Important Tips on Viewing This Website and Safe Internet Surfing Accessing Heathen and Woden Mail Accounts (for AOL users) and How to Tame Pop-ups and Ad-ware. I. Web Graphics The default setting for viewing web graphics on AOL is for compressed graphics. If you have not changed this setting, you are not viewing the images on this website in their full quality and clarity. In other words, AOL has compressed them automatically, and the quality of the images is therefore blurry and not as they were intended to be viewed. Even if you are not using AOL, your graphics might be set to compressed. TO SET YOUR WEB GRAPHICS TO "UNCOMPRESSED" IN AOL: A. go to "My AOL" in the AOL browser toolbar. B. Click on "Preferences" C. Click on "WWW" D. Select the tab at the top of the Internet Properties box that says "Web Graphics" E. You will see a check box. If there is a check in this box, under: "Do you want Web Graphics to be compressed? This will display them quicker," REMOVE the check by clicking on it. TO SET WINDOWS MULTIMEDIA: For Windows users, if you want to check to see if you have compressed graphics, go to: START > Settings > Control Panel and double click 'Internet Options'. You will see the Internet Properties dialog box open. Click the 'Advanced' tab, and scroll down to 'Multimedia'. Check to see if 'Smart Image Dithering' is selected. If so, then unselect it. Click OK. FINISHED! Now you will have a more artistic view of the web. II. Installing a Fully Functional Browser Woden's Harrow offers Free Web-Based E-mail with the address: Yourname@Woden.zzn.com, OR Yourname@Heathen.zzn.com You cannot access this great free service with the AOL browser, but with an independent browser like Internet Explorer (or Netscape, or Opera, or Mozilla) you can. If you do not have one, and feel you *must* have Internet Explorer (not my first recommendation, see below for alternatives!), Go toMicrosoft Download Center and get a FREE version of the Internet Explorer Browser. First, select a version of IE that is compatible with your operating system; (Note: IE 5.5 is the highest release that works with Windows 95), and follow the instructions to download and install it on your computer. The download may take some time (because IE is a fairly bloated program :), so I strongly suggest you do this late at night. Once you have Internet Explorer installed, sign onto AOL, and open IE (click on the " e " icon on your desktop) and the IE browser will open. Better yet, install the Opera or Mozilla Browsers. They are safer than IE! You will have access to more functions on certain websites, webpage editors, and mail programs than you ever could with the AOL browser. Once you have IE, you can access the free Woden and Heathen Mail accounts directly from Woden's Harrow, and you will be seeing the web more realistically.If you would like the Netscape Browser, instead, you can get it here. IIa. Opera Browser: It is FAST You may like the Opera Browser. I do! It is faster, not nearly as bloated, and safer than Internet Explorer, it blocks popups, and has many other great features. You can get Opera HERE. III. Tips About Cookies You must accept "cookies" to access many web services such as ZZN mail accounts and bulletin boards. Cookies are placed on your hard drive to allow the monitoring website to keep track of how many times you have visited, your password and login name, what URLs are referring people to them, the country of origin,the kind of browser you are using, and other useful statistical information. Cookies do not reveal personal information about you, like your name or Email address. If you would like to control which cookies your computer accepts, or would like to view the contents of the cookies placed on your hard- drive by websites, install CookieWall. This way you can make sure only cookies you want (like the ones that remember your pass words and login name, or that allow you to access services) are allowed. The excellent program System Mechanic also allows you to manage cookies. To make sure your computer accepts cookies, do the following: A. Go to "My Computer" on your desktop and open it. B. Click on "Control Panel" C. Click on "Internet" D. Select the "Advanced" tab at the top of the Internet Properties box. E. Scroll down until you see "Cookies" F. Select either "Accept all cookies" or "Prompt before accepting cookies". Prompt may become irritating. If you want to protect yourself from Adware cookies, instal Cookie Wall or a SpyWare prevention program like SpyWare Blaster, or IE Spy-Ad. G. Click on OK at the bottom of the box. FINISHED! IV. Taming Pop-ups, Ads, and SpyWare NEW! Woden's Harrow no longer has popups...if you surf on the NEW site, http://home.earthlink.net/~wodensharrow Still, Popups are a pain, and can install dangerous spyware, trojan horses, or malware on your computer, so get Opera, Zone Alarm, a pop-up stopper program (there are many), or a Firewall. Those allow you to block the pernicious things. You need to protect yourself from viruses and trojan horses which can be 'drive-by' installed on your computer when you visit a webpage. There is a lot of Adware and Spyware out there now. Of course, the new Woden's Harrow site has nothing of the sort (I don't know about the pop up ads on the Angelfire site, though)! But for your own safety, you should check out the great SpywareInfo site and their super anti-adware downloads list. Many of the programs are free. I advise you get AdAware, SpyBot Search and Destroy, SpyWare Guard, and Hijack This (which generates a report of adware, spyware, and trojans on your computer and allows you to remove them)! You of course need an anti-virus program. There are many out there, like Norton and McAffee, but a really nice, constantly updated free one is AVG Antivirus. I'm sorry Woden's Harrow had pop-up ads (on Angelfire) for so long; when I first created the website there were none. After I had several hundred pages online they sprang the ads on us. Anyway, here are some tips for taming Pop-ups: Don't kill ( or "X") a Pop-up Ad, it will only come back to haunt you again and again. Minimise the pesky thing instead: if you minimise the first Ad that pops, and just leave it dormant at the bottom of your browser, no others will appear! This works for most server pop-ups. Best just install some pop-up blocking software or use Opera Browser...which blocks them for you! :) Also, you should make sure that you do not allow just any Active X or script to run on your comp without your knowledge. Go to: START > Settings > Control Panel and double click 'Internet Options'. You will see the Internet Properties dialog box open. Click the 'Advanced' tab, and scroll down to 'Security'. Check to see if 'Check for publisher's certificate revocation', 'check for server's certificate revocation', 'Do not save encrypted pages to disk', 'Warn about invalid site certificates' are selected. Click OK. Now go to the Security Settings tab. Click Custom. I suggest you select disable or prompt for all the Active X settings. You can set your cookie preferences there too. For more detailed instructions, go to Markus Jansson's Privacy and Security Pages. V. Fonts You must have a particular font (type face) installed on your computer to be able to see text in that font on the Net. For instructions on how to download, unzip, and install fonts on PCs, Click Here. For some free Viking, Medieval, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Gothic oriented fonts, visit Thundrune's Free Font Downloads. VI. Making Images Load If for some reason an image on one of my pages doesn't appear, it does nevertheless probably exist. To make it show, put your mouse over the place the picture is supposed to be (usually a thinly outlined square with a small icon in the top left corner), and click your right mouse button once. A small menu will appear. Select 'show picture'. This should make the image load. If it does not, please E-mail me and tell me on which page the error occured. VII. Main Page Java Navigation Menu Tree You must have Java enabled to use the new, and very handy if I do say so myself, Java menu tree navigational system on the Main page. You can allow Java, for Windows users,by going to: START > Settings > Control Panel and double click 'Internet Options'. You will see the Internet Properties dialog box open. Click the 'Advanced' tab, and scroll down to 'Java VM'. Check everything. Click OK. Another thing: if the unfolding Java navigation tree on the Main page doesn't work for you, you need to allow Java. There is an alternate Main page (without the Java menu) which is the default page used within frames. GOOD LUCK and HAPPY SURFING! Woden's Harrow Home   page updated July 31, 2003

What are you doing way down here?