Internet News is an add-on product for Internet Explorer that provides facilities for viewing and participating in Internet Newsgroups. Internet News is a companion product to Internet Mail, a basic Internet e-mail program. Both Internet Mail and
Internet News are part of Microsoft's free Internet Add-On package for Windows and are designed to integrate with Internet Explorer to provide a complete suite of Internet access applications.
Internet News isn't your only option for accessing newsgroups. There are a number of very good alternatives available. For example, WinVN, News Xpress, and Free Agent are all popular shareware programs that have features to recommend them to serious newsgroup devotees. However, if you opt to use another newsreader, you'll sacrifice a bit of the convenience that Internet News offers with its consistent interface and integration with Internet Explorer.
The previous version of Internet Explorer (Internet Explorer 2.0) included newsgroup features built into the browser. However, those features have been removed from Internet Explorer 3.0 in favor of links to Internet News. By going with a separate
program for news, it's possible to develop a more robust news reader than is practical within Internet Explorer. This arrangement also affords you the flexibility to use a different news reader with Internet Explorer if you prefer. However, if you use
Internet Explorer as your Web browser, you'll probably want to use Internet News as your news reader. Internet News offers an impressive list of features in an attractive and easy-to-use package.
Internet News lets you do the following:
NOTE
Internet Mail and Internet News are rapidly evolving new products from Microsoft. Like Internet Explorer, they are being released to the public free of charge, first in an open beta program and then as a finished product. This chapter is based on the second major beta release of Internet News. The developers are adding new features and making significant changes to the software throughout the development cycle. The changes are likely to continue even after the "final" versions begin shipping. As a result of this continual evolution, Internet News might boast some significant new features by the time you read this. See the "Coming Attractions" section near the end of this chapter for a look ahead at some of the features that might be in future versions of Internet News but were not available at the time I was writing this.
Again, the final packaging details for Internet Mail and News have yet to be announced. It is likely that you will be able to get the programs from a number of sources. You might be able to get Internet Mail and News bundled with Internet Explorer 3.0
or acquire the programs separately. You might be able to purchase the package through retail channels or order it directly from Microsoft. Certainly, you will be able to download the software from the Microsoft Web site at
http://www.microsoft.com
Web sites are always subject to change, but you can probably find Internet Mail and News by following links to free software or to add-ons for Internet Explorer.
Internet Mail and News are available in several different language editions and in versions for different operating systems. Select and download the appropriate version for your use. After the download is complete, the Internet Mail and News
installation program may start automatically if your Web browser is configured to launch downloaded files. Otherwise, you can locate the downloaded file on your hard disk (it'll probably have a name similar to MAILNEWS.EXE) and double click its icon to
start the installation process.
A wizard will ask a few simple questions and then it will handle the rest of the program installation for you automatically. For example, you can choose to install Internet Mail, Internet News, or both; and you'll get the opportunity to confirm the
folder where the setup program will install Internet Mail and News. As with all wizards, you read instructions or answer questions in a dialog box, and click Next to proceed to the next page. After you answer the questions and view the license agreement,
click Finish on the final page of the wizard to complete the automatic installation. When the installation wizard finishes copying files and updating your system, you'll probably need to restart your computer in order for the changes to take effect.
With the basic program installation complete, you're ready to start using Internet News. But first, Internet News needs some information about your Internet connection and news server. The first time you run Internet News, another wizard will appear to
help you configure Internet News with the essential information about your news account and the news server that that houses your newsgroup lists.
Supply the requested information about your Internet news account and the news server. (Check with your system administrator or ISP staff for the necessary information.)
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Your news server might have a name such as news.domain.com. However, if you have any doubt about the correct server names, check with your system administrator.
The Wizard will configure Internet News with the information you supply and then start the program. Later, you can change or add to the information in Internet News. You'll find most of the settings on the Server tab of the Options dialog box (choose
Options from Internet News's News menu and click on the Server tab).
After you install Internet News, you can launch the program using any one of several techniques. Perhaps the most convenient way to start Internet News is to simply double-click the shortcut icon the installation wizard created on your desktop. This
will open Internet News in its own window, as shown in Figure 13.1. Of course, you can also launch Internet News by using the Start menu. Click on the Start button in the task bar, point to Programs, and then to MS Internet, and click on News. The effect
is the same as double-clicking on the desktop shortcut.
Figure 13.1. Internet News running in its own window.
Another way to start Internet News is to launch it from a My Computer window or from the Windows Explorer. However, you might be surprised by the technique (and the results). Like Internet Mail, Internet News is an extension of Explorer (Windows
Explorer, not Internet Explorer). Internet News has no executable program file that you can double-click to start the program. In fact, it doesn't appear as a file icon in the right pane of the Explorer window at all. Instead, Internet News appears as a
folder icon in Explorer's left pane listed under My Computer along with your hard drive and other system resources. To launch Internet News, simply double-click on the Internet News icon in a My Computer window or on the Internet Mail folder in the left
pane of Windows Explorer. When you open Internet News in Windows Explorer, the program runs in the right pane of the Explorer window instead of a separate window. (See Figure 13.2.)
Note
This feature might not be available in the final release of Internet News.
Figure 13.2. Internet News running in a Windows Explorer window.
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If you open either Internet News or Internet Mail from My Computer or Windows Explorer, you can use one window for both programs and switch back and forth between them. To switch to the other program, pull down the drop-down list at the left end of the toolbar and select the program you want to switch to. Repeat the process to switch back.
The first time you run Internet News, another wizard will guide you through the basic configuration necessary to allow the program to locate a news server and access newsgroups there. After running the configuration wizard, you'll be able to begin
using
Internet News to read and post articles in newsgroups. Later, if necessary, you can change the configuration settings that you entered with the wizard.
There's not a lot of configuration you need to do to get Internet News set up for use. Primarily, you need to supply your name and e-mail address and the name of the news server you plan to use to read and post newsgroup articles.
If you don't know it already, you should be able to get all this information from your system administration or Internet Service Provider.
NOTE
Newsgroups work by distributing copies of newsgroup articles to newsgroup servers around the Net. You read articles stored on a local server to which you have access. Most ISPs maintain a local news server providing access to some (but rarely all) of the available newsgroups. If your network or ISP doesn't have a news server (or doesn't carry some newsgroups you're interested in), there are news servers that will let you subscribe for a monthly fee.
You can use Internet News as a stand-alone product to access newsgroups. However, the program can also complement Internet Explorer by providing newsgroup access from within Explorer. For example, when you click on a link to a newsgroup that appears on
a Web page in Explorer, the program can launch Internet News to provide the features you need to access the newsgroup and to read and post articles there.
This link between Internet News and Internet Explorer is optional. If you don't configure Internet News to provide such services, Explorer will attempt to use another news reader—provided the alternate news reader is properly installed and
registered with Windows 95 as the default provider for news reading services.
Normally, you will elect to make Internet News your default newsreader program when you run the configuration wizard the first time you start Internet News. However, you can also create the link between Internet Explorer and Internet News later. To
make
Internet News the default newsreader program for Internet Explorer, start by opening Internet News and then choose Options from the News menu. When the Options dialog box appears, click on the Read tab (see Figure 13.3). To make Internet News the default,
simply check the Make Microsoft Internet News your default news reader box and then click OK to close the dialog box.
Figure 13.3. A simple button click is all it takes to configure Internet News as the program Internet Explorer will use for newsgroup access.
After you specify Internet News as your default newsreader program, Internet Explorer will launch Internet News whenever you attempt to link to the URL for a newsgroup. For example, if you are browsing a Web page and click on a hyperlink to a
newsgroup,
Internet Explorer launches Internet News to open the newsgroup. Similarly, you can type the URL for a newsgroup
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.internet.news
in Internet Explorer's Address box, and Internet Explorer will launch Internet News, which will attempt to access the newsgroup.
You need access to at least one news server in order to access any newsgroups with Internet News. However, you might not find all the newsgroups you want on one server. For instance, Microsoft doesn't distribute its product support newsgroups to other
news servers. If you want to participate in those newsgroups, you must access Microsoft's own news server (msnews.microsoft.com). For discussions of your favorite sport or hobby, you'll need to access newsgroups on a different server.
To facilitate access to a wide variety of newsgroups, Internet News enables you to access multiple servers. No doubt, you set up one news server during Internet News's initial installation and configuration. To begin the process of adding another news
server, start by choosing Options from the News menu. When the Options dialog box appears, click on the Server tab (see Figure 13.4). The top part of the dialog box lists your return address information that Internet News will place in outgoing articles
you write. The lower part of the dialog box shows a list of the news servers you've defined for Internet News to access.
Figure 13.4. Internet News can be set up to access multiple news servers.
To add a news server to the list, click on the Add button. This will open the News Server Properties dialog box shown in Figure 13.5. Type the server name in the News Server Name box on the General tab. If you must log in to the news server, check the
This Server Requires Me To Login option and enter your logon name and password. (You don't usually need to log in to access the news server at your local ISP, but a login might be required by a subscription-based news service.) Use the Advanced tab of the
News Server Properties dialog box to specify the Server Port Number (in case you need to access a news server using a non-standard port) and set the time-out value (the time Internet News will wait for a response from the server). Adjust these settings if
necessary, but you can usually leave them at their default values. Click on the OK button to close the dialog box.
Figure 13.5. Use this dialog box to define the properties of a news server.
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The heavy demand placed on the Microsoft news server tends to make it a little slow during peak times. To avoid errors caused by Internet News not getting a response in the allotted time, adjust the time-out value to Long for the msnews server. Other servers can usually remain set for shorter time-outs.
When you click on the OK button to close the News Server Properties dialog box, your newly defined news server will appear in the list in the Options dialog box's Server tab. Internet News will display a message box asking if you want to subscribe to
newsgroups on this server. If you click on the Yes button, Internet News will connect to the news server, download a list of the newsgroups available on that server, and open the Newsgroups dialog box where you can select which newsgroups you want to
subscribe to. (See the next section for information on how to subscribe to newsgroups.)
There are thousands of newsgroups in circulation on the Net. (The last figure I saw put the count at more than 17,000 and growing.) Few (if any) news servers attempt to carry them all. In addition to the newsgroups in general distribution via Usenet
News, local news servers often host newsgroups of interest to the local subscribers. In order to know what newsgroups you'll be able to access, you must find out what newsgroups are available on the news server you're using.
Internet News automatically downloads a list of available newsgroups from the server the first time you access a given news server. Henceforth, the program will update that list every time you connect to the news server. Then, you can use Internet News
to access any of the newsgroups on this list.
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By default, Internet News will notify you if it finds new newsgroups on the server when you connect. You'll have the option of viewing the new newsgroups in the Newsgroups dialog box to see if you want to add them to your list of subscribed groups. If you don't want to receive this notification, open the Options dialog box, click on the Read tab, and clear the Notify Me If There Are Any New Newsgroups option.
With the thousands of newsgroups out there, chances are good that there is a newsgroup for discussing just about any topic you might be interested in. The problem is sifting through thousands of other newsgroups to find it. Fortunately, Internet News
includes some features to make the task a little easier. After you find an interesting newsgroup and subscribe to it, it is placed on the Internet News menus so you will have easy access to it in the future.
To display the list of newsgroups Internet News can access, choose Newsgroups from the News menu (or click on the Newsgroups icon in the icon bar) to open the Newsgroups dialog box shown in Figure 13.6. The first step in selecting a newsgroup is to
select a server from the News Servers list on the left. A list of the newsgroups on the selected server is displayed on the right. The tabs below the list let you display all the newsgroups on a server, just the newsgroups to which you've subscribed, or
just the new newsgroups.
Figure 13.6. Find a new group in the list in the Newsgroups dialog box.
You could just scroll through the list looking for newsgroups that might interest you. However, that would be very time-consuming and unnecessary. Internet News can help you "drill down" to specific newsgroups quickly by filtering the list to
display only newsgroups with names or description containing a keyword you specify.
To use the filtering feature, type a word into the Display Newsgroups Which Contain box. Internet News filters the list to display only those newsgroups with the specified word in the newsgroup name. Optionally, you can check the Also Search
Descriptions box to extend the filter to include in the list those newsgroups that have the specified word in the description as well as in the newsgroup name.
When you find an interesting newsgroup, you can click on the Subscribe button to add it to the list of subscribed newsgroups. You can also click on the Go To button to access the newsgroup immediately (provided you're connected to the news server).
Subscribing to a newsgroup merely adds that newsgroup to the Internet News menus for easy selection; it doesn't send a subscription request or registration to the newsgroup owner. It's similar to adding a favorite Web page to the Favorites list in
Internet Explorer or creating a bookmark for it in other browsers.
As already described, one way to subscribe to a newsgroup is to select a newsgroup from the list in the Newsgroups dialog box and click on the Subscribe button. If you are viewing a newsgroup to which you are not subscribed, you can subscribe to it by
choosing Subscribe To This Group from the News menu. (If you are already subscribed, this command will appear as Unsubscribe From This Group and choosing it will remove the group from the list of subscribed newsgroups.)
Internet News provides several ways to go to a specific newsgroup. To go to one of the newsgroups to which you've subscribed, pull down the News menu, point to Go To Newsgroup, point to the news server hosting the desired newsgroup, and then choose the
newsgroup from the menu. Internet News will connect to the news server and begin downloading topic headers for the articles in that newsgroup.
NOTE
This first way to access a specific newsgroup appears to have received the ax from Microsoft's development team. It might not appear in the final release version of Internet News.
The title bar over the article list offers another menu of newsgroups. Simply click on the down arrow button at the left end of the title bar to bring down a list of news servers. Then point to a server and choose a newsgroup from the cascading menu of
subscribed newsgroups from that server.
You can also go to a newsgroup from the Newsgroups dialog box. Just open the dialog box (choose Newsgroups from the News menu or click on the Newsgroups icon in the icon bar), select a server, click on the Subscribed tab to display a list of subscribed
newsgroups, select a newsgroup, and click on the Go To button.
To go to a newsgroup to which you haven't subscribed, open the Newsgroups dialog box, select a server, and click on the All tab to display a list of all the newsgroups available on that server. Then you can select any of the newsgroups in the list and
click on the Go To button to access that newsgroup.
When you go to a newsgroup, Internet News downloads a list of all the articles in that newsgroup that are available on the news server. After the program downloads the article headers, it displays them in the article list pane.
The first time you visit a newsgroup, it might take several minutes for Internet News to download the entire article list (which might include thousands of articles). Internet News saves the list of article headers on your hard disk so you won't have
to
endure such delays on subsequent visits to the same newsgroup. When you access the newsgroup again, Internet News needs only download the headers for articles that have been posted since your last visit.
As soon as Internet News finishes downloading the list of articles from the news server, it displays the list in the article list pane. By default, the program displays a hierarchical list arranged by topic. A plus symbol (+) indicates that there are
replies to a given article. You can click on the plus symbol to expand the thread and see a listing of the replies.
You can easily sort the article list to change the order of the articles and group them by sender, age, or size. You have the option of sorting messages in ascending or descending order in any of the columns appearing in the message list.
The column headings in the article list work as sort buttons. To sort the list, simply click on the column heading by which you want to sort the list. An arrow on the button indicates which column is sorted and the direction of the sort. Click on the
same heading again to change the sort direction. It's just like sorting the message list in Internet Mail.
If you prefer to use the menus to sort the article list, you'll find equivalent commands on the View menu. For example, to sort the article list by author, pull down the View menu, point to Sort By, and choose From.
Another sorting command enables you to sort articles by topic, regardless of other sort criteria you might select. This command keeps topics (the thread composed of an original article and its replies) together in the article list. When the Group
Messages By Topic option is active, other sort criteria control the order of the articles within each topic. To activate (or deactivate) this option, open the View menu, point to Sort By, and click on Group Messages By Topic. The command is a toggle;
choosing the command switches it on or off depending on its current state. A check mark beside the command in the menu indicates that it is active.
Unlike Internet Mail, Internet News doesn't download all messages automatically when you connect to a news server and access a newsgroup. And it's a good thing, too. An active newsgroup might contain hundreds, or even thousands, of articles.
Downloading
them all would take too long and require too much disk space to be practical. The beauty of newsgroups is that you don't have to download all the articles in a group. Instead, the articles are stored on the news server, enabling you to browse through
topic
headers to see what articles are available and then download only those articles you want to read.
After you download the list of articles available on the news server into Internet News, you're ready to browse the list looking for interesting articles to read. The Internet News window is arranged to make that task simple and efficient. Normally,
the
Internet Mail window is divided into two panes: the article list and the preview pane(see Figure 13.7). When you first open Internet News, the program immediately attempts to connect to the news server and access the last newsgroup you visited. Internet
News downloads the list of articles in the newsgroup and, when it finishes the download, displays them in the article list. Unread messages appear in bold in the article list and articles you've already viewed appear in a normal font.
Figure 13.7. The article list and preview pane make browsing for an interesting topic a snap.
In order to read an article, Internet News must first download it from the news server. After the program downloads an article, it is stored on your hard disk for quick recall without your having to download it again.
NOTE
You might be able to rearrange the Internet News window and even hide the preview pane if you want. This capability was available in the early beta release of Internet News. It was removed from the second release. See "Customizing Internet News" later in this chapter for more information.
The preview pane makes it easy to read a newsgroup article right in Internet News's main window. Instead of opening the article in a separate window, you can simply click on an article in the article list pane and Internet News will download the
article
from the news server and display it in the preview pane. If the entire message won't fit in the preview pane, scroll bars will appear to let you scroll through the text. Most of the common message-handling commands, such as Replies and Forward, are
available from the menus to let you manipulate the selected article. When you want to view another article, just select it in the article list; Internet News will download it and display it in the preview pane, replacing the text of the previous article.
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If the first message in a newsgroup is particularly long (as is often the case in newsgroups specializing in pictures and other binary files), you can be in for a long wait while Internet News downloads the article as well as the topic headers for the article list when you first access a newsgroup. To avoid this, you can open the Options dialog box by choosing Options from the News menu and uncheck the Automatically show messages in the Preview Pane option on the Read tab.
Double-clicking on an article in the article list will cause Internet News to download that article (if it hasn't already done so) and open it in a separate window, as shown in Figure 13.8.
Figure 13.8. Internet News can also display articles in a separate window.
The article window has its own set of menus (duplicating those in the main Internet News window) and a toolbar with buttons for the most common message-handling commands. Using the arrow buttons in the toolbar, you can load the previous or next article
in the article list into the current window. You might prefer to read articles in the article window instead of the preview pane because you can control the size and position of the window and you have access to a couple of added features, such as the
ability to save the article as a separate file.
Like Internet Mail, Internet News hides the routing information and other details of a newsgroup article. But the information is available on the properties sheet for the article if you need it.
To view the article properties, open the article (in a window or the preview pane) and choose Properties from the File menu. (You can also right-click on an article in the article list and choose Properties from the pop-up menu.) This will open the
Properties dialog box as shown in Figure 13.9. The General tab displays basic information about the article. If you need routing information, click on the Details tab (see Figure 13.10).
Figure 13.9. The properties sheet contains more information about the article.
Figure 13.10. The routing information found on the Details tab can sometimes yield useful information about the article.
If you need to print an article, open the article or select it in the article list and then choose Print from the File menu. (You can also right-click on the selected article and choose Print from the pop-up menu.) Confirm the printer settings and
click
OK to begin printing. Internet News will format your message attractively and send it to your printer.
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After you select one message in the message list, you can Shift+click or Ctrl+click to select additional messages before issuing the Print command. Internet News will download and print all the selected messages.
Internet News stores all the articles you download and read in its own file structure. It doesn't keep a separate file for each message. However, if you need to save a newsgroup article as a separate file, you can do so. First, open the article
(double-click on the article in the article list), then choose Save As from the File menu (or click on the Save button in the message window's toolbar). This will open a standard Save As dialog box where you can specify the destination and filename, for
the file. When you click on the Save button, Internet News will save the article in a file with the .NWS extension.
The .NWS extension enables you to double-click on the file and automatically launch Internet News to open the article. However, the file is really just a plain text file. You can open it with Notepad, another text editor, or import the file into other
applications.
One of the challenges of following newsgroups is to keep track of the articles you've read. Internet News displays unread articles in bold type in the article list and the article icon resembles a page of paper. After you open an article in an article
window or the article appears in the preview pane for a specified length of time, Internet News Mail will mark the article as read by removing the bold style from its listing in the article list; also, the page icon gets a small turned-down corner to
indicate that it's been read (see Figure 13.11). Lines on the page of the article icon indicate that the article has been downloaded to your hard disk. A thumb tack on the article icon marks an article that has been downloaded but not read.
Figure 13.11. Internet News uses various symbols to indicate an article's status.
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You can adjust the amount of time an article must appear in the preview pane before Internet News marks it as read. See "Customizing Internet News," later in this chapter, for more details.
In addition to Internet News automatically marking as read those articles you've viewed, the program offers a set of commands for you to change the read status of articles in the article list. Simply select an article (or multiple articles) in the
article list and choose one of the following commands from the Edit menu. (Most of the commands are also available on the pop-up menu that appears when you right-click on an article in the article list.)
| Option | Function |
| Mark As Read | Marks selected article as read |
| Mark Topic As Read | Marks all articles in the selected topic as read |
| Mark All As Read | Marks all articles in the newsgroup as read |
| Mark As Unread | Marks the selected article as unread |
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The Mark As Read and Mark As Unread commands are also available on the pop-up menu that appears when you right-click on a message in the message list.
After you review the articles in a newsgroup and read the interesting ones, you'll probably want to use the Mark All As Read command before you leave the newsgroup. That way, you won't have to waste time reviewing those same articles again the next
time
you visit the newsgroup. They will appear as articles you've already read and you can concentrate on the new, unread articles in the newsgroup. You can even instruct Internet News to hide the articles you've already read when you enter a newsgroup by
choosing the Unread Messages Only command from the View menu. (Later, if you want to display both read and unread articles, choose All Messages from the View menu.)
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Internet News can automatically issue the Mark All Messages Read command for you when you leave a newsgroup. Just open the Options dialog box under News and check the Mark All Messages As Read When Exiting A Newsgroup option on the Read tab to activate the feature.
Although most newsgroup articles are plain text, it is possible to encode binary files, converting them to text, and include the encoded files in a newsgroup article. In fact, some newsgroups specialize in distributing pictures and other binary files.
Internet News can handle most common file attachments automatically, letting you open the attached file almost as easily as the article it's attached to.
When you download an article containing an attached file, Internet News automatically decodes the attachment if the attachment is encoded using one of the protocols Internet News can recognize.
Caution
Unlike Internet Mail, Internet News doesn't mark the article list to indicate articles that contain attached files. However, the topic header will usually alert you to articles with attachments.
How you gain access to a file attachment varies slightly depending on how you view the article. If you view an article containing a file attachment in the preview pane, an attachment icon (a paper clip) appears in the header area of the preview pane,
as
in Figure 13.12. Click on the attachment icon to display a menu listing the attached files. Selecting a filename from the menu causes Internet News to attempt to open the attached file.
Figure 13.12. The paper clip icon indicates the presence of an attached file.
Caution
Internet News will handle the attached file automatically provided the file is encoded and attached to the article in a way Internet News can recognize. Occasionally, you might get a long article containing a lot of text that looks like gibberish—a file attachment that Internet News failed to recognize as such. Your best bet is to request the sender to resend the file using the MIME protocol. You might also be able to decode the attached file by copying the encoded text from the article and transferring it into a separate utility for decoding.
Next, a dialog box might appear (see Figure 13.13) warning of the danger of viruses in downloaded files. If so, you must click on the OK button to confirm the action before Internet News will open the file. Internet News takes care of decoding the
attached file and then passes it to Windows 95 to be opened with the appropriate program or viewer based on the file's extension. For instance, Windows will use Excel to open a spreadsheet file with an .XLS extension—provided, of course, that you
have
Excel or an Excel viewer installed on your system.
Figure 13.13. Before opening an attached file, Internet News issues this warning.
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You can suppress the display of the virus warning by checking the Don't Ask About This File Type option. Thereafter, Internet News will skip the warning and open the attached file immediately when you open other attached files with the same extension.
If you open an article containing an attached file and view the article in its own article window, the attachment will appear as a large icon in a separate pane at the bottom of the article window (see Figure 13.14). To open the attached file, just
double-click on its icon. Internet News will display the virus warning (unless you chose to suppress it), and then open the file.
Figure 13.14. Attached files appear in a separate pane of the article viewing window.
Large binary files are often broken up into smaller segments and posted on newsgroups as multiple articles. Internet News can decode the multiple parts of an attached file and reassemble them into a single, usable binary file with just a little
assistance from you.
The first step is to select all the articles in the article list. Select the first article, then hold down the Ctrl key as you click on each of the other articles containing a portion of the file. (Hopefully, the sender included descriptive text (part
2
of 3, for example) in the subject header to help you identify all the parts of a multipart article.) After you have all the articles highlighted in the article list, choose Combine and Decode from the News menu. Internet News opens a dialog box (see
Figure
13.15) where you must specify the proper sequence for the articles. Adjust the article order in the list by selecting an article you need to move and clicking on the up and down arrow buttons to change the sequence. When the articles are in the proper
sequence, click on the OK button. Internet News will download the component articles, reassemble them into a single article, and open that article in an article viewing window. The attached file will appear in the attachment pane at the bottom of the
window.
Figure 13.15. Internet News needs a little help getting multipart articles into the proper sequence.
If you want to save an attached file on your hard drive instead of opening the file immediately from within Internet News, you'll need to open the article containing the attached file. The option to save an attached file isn't available when you view
an
article in the preview pane. To save an attached file, first open the article containing the file attachment, then choose Save Attachments from the article window's File menu or right-click on the file icon in the article window's attachments pane and
choose Save As from the pop-up menu. This will open the standard Save As dialog box, where you can specify the filename and folder where you want to save the file. When you click on the Save button, the file will be saved.
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Another way to save an attached file is to open it and then use the Save command in the application you're using to view the file to save it.
Newsgroups are designed to encourage discussions. Therefore, the most common form of newsgroup participation is to respond to an article posted by someone else. You're much more likely to post responses to articles you read in a newsgroup than to start
a new topic by posting a new article. So, I'll cover replies before getting into how to post a new article.
When you respond to a newsgroup article, you have two options for posting your reply. You can post your response on the newsgroup for all to see, or you can send a reply to the author of the article via e-mail. Which form of response you choose depends
on whether you want your reply to be part of a public discussion or a private correspondence with the sender of the article you're responding to.
To post a response to the newsgroup, select the article to which you want to respond and choose Reply To Newsgroup from the News menu. Internet News opens an outgoing article window where you can compose your response (see Figure 13.16). The program
automatically inserts the names of the all the newsgroups on which the original article was posted into the Newsgroups box as the "address" for your reply. The subject box contains the topic header from the original message preceded by Re: to
indicate a response. The body pane of the outgoing article window contains a copy of the article you're replying to, indented and marked as quoted material.
Figure 13.16. Preparing a reply to the newsgroup.
All you need to do is type the text of your response. You can also edit any of the other information. For example, you might want to delete some of the quoted material that does not pertain to your response. When your response is ready to go, choose
Post Message from the File menu. Internet News will send your reply to the news server for distribution to the newsgroup the next time you connect to the server.
Unlike replies to the newsgroup, Internet News doesn't rely on its own devices to prepare e-mail replies to the author of an article. Instead, Internet News uses the facilities of Internet Mail to compose and send e-mail messages. The finished e-mail
message will be placed in Internet Mail's Outbox folder for delivery the next time you check your e-mail.
Caution
This assumes you have Internet Mail installed and configured as the default e-mail program. If not, Internet News will use any other installed and properly registered Simple MAPI-compatible mailer program to create e-mail replies. If no mailer is installed, you won't be able to send e-mail replies from Internet News.
To send e-mail replies to the author of a newsgroup article, select or open the article and choose Reply To Author from the News menu. From this point the process is identical to creating a reply to an e-mail message. See "Replying to a
Message" in Chapter 11, "Using Internet Mail," for more information.
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Because you're working in Internet Mail to create an e-mail reply, you can use other Internet Mail features. For instance, you can add addresses to the To and CC fields from your Internet Mail address book.
Internet News makes it very easy to quote the original article when you prepare a response. However, newsgroup etiquette frowns on the practice of quoting large passages without adding something of your own to the discussion. Using quoted material to
provide context for your comments is one thing, but just repeating what someone else wrote is a waste of bandwidth.
If you try to post a reply consisting of more than 80 percent quoted material, Internet News will display the message box shown in Figure 13.17. You can ignore the warning by clicking on the Yes button. However, you might want to click on the No button
to return to your reply and consider making some additional edits.
Figure 13.17. You'll see this warning if you get a case of quote-itus.
Occasionally, you might see a newsgroup article that you think a friend or colleague really must see. In that case, you can forward a copy of the article to your friend's e-mail address. Simply select the article and then choose Forward or Forward As
Attachment from the News menu. As when you are creating an e-mail reply to the author of an article, Internet News relies on Internet Mail to handle the e-mail message. The Forward command works just like forwarding an e-mail message. (See
"Forwarding
Mail" in Chapter 11.) The Forward As Attachment command is similar except that the newsgroup article appears in the e-mail message as a file attachment instead of quoted material.
Of course, your participation in newsgroups isn't restricted to responses to articles posted by someone else. You can start newsgroup discussion on a new topic by posting an article of your own. The process is very similar to creating an e-mail
message.
The principal difference is that the article is addressed to the newsgroup instead of an individual's e-mail address.
To begin creating a newsgroup article, choose New Message To Newsgroup from the News menu or click on the New Message icon in the icon bar. Internet News opens a New Message window similar to the News Message window in Internet Mail. (See Figure
13.18.)
Figure 13.18. Creating a new article for posting on a newsgroup.
Internet News inserts the name of the current newsgroup in the Newsgroups field (the "address" of the newsgroup article). If you want to post your article on more than one newsgroup, to you can add other newsgroups to the list. You could type
in newsgroup names, separating each one with a semicolon. However, it's much easier to click on the Choose Newsgroups command in the News menu. Internet News opens the Pick Newsgroups dialog box shown in Figure 13.19. Select a newsgroup from the list on
the left and click the Add button to add it to the list on the right. When the list of newsgroups is complete, click on the OK button to close the dialog box and insert the list into the appropriate field in the outgoing article window.
Figure 13.19. Pick a list of newsgroups where you want to post your article.
Next, click on the Subject field and enter a descriptive topic for your article. Be sure to make it informative because the subject is what other newsgroup readers will see and use as a basis for deciding which articles to read.
After you complete the newsgroups and subject entries, you can move your cursor into the large pane and begin typing the body of your article.
You can define a block of text as a signature and then insert it into your outgoing articles. You can configure Internet News to add your signature to all outgoing articles automatically, or you can insert the signature megabyte with a simple mouse
click. See Customizing Internet News for details on defining your signature and enabling the automatic option. To insert a predefined signature in an outgoing article, choose Signature from the Insert menu or click on the Signature button on the toolbar.
Internet News can check the spelling in your newsgroup articles if you have the spell checker from Microsoft Office installed on your system. To begin checking the spelling in your article, choose Check Spelling from the News menu. Internet News opens
the familiar Office Check Spelling dialog box and begins checking the text of the message.
If you don't have Office or one of the Office programs—Word, Excel, PowerPoint—installed, this option won't be available.
When you've finished composing your article, you're ready to send it to the news server for distribution to the rest of the Usenet News network. Choose Post Message from the File menu to close the New Message window and submit the article to the
newsgroup. If you're connected to the news server, Internet News sends the article immediately. If you're not connected to the server, Internet News will hold your article and deliver it to the news server the next time you connect to check for new
articles.
Just as you can download and open specially encoded binary files attached to newsgroup articles, Internet News includes features to enable you to encode and attach binary files to your outgoing articles. In fact, the program will handle most of the
details for you.
Internet Mail supports both MIME and UUencoding, the two most common file conversion protocols. The program handles the details of converting binary files to text and attaching the converted text to your outgoing article. You only need to select the
file you want to send as an attachment.
You can select which of the message formats Internet News will use to encode your file attachments by opening the Options dialog box, clicking on the Send tab. Clicking on the Settings button for Plain Text in the News sending format section will open
the dialog box where you can choose the message format. However, you'll rarely need to change the setting.
To post an article containing an attached file, start by creating a new outgoing article. Address it to the proper newsgroup, enter a subject, and type some introductory text if appropriate. Then, to attach the file, choose File Attachment from the
Insert menu. This opens the Insert Attachment dialog box (actually a standard Browse dialog box) that you can use to locate the file you want to send. Select the file and click on the Attach button. Internet News converts the binary file to text using the
protocol you specified and attaches it to your article. After the conversion, the file appears as an icon in a new file attachment pane at the bottom of the New Message window (see Figure 13.20). To post the article with its attached file to the
newsgroup,
choose Post Message from the File menu.
Figure 13.20. Attached files appear in a separate pane at the bottom of the message creation window.
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An even easier way to attach a file to a message is to drag the file icon out of a Windows Explorer or My Computer window and drop it into the New Message window. Internet Mail automatically adds the dropped file to the message as an attachment.
The Outbox stores your postings while you are working off-line. When you reconnect to the news server your articles are posted and new article headers are downloaded automatically. If you are working off-line (not connected to the Internet or your news
server) you will have the opportunity to cancel a posting before it is published to the server. To do this, choose the Outbox from the Newsgroups pull-down list and right-click on the article to be canceled. From the pop-up menu, choose cancel or delete.
If you are not working off-line your post is immediately sent to the news server so there is no way to recover it.
In the second beta version of Internet News, choosing delete would remove the posting from the Outbox. However, choosing cancel might crash the application. Hopefully, Microsoft will have this bug fixed before the final release.
Internet News enables you to customize many of its features and settings to comply with your own preferences and style. You can alter the appearance and layout of the main program window and adjust settings that control how Internet News handles
incoming and outgoing articles.
You can rearrange the main program window's message and preview panes in various configurations, and you can choose to display toolbars for quick, one-click access to commands or hide them to make more room for viewing messages. Here's a summary of
ways
you can customize the Internet News window:
Note
This last item might not be included in the final release of this software. You might have to right-click on the icon bar then point to Align and choose Top or Left.
In addition to changing the width of the columns in the article list, you can add or delete columns. To edit the article list columns, choose Columns from the View menu to open the Columns dialog box as shown in Figure 13.21. When the dialog box is
open, you can select an item from the Available Columns list and click on the Add button to add that column to the items in the Displayed Columns list (and thus to the article list). Conversely, you can select an item in the Displayed Columns list and
click on the Remove button to hide that column. You can even change the order of the displayed columns by selecting an item in the Displayed Columns list and clicking on the Move Up or Move Down buttons to adjust the sequence. When the Displayed Columns
list shows the columns you want to see in the article list, click on the OK button to close the dialog box and make the changes.
Figure 13.21. Change the number and order of the columns in the article list with the options in this dialog box.
Internet News saves copies of article headers, downloaded articles, and attached files from each newsgroup you subscribe to. This stored information makes the program faster and enables you to review the cached messages even when you're no longer
connected to the news server. On the other hand, all those cached messages can take up a lot of disk space.
You can flush out the cache to recover some of the disk space occupied by Internet News's cache files by choosing the Advanced tab from the Options menu under News. Clicking on the Clean Up Now button takes you to the Local File Cleanup window. On this
window you have the options of Compacting, Removing Messages, or Deleting the downloaded cached material. Compacting the articles will remove any wasted space in the cache folder, therefore, the articles will take up less space on your hard drive.
Removing
the message body retains the header for indexing but clears the space required for the entire article. Clicking Delete will completely remove the cache folder from your hard drive. However, you might not want to do that. If you delete the cache file,
Internet News will download all the article headers the next time you enter the newsgroup.
Internet News offers several options that enable you to control how the program handles and displays articles. To adjust these settings, choose Options from the News menu to open the Options dialog box. The settings are on the Read tab, as shown in
Figure 13.22. The options are mostly self-explanatory, as you can see from the following list:
Note
The Download X headers at a time option was not available at the time of this writing. It might be operational by release of the final version.
| Option | Function |
| Download X Headers At A Time | Reads only a certain number of headers in one download. |
| Auto Expand Conversation Threads | Automatically expands topics to display all replies |
| Message Is Read After Being Previewed For X Seconds | Determines how long an article must be displayed in the preview pane before Internet News considers it read |
| Check For New Messages Every X Minutes | Instructs Internet News to automatically check for new articles periodically |
| Notify Me If There Are Any New Newsgroups | Enables or disables automatic notification that new newsgroups were detected on the news server |
| Mark As Read When Exiting A Newsgroup | Automatically marks all articles as read when you leave a newsgroup |
| Automatically Download Articles Into The Preview Pane | Instructs Internet News to automatically download the selected articles into the preview pane |
| Make Microsoft Internet News your default news reader | Assigns all news related actions to Internet News |
| Always start me in this newsgroup | Choose from the drop-down list of subscribed newsgroups to automatically load when the application is launched |
Figure 13.22. These options control how Internet News handles incoming articles.
A few more article-handling options are on the Options dialog box's Send tab. The following list summarizes those settings:
| Option | Function |
| When Posting, Save A Copy In The Posted Messages Folder | Saves a copy of all postings on your hard drive |
| When Selecting, Automatically Select Entire Word | Selects by word or individual letters when editing articles |
| Include Original Message In Reply | Automatically copies the original message to a reply as quoted material |
| Break apart messages larger to be than X KB | Allows sizable messages sent as multiple messages |
| Indent With This Character > When Replying To Or Forwarding A Message | Specifies how Internet News should mark quoted material in a response |
Like Internet Mail, Internet News gives you some control over several other aspects of the handling and display of your articles. The options are identical to their counterparts in Internet Mail. See the corresponding portions of the
"Customizing Internet Mail" section in Chapter 11 for a detailed explanation of their use. Those options include:
Internet News is another work in progress. It starts with a good set of basic features, but has the potential for much more. Reportedly, Microsoft plans to add several new features to Internet News over the coming months. (In fact, it's quite possible
that several new features have been added to Internet News by the time you read this.)
The following list represents some of the features that have been discussed by beta testers in the Internet News newsgroup and seem likely to be considered for future enhancements:
This chapter has covered the basic operation and features of Internet News—how to use the program to access and participate in Internet newsgroups. The next chapter covers another form of Internet communications—real-time conferencing.
