Visit the ModemJunkie Archive - - Impressions and commentary on the online world and much, much more.
I was reading the March 25th issue of Circuits in the New York Times, the old gray lady's weekly technology supplement. Circuits is usually filled with techno-hype. Article after article touting the latest gadgets and fads in the computer and online world. But this week article after article touched a chord - the need for balance between old and new. The result is my current article Validated: Balance in the Brave New World.
This page has been my portal, my gateway to the Web for a long, long time.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
Enjoy your visit.
Getting started on the net is easy with the right tools. The most important is a good starting point. But I don't like other people to tell me what I should see. A valuable source of 40 to 60 new sites a day is Net-Happenings, a service of the Internet Scout Project in the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The postings are also available via a USENET newsgroup at News:comp.internet.net-happenings.
For years, my favorite source of new sites has been CIWA. Much broader than Net-happenings. Unfortunately for a while, keeping it up-to-date seemed to overwhelm it's valiant moderators. But now it is back. CIWA is available as a newsgroup at News:comp.infosystems.www.announce. If you'd rather read the newsgroup in HTML, book mark What's new from CIWA an up to date archive of the CIWA announcements. Anyone interested in helping to moderate this newsgroup should contact the current moderator.
The Robot Wisdom WebLog edited by Jorn Barger. An amazing compendium of links to the latest on the Web. Updated several times daily. It has become my most frequently visited site. This site is filtered through Jorn's sensibilities, but it is an excellent source. (I was cuting down my online time when I discovered his page. Since then . . .)The Web can be a bewildering, vast, source of entertainment and information. AltaVista and Infoseek are two of the many fast search engines designed to help you find what your are looking for in seconds.
Also available are tools like Who/Where to enable you to find e-mail addresses, phone numbers and even reverse directories to tell you whose number that is scribbled on that scrap of paper in your wallet.
I do my searches right from here. If you don't find what you are looking for, try Lycos or Excite, or one of the many other search engines available on the Web. Here are some of the best:
HotBot is easily configured and is great for large searches so here is a link to their service.
This form will enable you to search the Usenet news groups, I have found it extremely useful.
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If you are looking for just the right word to use in your next page or project, check out the OneLook Online Dictionaries That site allows you to search over 50 online dictionaries with one click.
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I am hooked on viewing, creating and editing Web pages, as you can see. (Take a look at the Temple Har Zion page and the Gropper Windows page, for example.)
Readers of my columns and viewers of my pages know I like to keep things simple. I believe it should not be necessary to upgrade your computer every 6 months or add RAM every few weeks to write a letter or browse the Web or even to create Web pages. So, I appreciate applications that do their job with out requiring much in resources. I am happy to share with some recent finds:
DiDa is a simple, small, freeware HTML editor for Windows created by Godfrey Ko. The executable is less than 460 K. Beta version 1.72 is available here. The whole zipped file, dida172.zip is barely 300 K. While it is not a WYSIWYG editor, the app includes a fast previewer which will let you view your page without opening your memory-hog browser (and it will let you see how your masterpiece will look in browsers that don't handle "netscapisms," as well). This streamlined application has features not found on much bigger editors, including a status line indicating what line you are on, an invaluable feature for making corrections after running validation programs like Weblint.
A professional version, DiDa Pro is now available from the DiDa home page. Godfrey can be reached directly at godfreyk@faico.com. Tell him I sent you. Check back here regularly for the latest version of the freeware edition. He has also created a whole range of useful web related tools. Check out the Faico home page. All of my pages are edited or created with DiDa.
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PFE is a large-capacity, multi-file editor that runs on Windows 95-8, Windows 3.1x, and Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0 on Intel platforms. Although it's primarily oriented towards program developers and contains features like the ability to run compilers and development applications, it also makes a very good general purpose editor for any function at all. You can learn more and download the file on thePFE home page. Amazingly, the zipped file is only 603,028 bytes. Added June 27, 1998.
Last year's great find is getting better!! Opera, the shareware browser, meets my requirements for special mention. It is small (the compressed file barely more than one meg - - it still fits on a single floppy -- great for getting new machines online) and offers many innovative features. Its zoom feature is worth your attention. With just a click you can magnify a page (both text and graphics) as much as 1000% or reduce it to 20% of its original size. Thus Vision impaired users (including bleary eyed late night surfers) can enlarge the screen to legible size. On the other hand, it is also possible to reduce the screen so that you can see how a whole page is laid out at a glance.
Version 3.51 is now is available to download for evaluation and purchase. Opera's authors will listen to any problems or suggestions you have and are very responsive. Additional information, including links to sites with software for the disabled is also available at the original Opera home page.
See the new Opera page for information about the new features and more.
You can find more in depth software reviews and commentary in the ModemJunkie archive.
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Michael Quinion's Spell Checker for Edit Boxes isn't new but it is extremely useful for those of us who write online. I have used it in Eudora Lite, NewsXpress, DiDa, and the PFE editor. People used to make fun of my typos. Now they will have to look a lot closer to find them. The spell checker itself is only 136 K to download. Dictionaries range from around 300 K to over 700 K depending on the language. They include British English, US English, French, French-Canadian, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Norwegian. There is also a developer's kit available.
This application is very versatile although it does take some getting used to. It seems to perform differently in different environments. Sometimes a context field pops up, sometimes not, sometimes I can follow the position of the checker by observing highlighted areas in the original text, sometimes not. And it seems to have entered some unwanted characters in this page when I tried it with DiDa, my html editor. But, still, it found some outrageous errors which had been here for a long time, and the KGV validator found the odd entries. Try it. Entry added:10/18/97.
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My addiction to computers can be blamed on George Matyaszek's great BBS, Chicago Syslink and the people who hang out there. If you know anyone who needs a simple, inexpensive e-mail address you can get it there and get the benefits of a full service BBS thrown in. Let your modem dial(708)795-4478
It was on George's board that I first learned of two great user groups:Further information about NICOL can be found on its own home page.
River Forest is really in the center of the Chicago Metropolitan Area. I have created a link to directions and maps help you find your way.
CACHE's president, Peter Hru, can be reached at peter.hru@syslink.mcs.com.
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I am proud to announce that my wife, Sally, has become affiliated with the Baird and Warner Real Estate Agency in River Forest, Illinois. So if you are looking for a house or condo or have one to sell, in Chicago or the suburbs, drop her a note at grossman@mcs.net. Please put "Sally" in the subject line.
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Here are links to pages I have created or maintain and other places of interest including law and government related sites and some special sites related to the Web itself:
The Gropper Windows:Genesis in Glass. This set of pages celebrates a magnificent series of stained glass windows by
controversial artist William Gropper. For something a little different take a look at the unedited, computer translated French version of the Gropper home page and then at the retranslation into English.
West Suburban Temple Har Zion.
Chicago Weather A collection of links to national and Chicago area weather information sources. 
You may also want to take a look at the home page of the Mid-America Congress on Aging which has links to many
resources on aging. If you are serious about the development of the Web and HTML you will want to look at Terry Sullivan's All Things Web and his companion Perspectives pages.
If you are in a less serious mood, take a look at The Care and Feeding of Web Pages an essential text for web authors. (^_^)
Learn why you should be interested in opening the Web to all users. Take a look at Cathy Murtha's Web Accessibility page and the resources there.
No conscientious web author should fail to point his readers to sites like The Kinder Gentler Web Validator or to thank Gerald Oskoboiny or the many others out there who make possible free services which make it possible to validate the code which make possible what you see. Thanks.
And just in case you missed it before, don't forget my own Reflections of a ModemJunkie. My new ModemJunkie columns also appear each month in WindoWatch Magazine as well. WindoWatch is a great source of information and humor in PDF and ASCII formats.
Enjoy.
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The Oak Park Tourist has an excellent
set of links to information on the creation of web pages, search tools and other fascinating places.
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(public).
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Leonard Grossman
Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects. ACLU v. Reno
This page has received a WDG Award for accessibility . Although this page has been validated to the WebTechs "Wilbur" (HTML 3.2) standard, it is not my intention to restrict viewing to any particular browser. If this page presents
any problems on your browser, please drop me a note.Today's activity on many of my pages.
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In April 1996, this page was included on M.L. Grant's Best O'
CIWA list of outstanding sites.
I've heard that there is a 12-step program for modemjunkies. Unfortunately, you have to log on to participate. I hope I haven't made things worse.