NCSA Mosaic for Macintosh Features

Updated : Thursday, January 27 1994

The current release is 1.0.3.

1.0.3 Release Features:

• There were several bugs that caused serious CRASHES. These have been fixed.
• Reloading during an image load has been fixed.
• Preferences bug has been fixed.
• Styles bug has been fixed.
• FTP would fail if there was a character with ASCII > 128 in response string.
• When load of image failed for some reasons (memory, bad gif), the file would not be deleted. This is now done, resulting in a cleaner Temp folder.
• XBMs didn't read the last line causing some XBMS to not read correctly.

• Improved Speed
• Non-anonymous ftp works now. The syntax is file://user:password@host/
• Anonymous FTP is now more robust.

1.0.2 Release Features:

• Printing
• Formatting of text has changed. BLOCKQUOTE is now handled properly. The default fonts are Times and Monaco.
• Bug that caused 1.0.1 to be "Unable to access document" after 8 downloads on machines running pre-2.04 MacTCP is fixed.
• Non-color Quickdraw machines will not crash upon loading images.
• After using "Mail to Developers", network access will still be enabled.
• Anchors that contain named references will be marked as visited.
• Telnet launch file is stored in the same folder as temporary files.
• FTP directories parsing is improved, but not perfect yet.
• Multiple clicks on home page will not result in a crash.

• Ability to specify where temporary files are stored. The chosen folder can be any folder specified by user. Apple's "Temporary Folder" which is invisible to users can be set from "Options" menu.
• Clicking on the spinning icon will interrupt loading.
• Several changes of default helper applications:
• Sound Machine is now a default ulaw sound player.
• A new document type (application/macbinary), and extension (.bin) are recognized by default. This is the MacBinary type, commonly used to transfer Macintosh files. The default decoder application for MacBinary is MacCompress. For these changes to take place automatically, you will need to delete your original preferences file.
• Default WAIS gateway used to process URL's of type "WAIS:" is now user configurable through "Preferences" dialog box.

1.0.1 Release Features:

• Mosaic would not start up unless a printer was chosen.
• &quot HTML entity is now recognized.
• Redirected URLs (in HTTP 1.0 protocol) work for all protocols.
• Memory problems have been fixed. Mosaic will run well in 2 megabytes.
• Nested numbered lists are now always numbered correctly.
• Text files are single-spaced.
• All the files (even the last one) are listed in the FTP directories.

• Speed. Mosaic is significantly faster now, especially if you have fast network.
• Domain names are cached if you are using MacTCP 2.0+, resulting in faster downloads
• "Open URL..." menu item is active even if there are no documents open.
• HTTP 0.9 loading option. Because of incompatibilities between protocols this option has been added. If you are having problems with HTTP 0.9 server, switch this option on before loading documents from it. An example of this is http://slacvm.slac.stanford.edu:5080/FIND/spires.
• Images stored in the cache are loaded automatically, even if "Auto-load images" option is off.
• Inline images will be loaded to disk if "Load to disk" option is on.
• The cache can be flushed from the menu.
• Images are dithered on machines without color Quickdraw.

1.0 Release Features:

• Better interrupt support.
• All known interrupt hang-ups have been fixed.
• Telnet icons for Gopher are in.
• CSO gopher searches work, and do not spin forever.
• Annotations can be edited/deleted again.
• Temporary files are back in System Folder.

• tn3270 support
• Loading of binhex files in gopher
• Support for HR and ALT HTML tags
• Access authorization: test case http://www1.cern.ch/AAtest/Welcome.html Full HTTP1.0 support, including redirection: test case http://www.bsdi.com/test-cases/HTTP/
• Gopher tries to guess image types by file extension now.

Beta 6 Release Features:

• If loading fails, the user will not be notified in most cases.
• All the temp files are ending up in the Mosaic folder.
• Occasionally, an image will not be loaded automatically. Just reload it manually.

• HTTP 1.0 support.
• Icons in ftp and gopher directories.
• Better file typing for gopher, now images and sounds are used to denote file types.
• Phonebook support
• FTP protocol works without crashing, and does not leave any open sockets.
• When "Save file" dialog box appears, and Mosaic is in the background, it will no longer crash. Instead it will notify the user that it needs attention.
• Load-to-disk works in all conditions.
• Many more diagnostic loading messages.
• Style Dialog bugs:
  • Too many fonts caused NCSA Mosaic to crash
  • Size scrolling view now dims when HTML tags prohibiting size changes are selected.
  • Canceling Color change no longer displays the ugly green.
  • Changing a style no longer sets all the anchor colors to black.
• The Status Icon (NCSA S) in the upper left corner has improved.
• CMD-A (Add This Document to Hotlist) is now CMD-D.
• NCSA Mosaic no longer automatically opens a new window each time the user selects a document from a menu item. It only opens the new window for Help Menu items found in the Balloon Help Menu or if the user holds down the option key while clicking on the link.
  

• Help Menu:
  • Help documents are now in the Balloon Help Menu.
  • Help menu has been removed.
  • Other documents from the Help menu are now in the Navigate Menu.
  • Mail To Developers has been moved to the File Menu.
• CMD-R key added for Reload.
• Jumps to relative links within a document no longer requires a reload.
• Window resizes to screen upon opening.
• Remove Temp Files option has been added to the Options Menu. This allows the user to purge NCSA Mosaic's temporary files while the application is still running.

Beta 5 Release Features:

• Caching.. Mosaic will use all of the available memory to cache documents.
• No MacTCP is required. Without TCP, you will be able to open local documents only
• Status box shows what URL that will Mosaic jump to.
• Control key for toggling binary transfer mode.
• Menu option to reload current document.
• Fixed bug that caused repeated searches to append extra keywords.
• ISMAP works (really).
• Interrupt of loading through Cmd-. works during connect. The keys do not have to be held down any more.
• Annotations can be annotated.
• Many previously inaccessible gopher holes now work.
• Bug that caused a crash during image load is fixed.
• "Application not found" bug has been eradicate (we hope).
• Preferences are saved immediately.

Beta 4 Release Features:

• Fixed the bug which prevented B3 from launching properly.

Beta 3 Release Features:

• Ability to create a new hotlist
• Additional options for viewer setup. Now you can specify if Mosaic should ask user for file name, and should the application be launched automatically. The whole external viewer interface has been redone, and includes a new mechanism for external application launching.
• If home page entry is blank, Mosaic will start up with an empty document (nothing will be loaded)
• Image mapping works
• A status box has been added to display information during a document transfer.
• Bug Fixes

Beta 2 Release Features:

• Mail-to-developers option has been cleaned up from various bugs. If you would like a response to your bug reports, please enter your email address in Preferences. Mail-to- developers automatically reports your system configuration.
• Annotations both text and audio work properly.
• Setting the application for document types works. New option of defining custom document types has been added. This feature will be documented on-line soon.
• URLs of type rlogin:user@host work now. The title of telnet window will give you the user name.
• Preformatted text is not forcibly wrapped at 80 characters.
• Text Styles for the hotlinks are properly modified by the Style Dialog.

Beta 1 Release Features:

• Mail to developers.
• New look & feel.
• More informative status display icon.
• Full old Mac compatibility.
• Customizable external viewers
• Image map support (ISMAP)
• Custom styles.
• Saving documents in HTML format.
• Annotations private/group text/audio.
• Many more preferences.
• Simple AE support.
• Colored anchors to indicate "previously explored".
• Better failure handling when MacTCP is not available.

Alpha2 release features

• ISO-Latin support.
• Option to load next document to file. This stores the file on disk rather than displaying in the viewer.
• All temporary files (those whose name has not been specified by user) are deleted.
• Recognizes more file extensions. I was trying to make it fully user-customizable by this release, but did not succeed.
• Back and forward command are working.
• Better error handling for unrecognized file types.

Alpha release features:

• Support for accessing documents and data through World Wide Web, Gopher, WAIS, FTP, NNTP/Usenet news, Techinfo, TeXinfo, Telnet, tn3270 NOT, Archie, Finger, Hyper-G, HyTelnet, X.500, Whois, local files, and other sources.
• Multiple independent top level windows.
• History list per window.
• Editable hotlist.
• Support for recognizing and handling GIF, JPEG, AU, AIFF, MPEG, QuickTime, TIFF, Zip, Pict, documents and forking off appropriate external viewers.
• Inlined images in formatted (HTML) text: X bitmaps, GIF and Pict images can be included anywhere inside a document, and can act as hyperlink anchors. Image files themselves can be located anywhere on the network.
• In-document find capability with caseless and backward options.
• Cloning and creation of new window on loading a new document.
• Keyword search capability (for WAIS, Gopher, Archie, etc.).
• Copy and paste conform to Mac guidelines, including the type style information.
• Interruptible loading through cmd-. More Information.
• Background loading/repagination.
• Switchable automatic/manual image loading for optimal performance over slow networks.
• Printing, true WYSIWYG :)
• Opening of local files.