explorer puts a <Search> tag in front of a link that leads to a searchable index. When you click on a searchable index, you'll see the title Gopher Search
followed by a box where you can type some text.
Note
You might see some differences in your version of Internet Explorer and those pictured in this book. As of this printing, there were still several bugs in the Gopher portion of Internet Explorer that will be operational by the time you read this book.
If you enter a single word, you'll get a custom Gopher menu with links to every document or file whose title or contents contain that word. You can also enter complex combinations of search keywords using AND and OR. You could click on About the Fossil
Brachiopod Type Register in Figure 9.14 for specific instructions and example searches. The examples are from this particular topic, but almost all Gopher search engines work the same way.
The result of a Gopher search is a Gopher menu built just for you, in response to your search query. It's as if you've hired someone to sort all the files you want into your very own directory so you can easily pick them from the file list. This
feature
of Gopher can be rather miraculous when applied to larger Gopher indexes that include documents from many different servers around the world. You can find documents, images, programs, and more at some Gopher servers.
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If you click on a file or two at the end of your search, you will notice that they are actually very short. This is typical of documents in Gopher sites. Unlike the Web or FTP, where files generally contain as much information as possible, the idea with Gopher is to break up information into small chunks so that the menus and search engines can filter out all but the key information you're looking for.
Sometimes this philosophy bears fruit, as it would here if your goal were to find out the type classification of a particular type of brachiopod. But if your goal was to find out about brachiopod fossil research at the Smithsonian—or maybe even find out what the heck a brachiopod is, anyway—then Gopher searching might miss the forest for the trees. For general information, a Web page such as the one in Figure 9.15 might better suit your needs.
Most organizations that host Gopher sites now have Web sites, also, where you can find introductory and general information that the Gopher site might not include. If you often need the kind of highly specific searchable information that Gopher is best
at providing, you might want to consider using one of the dedicated Gopher access programs on the CD-ROM that comes with this book. These programs are harder to learn than Internet Explorer's simple Gopher interface, but they enable you to do a number of
fancy searching stunts and keep track of complex menu structures more easily after you master them.
In contrast to much of the whiz-bang stuff you've been exposed to so far, Telnet will probably be the dullest yet. All Telnet does is enable you to manually log into one computer from another over the Internet. Telnet does what a basic dial-in
connection usually does, only without the modem.
You'll find many Telnet sites listed in most of the Internet directories discussed in Chapter 8. One site particularly thick with Telnet addresses is Scott Yanoff's resource list at
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/DataSources/Yanoff.html
As an example, let's telnet to the largest academic library system in the world, which is physically located at the University of Michigan (which pains the Michigan State University-schooled author of this chapter to no end).
One of the big advantages of using Internet Explorer with Windows 95 is that it knows where many of your helper applications already are. This is the case with Telnet. There is no configuring Explorer, it will automatically use the Telnet program that
came with Windows 95. Going to a Telnet site is simply a matter of entering its address preceded by telnet:// in Explorer's Address: box. Internet Explorer will launch the Telnet program and connect to the site immediately. Figure 9.16 shows the
welcome you'll get at the University of Michigan Libraries (telnet://mirlyn.telnet.lib.umich.edu).
Figure 9.16. Connecting to a Telnet host is as simple as entering its address.
Telnet puts you completely at the mercy of the host computer you connected to. Whatever you type, that computer receives. What that computer sends, you see. If that computer has reasonably friendly host software, your visit will be pleasant and
productive. On the other hand, if that computer has an arcane or difficult interface, you're up the proverbial creek. Most systems do, in fact, have pretty good online help (try typing HELP and pressing the Enter key if you run into trouble), but some
will
present nothing more than a single-character command prompt without even so much as announcing what operating system you logged on to. If you end up at one of these, you're on your own.
Well, not totally on your own—there are a couple of pointers you should know no matter what telnet host you contact. The most important tip is how to turn the "local echo" on and off. Some Telnet hosts will automatically send back every
character you type, whereas others expect your software to "echo" what you type automatically. If you can't see anything you type on the screen, you need to turn your local echo setting on. If every character you type appears twice ((lliikkee
tthhiiss)), then you need to turn your local echo setting off. In Windows 95 Telnet, select Terminal/Preferences to change the Local Echo setting (see Figure 9.17). Other Telnet programs have a similar setting.
While you're at it, you might need to select either VT-52 or VT-100/ANSI terminal emulation. Almost all hosts prefer VT-100/ANSI, but if letters appear out of order on the screen, try VT-52. Usually, sites that work best with VT-52 will tell you so
when
you connect.
The MCAT system shown in Figure 9.18 is similar to most university library catalogs. If you've been a student (or instructor) at any college since 1980, it probably looks very familiar. To use the system via telnet, simply type commands exactly as you
would if you were in the lobby of the library at one of their terminals.
Figure 9.18. Hey, the U of M library has The War of the Worlds, too!
Whether or not you've ever been there in person, instant access to the holdings of the world's best libraries and other telnet-able resources can be a powerful research tool.
You can quit a Telnet session simply by closing the Telnet application window. However, it's considered a courtesy to log off the host computer first so it knows to reallocate the resources it was using to connect with you. The trouble is, there is no
consistent command for logging off a host. In fact, it's become something of a clichéacute: the image of a poor confused user sitting at a terminal typing OFF, LOGOFF, BYE, GOODBYE, SYSTEM, END, EXIT, in a desperate attempt to get free of an
unfriendly host.
All you can do is try all of the preceding common words or HELP. If you're successful (the University of Michigan system uses BYE), then your Telnet application will tell you that you are logged off. Some hosts might kick you out to a "higher
level" where another (often different) good-bye command is required. Even if you can't figure out how to leave courteously, when you close the Telnet window, you can rest assured that the connection is closed. After you quit the Telnet session,
simply
click back into Explorer to continue surfing.
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You can use Internet Explorer to surf Web, FTP, or Gopher sites while you are still connected to a Telnet session. For example, you could use a library catalog system to find book titles on a certain subject and simultaneously check an online bookstore's Web site to see if they carry the titles you want. Just don't forget to close your Telnet window when you're done using it.
This brief chapter has shown you how to navigate FTP, Gopher, and Telnet sites. Section III, "Communicating with Internet Explorer 3.0," shows you how to use e-mail and newsgroups with Explorer.
