Understanding Electronic Mail
Electronic mail (informally called email) is a way to send messages from one computer to another. Email messages look a lot like word processing documents and are delivered electronically using your computer's modem and a normal phone line.
To send an email message, you need to know the recipient's email address. Email addresses are composed of three parts: The user's login name, the @ sign, and the user's domain (usually the name of their ISP). So if your login name is bigdaddy, and your ISP is netscape.net, your full email address is bigdaddy@netscape.net.
There are actually two types of email services available on the Internet. Most Internet service providers supply you with what is called server-based email, which requires the use of a special email program, such as Netscape Messenger, the email component of Netscape Communicator. The other type of email service is Web-based email, which allows you to use any Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator, to access your email account; one such service is Netscape WebMail, offered at Netscape Netcenter.
