Mend Your E-Mail's Broken Links
Scott Spanbauer
It seems so simple. You stumble upon an amazing Web site, and you want to forward the address to a few of your friends by e-mail. You select the URL in your browser's Address field, press Ctrl-C to copy it, switch to your e-mail program, and press Ctrl-V to paste the URL into your message. Then you hit the Send button, and boom! The URL is on its way.
But sometimes, your link goes boom--as I found out firsthand recently when I tried to post a message containing a fairly long URL to a mailing list of friends. Most recipients found the URL highlighted as a link in their e-mail program, but the link did not take them to the site. Several people tried copying the URL from the message and then pasting it into a browser Address window, but they still went nowhere. It turns out that the address I used was good, but the way I sent it wasn't.
The lingua franca of the Internet--ASCII text--doesn't like long URLs. Most e-mail programs break a message's text (whether typed in or copied and pasted) into lines of 70 to 80 characters, inserting a carriage return at the end of each line. Your e-mail program usually highlights the URLs in your incoming mail as hyperlinks automatically. Unfortunately, it probably won't highlight anything after the carriage return that it inserted at the end of the first line containing the URL.
Clicking the resulting URL fragment usually generates an error message. Copying the entire URL and pasting it into your browser's address window can cause the paste operation to skip everything after the invisible carriage return. True, you could try cutting and pasting individual pieces of the URL before and after the carriage return, but you may find it easier to type the URL directly into the browser address window.
I could have prevented line-wrap from breaking my link by posting the message in HTML format. For example, here are two long URLs within an e-mail message: one broken, and one that works. Some mailing-list subscribers oppose receiving messages in any format other than plain text, however, so posting an HTML message may draw more complaints than posting a broken URL.
A friend who is up on Internet rules and regulations argues that the best way to avoid line breaks in an e-mailed URL is to add <URL: to the beginning of the Web address and > to the end. Other Internet resources report that enclosing the URL between right and left angle brackets prevents the dreaded line wrap, but when I tried this I got a broken link whether I sent the URL alone (http://www.url.com), enclosed in brackets (<http://www.url.com>), or with the official URL container (<URL:http://www.url.com>).
I finally managed to send the link using Qualcomm's Eudora 5.0.2 e-mail software. No matter how I formatted the URL in Eudora, or which e-mail program I received the message with, the URL came through 100 percent functional. Nothing fancy is going on--the program simply identifies URLs and doesn't insert carriage returns in them. Think how the collective level of human e-mail suffering would fall if only the other guys would add such a feature to their programs.
Keep Your Links in Line
Netscape's Messenger requires you to take one small step to prevent long URLs from cracking up. Prepare your new message in the normal way, but then choose View and uncheck Wrap Long Lines before clicking the Send button. Neither Outlook nor Outlook Express provides such an option.
If you don't want to switch to Eudora or Messenger (or send messages in HTML format and brave the wrath of text-only purists), send people the site's shorter main URL, followed by the steps required to reach the page you're directing them to. Better yet, offer the exact commands you used to find the page through a particular search engine.
Careful--Don't Click That Ad!
When browsing the Web I often encounter frames, windows, dialog boxes, and even such page elements as Close, OK, and Cancel buttons that appear to be a legitimate part of the Web site. When I click on any of them, however, the entire frame that holds them turns out to be a link to another site. Trying to "close" the object sends me to another Web site, which may automatically do something I don't want, such as present me with an unrequested download or subscription.
The next time you see one of these faux elements on your screen, move the mouse over it, but don't click. If the pointer changes to a pointing hand everywhere inside its boundaries, the element is actually a link. To avoid unwanted responses, just ignore it.
Mike Guerard, Wenonah, New Jersey
Good tip. There's nothing wrong with ads--you can ignore them, and they help pay for the free content you enjoy. But banner ads that try to trick you into visiting an advertiser's Web site by masquerading as part of the host site are even more obnoxious than suppertime telemarketers.
Another way to avoid camouflaged ads is to check your browser's status bar as you hover the cursor over suspect content (in this example on our site, of course, the ad is obviously an ad). Each hyperlink on a Web page is a URL--a Web address. When you place the cursor over any link, including a banner ad, the embedded link shows up in your browser's status bar.
By examining the domain name at the beginning of the URL (usually the part directly following 'http://'), you can often distinguish the ads from the site's content because their addresses contain the word 'ad' or 'ads', or the name of a prominent online advertising company, such as DoubleClick.
A Browser Security Check
No two people use their browser in quite the same way, yet nearly everyone seems satisfied with the default security settings on their browser. Part of the reason could be how well the browser makers hide these security settings.
So, how's your browser set, security-wise? To view Internet Explorer 5's settings, first choose Tools, Internet Options and then click the Security tab. Make sure that 'Internet' is the Web content zone selected. Click Default Level to reset your browser to its default setting of Medium; this disables ActiveX controls that are unsigned or not marked as safe, but allows all cookies (prompting you only before accepting third-party cookies stored locally). Active scripting and scripting of Java applets are also enabled by default.
To change the default setting, click Custom Level under Internet Options' Security tab and then choose one of the other three presets (High, Medium-low, or Low), or change individual settings manually.
In Netscape 4. x, select Edit, Preferences and then click Advanced. The default setting enables Java and JavaScript, and accepts all cookies, but you can choose to block all cookies, to allow only those that are sent back to the originating server, or to receive a warning before the browser accepts a cookie. Netscape 6 adds the ability to view your stored cookies, remove them individually or all at once, and permanently block all cookies that have been removed.
In Opera, click File, Preferences and highlight Security. You can view your personal certificates and certificate authorities, and select and configure security protocols.
Banish AOL's Pop-Up Ads
If you're bugged by the many ad windows that appear when you use America Online 6, reader Jacob Dawson of St. Marys, Georgia, offers relief. Click the Settings icon in the toolbar and select Preferences. Select the Marketing link, and click Continue on the button labeled POP-UP to open the Pop-up Preference screen. Select No, I do not want to receive special AOL members-only pop-up offers, and click OK twice. You can also opt out of e-mail ads, telemarketing, and snail mail from AOL and its partners.
Download of the Month: Once More With Feeling
In the July 2000 Internet Tips column, I wrote about CDScan, a nifty utility that catalogs MP3s stored on multiple CD-R and CD-RW discs. Alas, CDScan isn't being updated. Of the numerous alternatives, Wizetech Software's $30 Advanced MP3 Catalog Pro has won my heart. The 744KB program is available at our Downloads library and at the vendor's site. The program isn't free (the demo version catalogs only three discs), but it's worth the investment if your MP3 archives are massive.
Besides grabbing each song file's ID3 data, Advanced MP3 Catalog Pro lets you assign music categories to the tunes in your database and search by song, album, or artist within a category. You can also use it to print reports about your collection; sort reports by artist name, album title, or other ID3 tag; and export reports to Word, Excel, or Access. Best of all, the program can be used to print CD covers that list the contents of each disc.
Send questions and tips to nettips@spanbauer.com. We pay $50 for published items. Scott Spanbauer is a contributing editor for PC World.