Network Browsing Basics

Network Neighborhood is the central point for browsing in Windows 95. It offers the following benefits:

• Users can browse the network as easily as browsing the local hard disk.
• Users can create shortcuts to network resources on the desktop.
• Users can easily connect to network resources by clicking the Map Network Drive button that appears on most toolbars.
• Users can open files and complete other actions by using new common dialog boxes in applications. This new standard provides a consistent way to open or save files on both network and local drives.
• The network administrator can customize Network Neighborhood by using system policies, as described in Chapter 15, "User Profiles and System Policies." A custom Network Neighborhood can include shortcuts to commonly used resources, including Dial-Up Networking resources.

In any situation in which you can type a path name for connecting to a server — such as in the Map Network Drive dialog box or at the command prompt — you can specify the server name with two backslashes (\\) if your network uses UNC path names. For example, to connect to the server CORP, volume DOCS, directory WORD, and subdirectory Q1, type the UNC name \\corp\docs\word\q1.

On NetWare networks, you can use the UNC name or standard NetWare syntax. For the previous example, you would type corp/docs:word\q1. (Notice that, in the NetWare environment, "/" and "\" are interchangeable.) However, Windows 95 does not support the NetWare 4.0 naming convention of \\\nwserver_sys\directory_path\filename.ext where \\\nwserver_sys is the name of the NetWare Directory Services (NDS) server volume object.