Please note: this is an old file. It has been replaced by http://www.webteacher.org/.

Loot and pillage

To use the Web effectively, you will need a few extra programs on your computer, to display pictures, movies (badly), and sound. (Does the computer 'display' sound? Perhaps 'play' would be a better word.)

All the programs that you need can be found on archie. Archie is a computer in Canberra which holds all the popular shareware and public domain software from around the world. It's your one stop shop within Australia. If archie doesn't have it, then you are going to have to go hunting.

If you have used Fetch and archie before, jump to the next section, headed 'Talking to archie'.

Fetch, boy, fetch.

Load Fetch onto your machine. If you don't have Fetch on your machine, I can give it to you. It's a great program, because it has a cute little dog icon, which runs off and fetches things for you.

OK, once it's loaded, start it up in the same way that you would a normal program. Usually, you will see this screen, except that you won't have the fields filled in. If you don't get this screen, go to the [File] menu and choose [Open connection].

Fill them in as they are shown here. For a password, type in your e-mail address. That way, if something goes seriously wrong, the person who runs archie can contact you and find out what happened. As you type, your letters will appear as *, so that no-one else will know your password.

The directory that we are looking at is a mirror of the University of Michigan (umich) macintosh archive. I use this one for preference, because all programs are checked for virii before they are made available to the public. (Of course, I use Disinfectant as well. If you don't use a virus program, it is available at archie. The current version is 3.5, I think.)

Talking to archie

This is what Fetch looks like when it is running properly. I have logged into Archie.au, and have selected the University of Michagan collection of Macintosh software. Notice that there is a second window, underneath the Fetch window. This contains notices from archie. It is worth reading this, and additional files, like '/info/welcome-ftpuser'. Most of them are short and informative.

Now to go looting. The people who wrote Mosaic recommend the following list of programs to use with it. I have no reason to argue with them.

To view these: Use this:

* GIF/JPEG images: JPEGView

* TIFF images: GIFConverter

* QuickTime movies: SimplePlayer

* MPEG movies: Sparkle

* AU sounds: SoundMachine

* BinHexed files: Stuffit Expander

SimplePlayer is probably already on your computer. I think it comes standard with Macintoshes these days. You can check whether you have it by using the [Find...] command from the Finder [File] menu.

Looting archie

Let's get the last one as an example, because 'Stuffit Expander' will be useful when we get all the others.

From the opening screen, open the [util] folder (the last choice) and then [compression] folder. You can either double-click on each choice or highlight it and choose [Get File...]

Highlight [stuffitexp...]. This is what your window should look like now. This folder is full utilities (util) for compressing and decompressing stuff on Macintoshes. Stuffit Expander is a particularly useful program because you can set it up to automatically decompress the programs that you fetch.

Choose [Get File] and the little dog will run off and fetch it for you. You will be asked where you want to save the new arrival. I always put it on the desktop and then deal with it, because I often download stuff, play with it to see what it is, and then throw it away.

Stuffit Expander (and anything else that you download) will take a little while to arrive. While this is happening, Fetch will give you a running commentary on what is going on.