When a non-technically inclined web site owner speaks with an experienced programmer, technical jargon frequently enters the conversation. Some programmers do that intentionally, just to show off their expertise. For others, it is just the way they talk because they are immersed in a technical working environment. If you get confused talking with IT people, you may find this jargon guide to be handy.
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The World Wide Web Consortium, also known as the W3C, is the organization tasked with setting and maintaining the international standards for common Web scripting languages, such as HTML, XHTML and cascading style sheets (CSS). Their web site offers several valuable tools that assure that a Web site is compliant with international coding standards. First and foremost is the W3C HTML and XHTML code validator.
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Despite anti-spam laws, the amount of spam e-mail messages I receive has grown enormously. You probably feel the same way. The problem with spam laws is that someone has to enforce them, but the e-mail spam problem is so enormous that only the largest and most aggressive USA spammers get prosecuted. Foreign spammers are not subject to USA laws and are much harder to identify. There are, however, some fundamental things that you can do to lessen the amount of spam that you receive, particularly if you have a business.
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Thunderbird is a very powerful free e-mail client found at Mozilla.org. You will find it to be very easy to use, but not always intuitive. One of the questions I’ve been asked several times is with respect to setting up mailing lists in Thunderbird. This is actually very easy to do.
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Almost everyone who uses Mozilla Thunderbird is impressed with the tons of features that are built into this free e-mail client. However, as with most freebie software, it is not always very intuitively designed and some things are not easy to figure out. One such situation becomes apparent when the need arises to change an e-mail account password. Sometimes you need to change a password because you have changed it on your e-mail server. Sometimes you need to change it because you accidentally entered and saved an invalid password, which may prevent you from accessing your e-mail. Sometimes you just need to remove a password that you have accidentally saved on a PC used by multiple people.
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Mozilla’s Thunderbird is a free and very popular e-mail client. Thunderbird is actually very configurable, but the methods required to change certain aspects of the program are not very intuitive. One issue that I ran into is related to doing backups. The default location for files is buried in a special Application Data folder in the Documents and Settings folder. That makes it difficult to remember that these files should be backed up along with Word documents, Excel spreadsheets or any other files that your business cannot afford to lose.
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