Posted: July 18, 1997
Problem: When double-clicking on .html files on my local hard drive Netscape Communicator 4.x loads and AutoDials into my Internet Provider. How do I prevent it from dialing?
Solution: This gets a little tricky, but the basic idea is to configure Netscape to use an alternate profile which is setup for offline browsing. You can select a profile from Netscape's command-line with the option '-P"profile"'. Maybe I should lay out the steps sequentially:
- Create a second profile, let's call it "offline".
- Start "Programs | Netscape Communicator | Utilities | User Profile Manager" or Run "netscape.exe -profile_manager".
- Click "New". Just skip through all the steps (we'll change them later) except set your "Email Address" to "offline". (That should set your profile name and default directory to the same.)
- Click "Finish" when done. Then "Exit" the Profile Manager.
- Copy all your preferences from your original configuration. This way you don't have to set everything up again.
- Start "Programs | Windows Explorer" or Run "explorer.exe".
- Navigate through to your Netscape Users folder, probably something like "C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users". Go into your original configuration folder (not "offline", for me it's "blok").
- Select all the files in that folder, but not the subdirectories and copy them into the "offline" folder. Yes, you want to replace the files.
- Set the "offline" profile to ...run offline! (and more)
- Run Netscape. Choose the "offline" profile.
- Click menu "Edit | Preferences..." and make the following changes: (wherever you see "blok" replace with your original profile name)
- "Navigator | Navigator starts with" = "Blank page"
- "Mail & Groups | Mail Server | More Options | Local mail directory" = "C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\blok\mail" (optional)
- "Mail & Groups | Groups Server | Discussion group (news) folder" = "C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\blok\news" (optional)
- "Offline | Startup Communicator in" = "Offline work mode"
- "Advanced | Cache | Disk Cache Folder" = "C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\blok\cache" (optional)
- If you changed all those directories you can delete the respective directories in your "offline" folder.
- Create a new "Action" for HTML files.
- Exit Netscape. Run Windows Explorer.
- Click menu "View | Options...". Select the "File Types" tab.
- Select "Registered file type" = "Netscape Hypertext Document" and click "Edit..."
- Copy the Action "open" to a new Action, called "Open Offline"
- Select "Actions" = "open" then click "Edit..."
- Copy the information from every edit box down. Then click "Cancel"
- Click the "New..." button to create a new action
- Under "Action:" type "Open Offline"
- Fill in the remaining boxes with the data from "open"
- Edit "Application used to perform action" so that after netscape.exe it reads ' -P"offline" "%1"' (without the single quotes '). This will set it up to run the specified file ("%1") with the offline profile (-P"offline"). When done click "OK"
- Select "Actions" = "Open Offline" then click "Set Default" to make this the default action for this file type.
- Click "OK" to save your changes. And again.
- Test it twice!
- If you don't have any .html files go online and find one. Then select "File | Save As..." and just click "OK" at the Save dialog. Now go offline.
- From Windows Explorer double-click on a file with an .html extension and watch it load into Netscape without dialing!
- Exit Netscape and try it again. Netscape tries to reset your actions when it closes, but if you did everything right it shouldn't mess with the "Open Offline" action.
Whew! Don't worry, it looks a lot harder than it actually is. I just included all the little details so there wouldn't be any possibility of confusion (I hope).
You will probably now find that you get that annoying "Profile Manager" popping up every time you run Netscape from the Start menu. To correct this just change the shortcuts so that they have a '-P"blok"' option (substitute your profile name for blok). That way, Netscape will already know which profile to use and won't need to ask you. (The '-P"offline"' option is also great if you use a text editor as your HTML editor.)
If anybody has any bright suggestions on how to simplify or clarify this procedure, let me know.
Problem: I use DDE (dynamic data exchange) to communicate with Netscape Communicator, but with my last upgrade it no longer works. How can I fix it?
Solution: Starting with Netscape Communicator 4.02 the DDE application name has been changed from Netscape to NSShell. Try changing that.
Problem: Whenever I check my try to check my mail it starts downloading the messages ok, then pops up with the following:
It is preventing me from collecting my mail! What is causing this and how do I fix it?
Solution: As far as I could find out there are two possible problems here:
- Your inbox file might be corrupt. Try to fix this first. From Netscape Messenger, move all your mail out of the Inbox to some other folder, then close Messenger. Then locate the inbox file in your Netscape Mail folder (something like C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\username\Mail\inbox) and delete it. Don't delete the inbox.snm file. Now restart Netscape Messenger. It should just create a new inbox file and if it was corrupt, everything should work fine now. If that didn't work...
- You might have a corrupt piece of mail sitting on the server. Everytime it tries to download it, it crashes and so it can't delete the mail either. What you need to do then is use some other mail program to delete the offending mail. This happened to me once so I wrote a little WinBatch script to do this for me (using WinBatch's Internet Extender):
; DelMail.wbt - WinBatch script to delete first message on POP3 server AddExtender("WWWSK32I.DLL") ; load Internet Extender user=AskLine("DelMail","Username:","") pswd=AskPassword("DelMail","Password:") server=AskLine("DelMail","Mail Server:","") handle=p3Open(server, user, pswd) If handle == @FALSE ; error opening account Message("p3Open", "Open Failed") Else If p3Count(handle) > 0 ; if messages waiting on server, delete first If p3Delete(handle,1) Then Message("DelMail","First message deleted") Else Message("DelMail","Error deleting message") EndIf EndIf p3Close(handle)
Problem: When I click on a file I want to save to disk Netscape pops up an "Unknown File Type" dialog. How can I tell Netscape to always save these files without having to click "Save File..." every time?
Solution: Choose "Pick App..." in the "Unknown File Type" dialog. Then enter browser-handle-internal-savetodisk as the external viewer. Netscape will then default to saving files of that type.
