Sams Teach Yourself the Internet in 24 Hours, Sixth Edition

Appendix B. Tools for the Serious User: FTP and Telnet

People surfed the Internet for over a decade before there was a World Wide Web. During those years, the principal tools for using the Net—other than email and newsgroups—were good old Telnet, FTP, and, in the final pre-Web years, Gopher. After you get the hang of them, these tools aren’t really any more difficult to use than the Web or email. But because they take you beyond the familiar confines of the more popular Internet tools, you might lump FTP, Telnet, and Gopher together as “serious” tools—after all, you won’t use them unless you’re serious enough about what you’re doing to go beyond the Web.

There’s so much available on the Web these days that most newcomers to the Net never bother ...