Chapters 3 : Internet and the World Wide Web

Sections 1 : Internet E-mail

Internet E-mail

Electronic mail is the most widely used Internet service. Electronic mail is typically referred to as e-mail. The e-mail features of the Internet allows you to exchange mail with millions of users worldwide. E-mail is very equivalent to postal mail, except you are not required to print it out in order to send it. You have an address and you send your message to others e-mail address. And you can receive messages at your address.

The E-mail message:


E-mail messages are composed of several components. A Message is composed of a Message header, the body of the message, and possibly attachments. But before we examine these, let us take a look at what an e-mail address is and what composes it. The name before the "@" symbol identifies the recipient of the mail (it can be a person, a position, or the name of a department or company). The information that follows the "@" symbol identifies the computer to which the mail is sent. The computer can be broken down even further. The information that follows the "@" symbol is often referred to as the domain name of the computer the to send mail too. Domain Name System (DNS): To make computer identification easier for non-computers, there is a unique name which identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on the right is the most general. The most commonly seen general domains are:


Now Let us take a look at the Message Header. There is the date that the message was sent. The person which the message came from. Some messages will have a reply to section indicating that when the receiptant replies to the message, the message will be sent to that address. There is a TO section, which states who the message was sent to. A CC section indicates who was carbon copied on the message. Some users will indicate what organization they work for. Depending on the mail application and platform and mail protocal used, a trail of where the message came from will be shown but the Received section.

------ Message Header Follows ------
Received: from erols.com by smtp3.erols.com
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 19:00:55 -0500
From: "Graham L. Mehl" <mehl@erols.com>
Reply-To: mehl@acm.org
Organization: Graham Consulting
From: "Graham L. Mehl" <mehl@erols.com>
Subject: Yes, I will write a Internet Tutorial


Next is the Body of the message. THis is the are where one type the message they want to send to the receiptant.


Attachments can be added to any e-mail message. Attachments can be in any format, Text, Images, sounds, and video. To add an attachment. go to the File or "Message > Attach Document" from the pull-down menu. A file locator dialogue box will open, and you should double click on the file you wish to attach to the message. In the message itself, you will then see a line showing which file will be attached when the file is sent.

The recipient must be using an email program that accepts MIME attached files, and his or her mail server must be able to handle MIME files as well. There are other formats for attaching files to email messages such as UUENCODE used for images) and BinHex (for Macintosh files), but MIME is the standard.

Here is a list of some ofthe commonly used mail applications used to access a user's e-mail. Mail, Pine , Elm, Pegaous Mail, SMPT, Netscape, Eudora Light, and other site designed applications are just a few of the ways to access a users e-mail.

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