which browser am I using?

[sunspore]

I have Juno as my ISP. Does this mean that this is my browser, or does it use IE as the browser? Also, when I receive emails from people who try to put animated symbols in the emails, like smiley faces and stuff, it just looks like text symbols on my end. Any idea why, and how I can change that? Thanks.

Sunspore

 

[jrbarnett]

Sunspore,

A browser is a piece of software for viewing websites. In your case IE is your browser, but others are around. Some you may have heard of are Mozilla, Netscape and Opera.
ISP's (Internet Service Providers - companies that provide access to the internet) can customise internet explorer quite easily, adding their own name and logo via a piece of software available from MS.
This is why you often get "Internet explorer provided by XYZ" in the title bar when installed from ISP CD-ROM's.

As for emails, they are normally in one of 3 types: plain text is exactly that. No flashy images, graphics, fancy sounds. For many years this was the only method and even now, many clients don't support anything more. There is a school of thought by many that says if it can't be said in plain text it shouldn't be said at all, as using the other methods significantly increases the size of transmission and download over plain text.
HTML email basically uses HTML (HyperText Markup Language, the 'tags' used to turn plain text into word documents) to spice up emails. They can therefore have sounds, images, multiple fonts and different colours etc, and are often rendered by a web browser application.
The other one is Rich Text, which is a similar idea, but doesn't (to my knowledge) support graphics. It is less flexible than HTML.

Any emails with embedded images are likely to be in HTML, and you will need a client that supports it. With Internet Explorer, Microsoft supplies a well known email client that does called Outlook express (as distinct from the full blown Outlook supplied with Office) which will do this for you.

I hope I haven't blinded you with science here...

John

 

[sunspore]

Thanks John.

Your response was informative, but you've left me with two more questions. So basically, you're saying that even though I never double click on IE to get on the internet (I double click on my Juno icon), IE is still the software being used to browse the internet? Secondly, you say that Outlook express comes with IE. Well if IE is my browser, as you say, why can't I see the HTML images? Do I have to install Outlook Express seperately? Thanks again.

Sunspore

 

[jrbarnett]

Sunspore

To answer your question, even if you click on Juno icon, IE (Internet Explorer) gets loaded and is used to browse the internet (well, the web).

I would also like to correct a whopping great error in my previous posting that I have just noticed: HTML is used to turn text into Web pages, not word documents. (Picture Homer Simpson going D'Oh and bashing his head against a wall).

Outlook Express should be installed as part of the system, but if you use a different email package then you may not be aware of its existence on your system.
It is quite possible to have it installed and not used at all.
As an example, Pegasus Mail, Eudora and Incredimail are all email clients for PC's that aren't written by Microsoft.
If you use a web based email system such as Hotmail or Yahoo Mail they are also irrelevant.
Whether it was installed on your PC when you configured Juno was dependent on their setup system, but the easiest way is to go to start -> find or start -> search depending on your Windows version, choose Files or Folders and enter msimn.exe in the filename box. That is the executable for Outlook Express.
The reason for receiving just plain text where others sent graphics may be that their system is configured to replace any graphics with text equivalents for the reasons mentioned in my previous post, but they would need to check on their system.

Another quick point: The terms "web" and "Internet" are commonly used interchangeably. They are not the same at all.
The Internet is the global communications network that links systems from various organisations together. Each organisation has one or more services, of which the web is one. Email is another, as are instant messaging, peer to peer file sharing etc.

John