About browser and internet

This is a message for those of you who are no computer experts!

Chapter 1

The latest browser software (IE 6 and higher) is certainly a great feature compared to IE4 and older and it works much faster, however, you should note some little ideology behind the reason why it looks faster than old browsers do:

The new IE versions use your local computer cache memory as well as the "windows/temporary_internetfiles" directory. Not a big problem in fact, but if you are more or less computer illiterate you could face some unexpected problems as some of our customers had faced in the last week.

Why? When a website is more or less unchanged, the browser reads from your local harddisc rather than from the internet to speed things up. What happens is that when you enter e.g. www.dwwgalaxy.com is that your browser checks if that very website is already stored onto your local harddisc and if it finds that it is and if it is small enough then it will not read this website from the internet but from your local harddisc. Not bad? Well, not bad but it could cause some problems for those who give up to soon and who have no ambition:

When we updated the site for a few hours last month with the message when our server was down some users stored this site with their browser (unwillingly) to their harddisc. Then their browser did not recognize when the site was up again after a few hours but it always read from their own harddisc and they believed we were offline for weeks.
That is why I said "no ambition and giving up to soon":

If they were ambitious they would have sent us an email after 2 days asking what's going on. Also - and that's REALLY important, you have a "REFRESH" button on top of your browser menu (in the grey area on top). If you click that REFRESH button then any site gets refreshed from the internet and the browser will NOT read it from your own harddisc. So you can see the update but not the old website.

There is also in the browsers' internetoptions a field that you can check for not using "cache". That is also helpful. It slows down the speed of your browser because it will read all from the internet from then but it will avoid reading old websites from your own harddisc.

You can also delet the directory "temporary_internetfiles" from time to time. This directory is full of websites and graphics from your latest internet visits and fills the harddisc of your browser and gives other people who use your computer enough opportunity to see and check what you have watched. However, if you delete this directory you will also lose any stored passwords of the prompt boxes, so better write down your passwords on a paper before you do this. However, you should delete this directory from time to time anyway to clean your PC. There is no software there, only websites, graphics and other stuff that you've visited on the internet before.

New browsers are advanced software using cache, locally stored websites and graphics you have visited before and other features to make your websurfing faster. However, they are also dangerous in the cases as to be seen above because they do not always recognize small changes on a certain site and might bring you always old versions from your local harddisc. They just fool you! So if you are unsure just press the refresh button of your browser once and you get the updated website always from the internet.
Also do never use any proxy servers. They are installed in your browser options and usually are located at your provider. They do the same as your local cache on your harddisc, but only at the provider's place, supporting more than one user who accesses the same website. These proxy servers may present you the same troubles as your local harddisc, making surfing faster but more inaccurate. I would always recommend not to use them, also for the purpose of more privacy because your internet access gets stored there at your provider for a long time then on their proxy server. You can easily disable them in your browser settings (menu on top of your browser) - if you ever enabled a proxy server. They don't get enabled by default. You should remember if you ever did enable a proxy server!

If you follow these instructions and if you understand that, then you will have a more secure and more easy time when you are websurfing! Understanding what happens on the internet is quite important when using it. And you will not face the problem of a customer who tells me by email on May 4th: "Hey, you still have the April web club issue online".
So my response is: "Well, poor guy, your browser software just shows you what you have stored on your own PC last month but it does not show you the CURRENT website. Press the "REFRESH" button and you will get the information from the internet or better do not allow your broswer at all to show you websites from last month reading them just from your harddisc instead from the internet.... Reading data from local harddrives of yur own PC is clearly not what websurfing ought to be!

Chapter 2

If you are interested to learn more about your browser and your websurfing options, please read on:

Click the internet options on your browser menu (you will find it but I cannot give here a general advice where to find "internet options" because I do not own an English browser version and it is different from browser version to browser version). It is a submenu when you click one of the links on the very top of your browser (in the grey area), right handed of "FILES". But it depends what language your browser uses, so I cannot give a general advice here where to find "internet options" but if you are not completely stupid then you have to find it there in a sub-menu.

Given you use Internet Explorer (IE): If you click on "Internet options" you will suddenly find the menu where you can enter your startup page. Right below should be the option for "temporary internet files" that we were searching for. These is the option about the files stored on your own PC's local harddrive in the directory: windows/temporary_internetfiles

You can delete these files using the button there but be warned that then your surfing becomes slower and that you lose your pre-stored passwords from the prompt box! You should write them down before you do this!

You can also give - after deleting these files - your browser an option how much discspace it is allowed to use for this cache. Theoretically you can say "zero" there but this is not a good option because then you cannot access many sites that require cookies (including ours). Since a cookie is very very small 1kb file, you don't need to give much discspace to the browser, but simply saying just "zero" is not a very good option for wbesurfing.

Also in that menu "internet options" / "temporary internet files" you can find next to the "delete" button another button to install your web access. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE OF YOUR BROWSER!!!!

Those having troubles will find out, clicking there - that their options about internet access are wrongly installed ! They shall always give the browser the order to read "ALWAYS" from the internet, or maybe "automatic" is also a quite good option but not always satisfactory, but NEVER EVER(!!!) use "NEVER" and NEVER USE "read only when starting" as your options. If you don't accept that advice then you really "wait for" a cache problem and for getting old websites from your local harddisc instead real ones from the internet!

More information about this matter you can certainly get from your local software specialists and from microsoft directly.

One last word: We recommend you always install the latest version of Internet Explorer and other browsers. Most of these products have always bugs but when you download the updates all the time you can avoid those bugs by always using the latest version of your browser.

For microsoft explorer just use to check the website:

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

to get always your latest version of your browser. Their download and their install-option are 100% automatic and extremely simple to use even for computer illiterate people.