We receive questions occasionally from people who have difficulties accessing the Net, or who are curious about some aspect of it. We'll try to answer them here, for the benefit of all our readers.
If you have questions that aren't answered here, it would be helpful to us if you went to our feedback page and followed the instructions there. CWC.
Q -- Why is THE NET on the world wide web, anyway?
A -- Early in 2002, I was discussing with Pastor Karl Stuckenberg some possible ways to take advantage of the new technologies of the internet. An idea which appealed to both of us was to publish OUMC's monthly newsletter to the world wide web. I prepared the first web edition in February and labelled it "experimental web version". After four experimental issues, I went to the Church Council to see if it wanted to continue the experiment "officially". It did. The "experimental" tag was removed from the June 2002 issue.
Q -- The interNET just doesn't look like the paperNET. Why is that?
A -- Differences are due to a variety of reasons.
A Microsoft program called Publisher is used to produce the paper version of THE NET. For me to be able to produce the internet version, Publisher has to convert the newspaper into a format used by another Microsoft program -- Word -- so it can be e-mailed to me. As is often the case with Mr. Bill's products, they don't communicate very well with one another. Parts of the paper document are sometimes lost or scrambled.
The June 2004 issue was a particularly unfortunate example. The conversion process lost the whole Womanspace item, all of the prayer concerns under Extended Family, and the reminder to send your e-mail addresses to OUMC's new address.
When I receive my NET in the mail, I usually catch these "little problems" and correct the interNET. The corrections usually appear in red. It's always a good idea for you to take another look at the NET a week or so after it appears on the World Wide Web, just to catch any such corrections.
Since the Publisher-to-Word process randomly resequences text, I don't usually have a clue which items were a part of "Bits & Pieces" or "Opportunities" or whatever. I group items however they look good to me, which may or may not be the same as the way they were grouped on paper. ;~)
Actually, Publisher is such a woeful tool that, whenever possible, I stop by the office and pick up a paper copy of THE NET, "hot off the press", then rush home and stick it in my scanner. The church's copier produces such crisp output that the result is much closer to being ready for use than whatever Publisher produces.
Q -- I like to save back issues of the NET to refer to later. What happens if I ask you to stop mailing me the paper NET?
A -- If you'd like to see a back issue of the NET on the web, click on "archive" at the top of the page. You can then read, and print, any web edition since its beginning in Feb 2002.
Q -- When I tried to bring up the NET, all that was there was the first page. There didn't seem to be any way to bring up the rest. How does it work?
A -- Try clicking on the subjects at the top of the screen.
There was some discussion about this when we published the first issue of the NET. It was just one long page. Some people objected to having to scroll up and down to locate subjects of interest. Also, it took the page quite awhile to load on the slow dial-up connections which some of us have. For that reason, we decided to break it down into several pages which correspond, very roughly, to those of the paper NET.
Q -- Would you please include this article in the next NET...
A -- Please send any material which you'd like to have published in the NET directly to the OUMC office (oumcoffice@megapathdsl.net). The web edition of the NET is, with minor exceptions, an exact copy of the printed version which I receive from the NET editor.
Q -- I cannot get the OLC page [in the Nov 2002 NET] to print. I have some friends who would probably like to order some tamales but I need the order form. Any suggestions? NOTE: What prints is only the header (ie. the OUMC and contents section at the top of the page).
A -- Make sure you click somewhere within the tamale form before you click on File > Print. If the last place you clicked was within the "contents" frame, that's all you'll get.
This advice holds true, regardless of which page of the NET you wish to print. Your browser just guesses that you're interested in printing the frame which includes the area you last clicked on. There may be some slight variations depending on which browser you have, e.g. some browsers may ask you which frame you'd like to print.
Q -- After I got your note that the October 2002 issue was available, I looked for it and got the August-September issue. Are you sure it's there?
A -- This is a complaint I still hear now and then from readers. I've even experienced the same situation myself. In each case, the latest issue really was there. I blamed the problem on our browsers caching the obsolete information on our computers, so that we'd still see it even after the web site was updated. About the only solution I can offer is this: