Sometimes you may receive an e-mail message where the "word-wrap" doesn't work and the message is extraordinarily long and scrolls horizontally off your screen, making it very cumbersome to read. This seems to occur when receiving email from folks using Novell GroupWise or anyone else who hasn't set word-wrap on their outgoing e-mail preferences. Pretty much every message on the Wiscat-L electronic discussion group seems to have this formatting annoyance.

If you use Netscape Communicator 4.51 for e-mail and find this is a problem, all you need to do is to change one setting in Netscape's preferences. Follow these steps to fix it:

1. On Netscape's menu bar at the top of the application window click Edit.
2. In the menu that pops up click Preferences.
   
3. In the small Preferences window double-click on the words Mail & Newsgroups.
4. This section should open up to show you a number of subheadings. Click on Messages.
5. Appearing in the bottom half of this Messages window there is a section named "Message Wrapping". Click once in the box next to the words "Wrap incoming plain text messages to window width".
Here's a screenshot with a red dot indicating the spot where you need to click:

6. Click the OK button, and the problem should be solved!

Contrary to popular belief, pressing the Reload button doesn't make Netscape reload a web page. Instead, Netscape keeps track of the "last modified" times of all of the web pages and graphics in its cache. When you click the Reload button, Netscape checks to see if the web page has changed on the page's web server. If it hasn't changed, Communicator reloads the page from your PC's cache. It will only completely reload the web page if it's different from the one stored in the cache.This is a way to speeding up the loading of web pages.

But if you want to make sure you're viewing the most current version of a web page, all you need to do is hold down the Shift key while clicking on the Reload button.

This technique will force Netscape to retrieve the most current version of the page from the server, instead of re-displaying a potentially out-of-date page saved in "cache" on your PC's hard disk.

This trick may also work on the Refresh button of Internet Explorer and the Public Web Browser -- give it a try and see!

Even though browser caching is a good idea because it decreases web page loading time, remember that you know a way to make sure you have the freshest data.      ;-)

A handy timesaver in Windows 9x and Windows NT is the ability to open any recently used document. This includes word processing documents, spreadsheets, and web sites. To make use of this shortcut...

1. Click the Windows Start
button.
2. Place your mouse pointer over Documents.
3. A list of documents you've accessed recently will open up, so just click on the one you'd like to re-open. Windows will automagically start the software/application associated with the document to access the document, if it isn't already open.

After a while the Documents menu can become quite long and list items you're no longer interested in. To clear it, follow these steps:

1. Right-click your mouse on any open area of the Windows Taskbar.
2. Click on Properties.
3. Click on the Start Menu Programs tab.
4. Click the Clear button
to remove the contents of the Documents Menu.
5. Click the OK button.

If you can't remember (or never knew) the difference between blast-ended skrewts and flobberworms, then you might want to set a bookmark for The Harry Potter Lexicon. The Librarians' Index to the Internet says, "This intelligently designed, eminently browsable, and easily searchable site will serve everyone from the Harry Potter fanatic to the hopelessly lost muggle. Besides easy access to the people, places, and things in the Potter series, one will find here an excellent timeline of events and a guide to other resources concerning the world's favorite wizard-in-training."

What do a popsicle stick, a comb, and an arrest warrant have in common? Read "Stuff Librarians Find as Bookmarks" to find out.

And in honor of the recent passing of author Douglas Adams, Vogon Heavy Industries is proud to make The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy available to Earth Internet users under license from Megadodo Publications, Ursa Minor.

This month's quote isn't so much a quote as a poem. It's rather long, so I'll just link to it as Odes to Public Libraries.

is Rhubarb Custard Kuchen, for you connoisseurs of this springtime treat.

This issue of The Ides was written on May 15, 2001
Copyright 2001, Winnefox Library System

The Ides is written by Joy Schwarz.
Please direct any questions, comments or recipes to schwarz@winnefox.org

URL: http://www.winnefox.org/ides/idesmay01.html