Subject: BL-Newsletter: LRMs Online - Use Your Web Browser to View Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 16:58:47 -0500 =========================================================== BenefitsLink Newsletter Free, useful information about U.S. tax and labor laws and new Internet resources, for employee benefit plan sponsors, service-providers and participants. =========================================================== LRMs ONLINE IN EASIER-TO-USE FORMAT You now can use your Web browser to view and save the full text of the "Listing of Required Modifications" documents provided last week to BenefitsLink by the IRS National Office. The LRMs are the latest version of provisions that have long been used by the IRS National Office when it processes requests for opinion letters on regional prototype plans and M&P (master or prototype) plans sponsored by financial institutions and other firms. The latest versions contain language that conforms to statutory changes made by 1996 and 1997 legislation. To save a document, let your Web browser download the entire document first. Then use the "Save as" command that probably appears under your browser's "File" menu item. You should use "HTML" format if you wish to save the document's special formatting (bold, underlines, etc.). The Web addresses for the LRMs are: DC M&P - http://www.benefitslink.com/IRS/dclrm.html DB M&P - http://www.benefitslink.com/IRS/dblrm.html CODA M&P - http://www.benefitslink.com/IRS/codalrm.html DC Regional Prototype - http://www.benefitslink.com/IRS/rpdclrm.html DB Regional Prototype - http://www.benefitslink.com/IRS/rpdblrm.html CODA Regional Prototype - none provided ____________________________________________________________________ FUN WITH INTERNET FILE TRANSFERS, or, ANOTHER AFTERNOON SHOT TO HELL Last week BenefitsLink placed the WordPerfect versions of the LRMs online, for downloading by readers. Many people had trouble getting them. Here's what we learned, in case you might find this information useful for your own Internet adventures: 1. A "click here to download" kind of link on the Web does not work with many Web browsers unless you have configured your browser so that it knows your email address. This is because a kind of handshaking goes on behind the scenes between your browser and the file server ... during that handshaking, your browser is supposed to be sending your name to the file server as "anonymous" and sending your email address to the file server as a sort of password. If your browser doesn't know your email address, the file transfer can't get started and the browser will return an error message of some kind. 2. When you're trying to get a file that has been stored in an "ftp" directory (it has ftp:// in its address), your best bet is to use special ftp software rather than using a Web browser. (Ftp stands for "file transfer protocol".) Enter "anonymous" as your user id, and your email address as your password. 3. The use of HTML format to display documents onscreen really does have advantages over Word or WordPerfect format ... the HTML versions (see addresses shown above) will display and print properly using any Web browser, even if you resize your screen or the size of the font. 4. If the WordPerfect format is important to you, just send an email to Dave Baker at erisa@benefitslink.com and I can attach one or more of the files (please specify) to an email message to you. Most email programs are able to encode and decode the documents behind the scenes so that you will end up with one or more WordPerfect documents in your email directory. (Famous last words!) =========================================================== To unsubscribe: send email to majordomo@majordomo.net and put "unsubscribe BL-newsletter" in the body of the message. This newsletter is published without charge by BenefitsLink, http://www.benefitslink.com/