So you have found a cool piece of software on the World Wide Web and want to download the program. Now what? All software that you find on the Web must subsequently be downloaded and installed. Files which have been downloaded generally have one of two extensions (the three characters after the period): .exe or .zip (.hqx or .bin on a Macintosh).

Let's say you want to download MIRC, a chat program. Open Netscape and in the location field type: ftp://ftp.cyberia.com/winsock/mirc46s.exe and press enter. A list of directories will appear on your computer. Select a directory to store MIRC. I suggest creating a c:\temp directory to save files in just to be consistent. After you select your download directory, the download process will begin. When it ends, you will have a file called mirc39.exe on your hard drive under the specified directory. The .exe extension signifies that the file is executable. You should find the file using File Manager (Win3.1 users have an icon called File Manager in their Main window), My Computer (Win 95 users have an icon called My Computer on their desktops), or Hard Drive (Mac users have an icon labeled Hard Drive on their desktops). Double click on the file and it will run.

You may be prompted for where you want the file to be extracted to. This can be anywhere on your hard drive as long as you remember where. You may also be prompted for where you want the program installed to. It is recommended that you use the default directory for installation purposes.

The same downloading process is used for a zip file like ftp://ftp. download.com/pub/win3/multimedia/macaroni.zip. The file will be called macaroni.zip. The .zip extension signifies that the file is zipped or compressed. You will need to have a program called WinZip to unzip files with these extensions. WinZip can be obtained from http://www.winzip.com. Once WinZip is running on your machine, start the WinZip program by clicking on its icon, click I Agree, and Open. Find the .zip file you downloaded and click on it. Click on Open, then Extract. Select a directory to extract to (remember this directory), click Extract and close WinZip.

Please note, if you extracted a .zip file or if the .exe file only extracts but does not install, you will have to locate the directory where you extracted to and look for install.exe or setup.exe. Double click on this file to begin the installation process. Once the program is installed, you should be able to double click on the icon and start the program.

Please email comments/suggestions to editor@cyberia.com.

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