Contents

• Utility programs, both shareware and freeware. A wide range of programs, including programs to view graphics, listen to audio, interpret scanned text as ASCII, compress and decompress files, transfer files, and countless other tasks, as well as drivers for many devices you can attach to your computer.
• Patches and fixes: software to enhance or correct problems for commercial programs. The Internet provides a very convenient way for software developers to make their upgrades and corrections available quickly, world-wide.
• Specialized information, often using Adobe Acrobat format, on a given topic. Much of this information is in HTML or plain text, but the Adobe Acrobat format allows more control over printed pages than either text or HTML. The Acrobat Reader is available for free, as well.
• Media: pictures of many beautiful scenes and technical topics, as well as free clipart to spice up your presentations; audio and video in many formats, educational, practical, and amusing.
• ...And lots of other things!

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Public Sites

	C|Net and Shareware.com  http://www.shareware.com/
	SimtelNet http://www.simtel.net/simselects.php
	Winsite: http://www.winsite.com/
	ZD-Net http://www.hotfiles.com/index.html

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Corporate Sites

	Microsoft Corp. file download site http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx
	Netscape Corp. http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp
	Sun Microsystems http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/

  

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Personal Sites

Use the Browser

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

There are a couple of "flavors" of FTP. Classic FTP started life as a Unix program. It is entirely character-oriented and command-line based. Most people avoid classic FTP whenever possible! This module doesn't talk about it, but you can learn more about it in module NA30c, "How to Get Files Using Internet".

A more appetizing flavor of FTP is the GUI-based type, like Ipswitch Inc.'s WS_FTP. This runs on Windows; similar software is available for the Macintosh. This module doesn't go into detail about using these, but they're quite user-friendly.

CAUTION: When dowloading anything other than text files, make sure the FTP program is using Binary mode before downloading a file.See module NA36c for details.

1. Use the Search button (or equivalent) on your Web browser, or click here to go to Lycos media search (http://www.lycos.com/lycosmedia.html). If you use the Search button, try to find a graphics search engine, though any general Web search engine will work eventually - they'll just get you non-graphic hits.
2. Enter space shuttle in the search field and click the appropriate screen button to start the search.
3. When you get a list of hits, click to see if the site has what you want - a good picture of a shuttle.
4. Right-click the image (Mac users: hold the mouse button down for a second or so) and select the option that lets you save the picture on your own computer.

Lab users: please save the image on the hard drive of your computer on a public directory such as My Documents! You may save it on your own diskette if you like it.

1. Use any of the public shareware libraries in the table above. Click to go to the site, and follow any directions on finding a graphics conversion program. In this example, I'll use the Oakland University Repository, but you can use any you like...the steps would be a little different, though each has clear instructions so you should have no major hassles!
2. Click on the Quick Search link. Select the kind of computer you use (for Windows, you can use "MS-Windows (All)"). Fill in the search field with the words graphic and converter. Click the Start Search button.
3. Oakland gives you a list of programs you can download. Study the list to find a program that does what you want in the smallest size of file. In this case, look for files that do general graphics conversion, rather than some specialized type. When you've identified these, find one that comes in a relatively small package. I picked ezgt3220.zip (412 Kb), but you can take another if you can't find this one, or if you prefer.
4. Oakland next offers you a list of servers you can download from, listed in alpha order by country. It's usually smart to choose one close to you; since I'm only about 40 miles or so from Oakland University, that's the one I picked.
5. In the lab: save the file in My Documents or other public directory (or use your diskette). When I'm doing this on my own computer, I use a directory called temp.

The most popular compression program is PK-ZIP. That's what the extension ZIP refers to. To decompress a "zipped" file, we need either PK-ZIP, which both compresses and decompresses; or PK-UNZIP, which only decompresses, but is smaller.

Let's see if  we can find an UNZIP program. I'll use Oakland again as an example...

1. After reaching Oak, click on the Quick Search link. Select the kind of computer you use. Fill in the search field with the word unzip .Click the Start Search button.
2. Again, study the list to find a program that does what you want in the smallest size of file. In this case, look for programs that unzip (at least) and are executable. Executable files end with .EXE

(Why must it be executable? Because executables are programs that run, rather than files that need something else to work on them. If it's "zipped" what would you unzip it with???)
When you've identified executable unzippers, find a relatively small one. I clicked jzlib95.exe (164 Kb), which is incredibly small. (Does it really work? We'll see...)
3. Choose a server close to you. This time Oakland didn't have this software, so I clicked wuarchive.wustl.edu, which is in St. Louis, Missouri.
4. In the lab: remember to save the file in My Documents or other public directory.

Setting up the Unzip Program

1. Use My Computer or Windows Explorer and find the directory that contains jzlib95.exe.
2. Double-click jzlib95 to run it. It should run briefly and return you to the file listing, but it should have left several new files in that folder.
3. Look for a file called readme. Readme files are a standard way of communicating with people who download files. You should be able to double-click Readme and have Notepad show you the file. Read it! It has instructions on what to do next.
4. In this case, the instructions say: "Install: Press the right button on the Zlib95.inf file and choose install." Do this using My Computer or Windows Explorer. In this case, the process is relatively quick and painless! (Notice that the instructions also tell you have to uninstall the program - we'll do that later.)

1. Return to My Computer or Windows Explorer.
2. Find the graphics converter program you downloaded (mine was ezgt3220.zip)and double-click.
3. The ZLib program should appear with ezgt3220.zip and its contents listed. Click on each file in turn, then click the Extract button on the Zlib window. According to the Readme instructions, this will decompress each file and store the result in the current directory (My Documents).
4. Notice the file ReadmeEZ. This is the Readme file for the graphics converter program. Always read (or at least skim) the Readme file!
5. According to the instructions for this program, we must run the Setup program. We can do that using my Computer or Windows Explorer, simply by double-clicking on the file Setup.
6. This setup program asks some questions - specifically, it wants to know where to install your program. Just to keep things in one place, have it put the program in My Documents.

Converting the Image

1. Run the graphics converter (you can use My Computer or Windows Explorer and double-click the program' icon).
2. Use the menu and Help information of the graphics converter, and figure out how to read in the original space shuttle image.
3. Again using the menu (probably File...SaveAs) save the image as a Windows Bitmap. The type of file is usually an option near the bottom of the Save As dialog box.

1. The compressed executable file of the unzipping program you downloaded. In my example, that was jzlib95.exe, but if you downloaded another, that's OK too.
2. The GIF or JPEG version of the graphical image of the space shuttle.
3. The BMP version of the space shuttle picture, once you've converted it.

Clean up the Hard Drive Before You Go!

1. If you can, use Windows 95's Start menu and select Settings. (Some Lab machines don't have Settings available; if so, skip this step.)

From Settings, select Control Panel.
On Control Panel, select Add/Remove Programs
2. Select Zlib95 (or other program you added) and click the Add/Remove button. This should remove the program.
3. If the graphics program you installed is listed in the Add/Remove window, select it and again click the Add/Remove button. My graphics program was not listed; if yours isn't either, use My Comptuer or Windows Explorer to look in the folder you stored it in (My Documents) and remove it with any of its recognizable components, by selecting and pressing the delete key on the keyboard. (You can also delete by using the File...Delete menu option, or by dragging the file to the Recycle icon.)

Audience:

Objectives

1. Discuss the types of file available for downloading via Internet
2. Use a browser to find archives
3. Download archived files to your local disk
4. Find decompression programs
5. Decompress files for local use

Module NA31g: Getting Files using a Web Browser

Author:

Laurence J. Krieg

Institution:

Department of Computer Information Systems, Washtenaw Community College

History:

Original: 24 Nov 1997

Version 2: 3 April 1998; added sites 9 April 1998; correction 2 Dec 1998; added site 3 Feb 1999; revised sites, added binary caution 20 Oct 2002

Copyright:

Copyright © 2002, Laurence J. Krieg, Washtenaw Community College
Instructors: You may point to this file in your Web-based materials.
Students: you may make a copy for your personal use.
All other uses: contact the author, Laurence J. Krieg for permission.