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| CREATE AN E-MAIL ACCOUNT |
With Links, Favorites, Internet History, the Information Bar and various Internet related explanations covered it is now
time, over the next three sections, to use Internet Explorer. The first thing I will show you is how to create a FREE E-Mail
Address. The reason being that most things on the Internet these days require an E-Mail Address - Booking a Flight. Shopping.
Joining a Forum/Newsgroup. Using a Messenger to "Chit-Chat". Sending your C.V to a company. And so on.
Before you can setup a FREE E-Mail Address you must know of a company, or website, that offers a FREE E-Mail Address.
Microsoft is one of many companies, with their own website, offering a FREE E-Mail Account. Yahoo is another. Although a
company usually has a website, a website owner does not have to have a company. For example. A person with a Forum
(Questions & Answers) website will more than likely offer you a FREE E-Mail Address only when you join their forum. This
means they are lending you one of their e-mail addresses (with your name on it) as long as you are a member of their forum.
Once you stop being a member your e-mail address is deleted. Whereas a company like Microsoft tend to offer a FREE E-Mail
Account in the hope you will like their e-mail service, and/or their website, and possibly go for one of their Pay-For
services (i.e Advanced E-Mail Service) later. These days you normally get free web (internet storage) space with your free
e-mail account, which can be used for storing e-mails and photos for example. A feature of webspace, if it is available/offered,
is its ability to allow your stored photos to be viewed by the people in your contacts list. And a feature of a free e-mail
account in general is its ability to allow an e-mail address to be used with its Messenger ("Chit-Chat") service, if it is
offered/available. So always look for the words FREE E-Mail Account. Free E-Mail Accounts usually expire if you do not use
them once every 30 days. Meaning. It will be de-activated or deleted thereafter along with your free e-mail address.
In this example I will show you how to set up a FREE E-Mail Address using Microsoft's HOTMAIL e-mail account service. So the
first thing you need to do is connect to your ISP's computer (dial the Internet) in order to make the Main Internet Connection
(see Internet Connections for more information). This is normally
done for you, when you switch on the computer, if you are a Broadband user. However. If you are a Dial-Up (P.A.Y.G) user
you will have to manually dial-up (connect to) your ISP's computer in order to make the Main Internet Connection. I say
normally, for Broadband users, because it depends on the way your Broadband was setup (i.e to Automatically Connect or to
Manually Dial-Up). More information can be found in the Internet section.
Once you have the Main Internet Connection, which is the connection running from your computer to your ISP's computer
(Server) only, the next thing to do is open an Internet Explorer window (Fig 1.3). This is done by clicking on internet
explorer's Quick Launch Toolbar icon (Fig 1.1) or by clicking on its Start Menu icon (Fig 1.2).
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When you open an Internet Explorer window, by default (normal behaviour) it makes an Extended Internet Connection to your
Home Page (first to be displayed webpage). In this example www.google.co.uk is my Home Page, hence why it was displayed
when I clicked on the Internet Explorer icon. Home Page is explained towards the bottom of the
Web Terminology section.
With an internet explorer window open, displaying your Home Page, you are now "ON THE INTERNET". This means from here
onwards you can travel from one website to another simply by typing a website's Address into internet explorer's Address
Bar edit box. In this example you need to go from your home page
(i.e Google website - www.google.co.uk) to the HotMail website (www.hotmail.com) in order to create a FREE E-Mail Address.
You do this by typing www.hotmail.com into internet explorer's Address Bar edit box and then either click on the blue
Right-Arrow (GO) button or press the ENTER keyboard key to take you to the HotMail website.
After clicking on the Right-Arrow (GO) button Internet Explorer disconnects its Extended Internet Connection from the current
website (or webpage), i.e your home page - www.google.co.uk, and then makes a new Extended Internet Connection to the
website (or webpage) you have typed into the Address Bar edit box (i.e www.hotmail.com).
As long as the Internet Explorer window is open it will always disconnect the Extended Internet Connection from the website
(or webpage) you are leaving before making a new Extended Internet Connection to the website (or webpage) you are going to.
So in this example internet explorer will disconnect its Extended Internet Connection from www.google.co.uk before it makes
a new Extended Internet Connection to www.hotmail.com. This is because one internet explorer window can only be connected,
via an Extended Internet Connection, to one website (or webpage) at a time. And more importantly it can only display the
contents (i.e text and graphics) of one website (or webpage) at a time.
If a website is using FRAMES (Split Windows) or internet explorer is using TABs (Seperate Windows within the main window)
then each window has its own Extended Internet Connection. If an Extended Internet Connection cannot be made, to the
website (or webpage) you are going to, internet explorer will complain with Error 404 - Page Could Not Be Displayed.
Closing an internet explorer window will disconnect the Extended Internet Connection belonging to the website (or webpage)
you were viewing in that window.
| SIGN UP / REGISTER |
When you get to the Hotmail website (Fig 1.5 above) look to the left of it and you should see a SIGN UP button. Click on it to get to the next webpage, which offers you a choice of E-Mail Accounts (Fig 1.6 below).
If you scroll down the E-Mail Options window (above) you will see what is on offer for both the FREE Windows Live Hotmail
e-mail account and the Pay-For (£14.99 a Year) Windows Live Hotmail Plus e-mail account. However. As I am showing you how
to get a free e-mail address with no Pay-For e-mail account simply click on the Windows Live Hotmail (left-side) SIGN UP
button to continue.
The free e-mail account, that comes with the free e-mail address, is limited in features/services compared to the Pay-For
e-mail account. This is to be expected as Microsoft, or any other company you choose to get your free e-mail address from,
cannot be giving everything for free!! Remember. They have to pay the running costs of the features/services they give
you for free.
After clicking on the Windows Live Hotmail (left-side) SIGN UP button (Fig 1.6 above) you are taken to the Registation
webpage (Fig 1.7 above) where you are required to enter your Registration Details and agree to the Hotmail Terms & Conditions.
The registration webpage is one long webpage that will need scrolling as you
enter your registration details. In this example I will breakdown each section of the webpage/registration details for you.
The first section requires that you type a Windows Live ID (User Name) into the WINDOWS LIVE ID Edit Box. In this example
I have used yoingco2008 as the Windows Live ID (User Name) I would like to use. The Windows Live ID can be used with this
Hotmail E-Mail Account (once it has been set up), Windows Live Messenger ("Chit-Chat" program) and so on. Following the
Windows Live ID is the @ sign (@ is pronounced AT) and then the Domain Name, either hotmail.co.uk or live.co.uk. Normally
you would stick to what domain name is chosen for you, but if you want to change it you can do so by clicking on the DOMAIN
NAME drop-down menu and then select the domain name you would like to use.
When you have typed in your preferred Windows Live ID, and changed the domain name if need be, check that your chosen Windows Live ID is available by clicking on the CHECK AVAILABILITY button (Fig 1.7 above). This needs to be done because even how unique you think your chosen Windows Live ID is someone might be using it. For example. If your chosen Windows Live ID is jsmith71, named after you (John Smith) and your birth year (1971), you may find it is being used by other John Smith's born in 1971 (i.e jsmith71@hotmail.co.uk and jsmith71@live.co.uk).
If someone else is using your chosen Windows Live ID you will see the following error message and be given alternative, available, Windows Live IDs to choose from. From here you can click on an alternative Windows Live ID to use, look at some more Windows Live IDs by clicking on the MORE link or click on the ADVANCED SEARCH link to search for much better Windows Live IDs.
If you use common words and/or numbers to make up your Windows Live ID it may take you several attempts before you get a
Windows Live ID that is available. For example. If you want a user name such as johnsmith261073, to mean you are called
John Smith and born on 26th October 1973, it might unavailable because many people called John Smith were also born on
26th October 1973. The same applies to Nicknames, Animal Names and so on. So always think Unique - For example. You could
have jothoct73 (first two letters from JOhn, last two letters from smiTH and OCTober 73 - Pronounced Joff Oct 73 for easy
remembrance).
With the user name yoingco2008 available, my E-Mail Address is yoingco2008@hotmail.co.uk. So as you can see, an e-mail
address in general is made up of a Windows Live ID (User Name), the @ (AT) sign and a Domain (Company) Name. It is very
important you remember this because with some companies they ask for the User Name only (i.e yoingco2008) whereas other
companies ask for the E-Mail Address (i.e yoingco2008@hotmail.co.uk). The @ sign just acts as a seperator. Another thing to
remember is that your Windows Live ID (User Name) is only available/unique to you with the current domain name (i.e
hotmail.co.uk) - In other words, someone could set up an e-mail address as yoingco2008@yahoo.co.uk or as
yoingco2008@live.co.uk.
| CREATING A PASSWORD |
The next required piece of information is the Password. It is required in order to stop unwanted people from Viewing/Changing your e-mail account details, Viewing your e-mails, Signing-In as you with Windows Live Messenger and so on. To make it more difficult for someone or something to guess your password use a password that contains between 7 and 16 Characters, with those characters containing a mixture of words, symbols and numbers. For example. Do not use common words to make up your password, like - Password, 190371 (D.O.B: 19th March 1971), Mother, God and so on. Use something like these instead - F10uR_22 (Flour_22), Son_Shine_1, ThreePlusFour and so on.
Begin by typing your desired password into the PASSWORD Edit Box (Fig 1.11 above). As you type, from your sixth character
onwards, the Password Strength indicator will highlight the strength of your password accordingly (WEAK, MEDIUM or STRONG).
I typed a six letter word above, which gave me a WEAK strength. So I then added an _ (underscore) sign which gave me a
MEDIUM strength (Fig 1.12 below) before finally adding four numbers which gave me a STRONG strength (Fig 1.13 below).
As you type your password each character you type will be shown as a DOT character, so that anyone looking at the screen
cannot see your password.
When you have typed in your desired password you must re-type it into the RE-TYPE PASSWORD Edit Box. This is so that the password and re-typed password can be compared, in order to establish if you have made a typing error. For example. You may have thought you typed JIMMY_2007 as your password inside the password edit box when in fact you typed JIMNY_2007, because your finger caught the wrong key. So when you type JIMMY_2007, correctly, into the re-type edit box the registration process is able to identify the mistake and inform you of it. If the registration process just asked for one password and you typed JIMNY_2007 instead of JIMMY_2007 by mistake you would find yourself unable to log-in to your e-mail account next time because you would not know the now correct password JIMNY_2007.
| RESET THE PASSWORD |
The Reset Password section allows you to create a Secret Question and Secret Answer so that if you forget your password, as
desribed in the last paragraph for example, it can be e-mailed to you (using the ALTERNATE E-MAIL ADDRESS, below) or it can
be reset by answering the secret question.
Begin by typing an alternative e-mail address into the ALTERNATIVE E-MAIL Edit Box, if you have an alternative e-mail
address you can use (i.e another e-mail address of yours or your friend's e-mail address). Do not worry if you do not have
an alternative e-mail address though as it is not required - You can answer the secret question instead. In this example I
used contactjohn@yoingco.com as my alternative e-mail address. This means if I forget the password for this newly created
e-mail account I can ask Hotmail to send it to me at contactjohn@yoingco.com.
After the ALTERNATIVE E-MAIL Edit Box is the required Secret Question and Secret Answer. Starting with the Secret Question.
Click on the QUESTION drop-down menu, which will display six questions, and then select one of them. The question you select
will be asked, by Microsoft/Hotmail, should you forget your password. In this example I chose Favorite Historical Person.
Once you have chosen a secret question give it a Secret Answer by typing your secret answer into the SECRET ANSWER Edit Box. In this example I typed: robin hood.
Although the PASSWORD was disguised by DOT symbols (Fig 1.14 above) it might surprise you that the SECRET ANSWER was not. Furthermore. Once someone has seen your E-Mail Address, Secret Question and Secret Answer (i.e because they were being nosey, looking over your shoulder) they can use them to reset your password. In other words. They could enter your e-mail address and then pretend they have forgotten your password, where they would then be asked for your Secret Answer to your Secret Question in order to reset your Password. So be careful when filling out these registration details - If you use an Internet Cafe watch who is looking at your screen.
| ACCOUNT INFORMATION |
The Account Information details are quite straight forward. The names you type into the FIRST NAME and LAST NAME edit boxes are the names other people will see when they receive an e-mail from you (i.e FROM: John White). These names do not have to be your real names though. They could be nicknames for example. After typing in the names select your GENDER, by clicking on its radio button.
With the BIRTH YEAR edit box you need to type a four digit YEAR (i.e 1971) inside it. The COUNTRY/REGION drop-down menu can be left as it is because Hotmail automatically detects which country/region you are in. If you feel the wrong country/region has been chosen for you use the drop-down menu to change the country/region. The CONSTITUENT COUNTRY, which is also required, has a selection of citizenship countries to choose from. For example. The UK is split into four countries/citizenships (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). In this example I chose England.
The POSTAL CODE Edit Box requires your post code (zip code). If you are in the UK you should, preferably, enter your post code with a space (i.e SW2 1RX and not SW21RX).
| HUMAN VERIFICATION |
After typing in your Account Information you are then asked to type the Picture Characters into the CHARACTERS Edit Box.
This is to ensure that a Human is creating this e-mail account and not an Automated Program. Hence why the characters are
picture characters (graphics). An automated program cannot read on-screen characters (graphics) as letters/numbers at this
time, designed in this way.
If you make a typing mistake, because you cannot read the picture characters properly for example, you will be given error
message that requires you to type the picture characters again. And in some cases the webpage itself might clear your
entire information, after your mistake, usually due to a bad extended internet connection (i.e Hotmail could not re-connect
to its Server to retreive your information it has stored so far and therefore cannot refresh the webpage with your information).
Also. Hotmail will not use AutoComplete to remember your information, as it is a secure website. This means it only submits information
to its server when you click on certain buttons (i.e the I ACCEPT button, below). So to cut down on mistakes look carefully
at the picture characters and type them in CAPITALS.
If you are not happy with the picture characters you have been given you can use the blue REFRESH button, to the right of
the picture characters, which will refresh the webpage with a new set of picture characters. Alternatively. You can click
on the AUDIO (Speaker) button, which will clear the Characters window and allow you to type spoken numbers into the
CHARACTERS edit box.
When you have filled in this e-mail account registration form check it over, for mistakes and so on, and then click on the I ACCEPT button to accept the Contract (Agreements/Terms Of Service) between you and Microsoft.
| ACCOUNT CREATED |
After agreeing to Microsoft's Contract, by clicking on the I AGREE button above, you then have the choice of two e-mail account interfaces (Control Panels/Webpage Layouts). The Classic version of the interface is the "No-Frills" standard features interface (ideal for P.A.Y.G Internet users), whereas the Full version is the new Windows Live Hotmail version with new features (ideal for Broadand Internet users). In this example I clicked on the Full version because I will be using my e-mail account with broadband as well (i.e in an Internet Cafe).
When you have clicked on the Interface version you want to use you are then Signed-In to your new e-mail account automatically and therefore taken straight to the relevant interface. From there you can view your e-mails, create a new e-mail and so on.
If you look around the window you will notice Folders to your left (INBOX, JUNK, DRAFTS, Etc), E-Mail to the center (in this
case one e-mail from the Hotmail Staff, welcoming you to Windows Live Hotmail), Options above (NEW, DELETE, JUNK, Etc) and
so on.
E-Mail, in general, will be explained in the next section. For now though you should Sign Out by clicking on the SIGN OUT
button - Sign Out means you want to log-off (disconnect) from your e-mail account, as you are no longer in need of it for
now. You should always Sign Out. If you do not someone could be nosey and start reading your e-mail or more importantly
change certain details of your e-mail account, especially if you are in a Internet Cafe.
After clicking on the SIGN OUT button, towards the top-center of the window, the Extended Internet Connection is disconnected
from www.hotmail.com and a new Extended Internet Connection is automatically made to www.msn.com. In other words. Microsoft
could send you back (connect you) to your previous website (i.e www.google.com) but it does not. It connects you to its
MSN (Microsoft Network) website instead. This is normal and known as re-direction. If you close the Internet Explorer
window however the Extended Internet Connection will be closed - In this example you would just be left with the
Main Internet Connection.
In the next section you will be shown how to use your Free Hotmail E-Mail Account in a general/basic, but yoingco.com!, way.
However. To understand more about E-Mailing, What an e-mail actually is and What you can do with the E-Mail Client (program)
called Windows Mail I advise you to read the Windows Mail category.
Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation. As stated here by the Microsoft Corporation.
All HTM files in the yoingco.com folder and its sub-folders are (c) John White, August 3rd 2005 - 2008. All Rights Reserved. FREE Vista Helpline: Contact John