How To Use Internet News
for CIS 210 students
What is a newsgroup 
This page will show you how to use Netscape to access newsgroups.
The idea here is to help you become familiar with the concept of
how newsgroups work and what you can benefit from them.
Netscape isn't the only way to access newsgroups, but it is probably
the easiest.
Internet news consists of many "newsgroups". A newsgroup is basically
a forum used to discuss a particular subject with lots of other people
who are interested in the same subject. There are newsgroups for just
about every subject you can think of.
CIS 210 has its own newsgroup. The name of this newsgroup is
"uo.classes.cis.200". This news group is to help keep you informed
about what's going on in this class. Things like homework assingments,
lab assingments, and other general announcements will be posted regularly
by the CIS 210 staff. If you have any questions relating to this class
throughout the term, you are encouraged to post them to this newsgroup.
The professors and GTFs will regularly check for postings to this newsgroup
and will try to respond quickly. Chances are that other students will have
the question you have. This way everyone can benefit from your posting.
Subscribing to a newgroup
After you have started up Netscape, click on the button
"Newsgroups" that's near the top of the Netscape browser.
This will give you a screen that shows you what newsgroups you are
"subscribed" to. To be subscribed to a newsgroup only means that you
want that newsgroup to be easily accessible to you because you use it
a lot. When you start news for your first time, you will automatically
be subscribed to a few newsgroups. On this screen, you will see
the text "Subscribe to this newsgroup:" followed by a box that you can
type into. To subscribe to the CIS 210 newsgroup, you can simply type
in the name, uo.classes.cis.200, into this field, then hit the "enter"
key. Your page will be redrawn with the 210 newsgroup now in your
list of subscribed news groups.
Note that at the bottom of your screen there is a button that says
"View all newsgroups". If you click on this, you could search through
all the available newsgroups and have the option to subscribe to any of them.
Reading and Posting news to a newsgroup
Now that you have uo.classes.cis.200 in your list of subscribed news
groups, all you have to do is click on it. You will get a new page
which lists all of the articles that have been posted to this group.
This list will be threaded by topics. This means that by just looking at
the structure of the list, you will know which articles are related.
To read an article, all you have to do is click on its entry in the list.
To post an article to this newsgroup, click on the button that says
"Post New Article". A new window will appear with a place for you to
type into. After you finish typing in here what you want to say, click on the
send button. Your article will now get posted to the newsgroup.
If you want to post
a reply to a message you are currently reading, there will be a button on
your screen that says "Post Reply". By clicking on this, a new window
will appear with an area for you to type into. Just type in what you want
to say and click on send. Your reply will now be posted to the newsgroup
and placed in the proper thread.
IMPORTANT!
When you post either a new article or a reply to an article, you
need to make sure that your name and email address are provided.
This information also needs to be provided if you want to send
email through Netscape.
This may be configured for you allready, however, if you are using
Netscape from the mac lab, you'll have to do this yourself.
To do this, go to the "Options" menu at the top of the Netscape
window and select "Preferences". A new window will appear. In this
new window, select "Mail and News". You need to fill in the field
where it asks for "Your Name:" and "Your Email:". After you enter
your name and email address in these fields, click on OK. Now you're
ready to post articles. When you're
done using Netscape, you may want to go back and clear these fields.
If you have any questions or problems using Netscape
for news or any other type of news reader, mail
to Mark Galli: mgalli@cs.uoregon.edu