World Wide Web

The Internet's Killer Application

Not only does the Web allow us easy cybersurfing, but its similarity to the printed page increases our comfort level. Here, we'll show you the ups and downs of the various browsers available to help you cruise the Web.

If you've been following CNN, Time, Business Week, or just about any other popular news medium over the last six months, you've heard about the World Wide Web and its "pages." The Web promises to give you graphics and video and fill-in shopping forms from all over the world.

So, why all the hoopla? The Web is the first sign that the Internet will soon be ready for prime time. Previously, the Internet was primarily used for sending and receiving text messages and text files. Its interface was about as exciting as MS-DOS (not to mention much harder to use).

With the Web, though, we get point-and-click access to the Internet, with an interface as easy to use as the Help screen in a typical piece of Windows or Mac software.

The Web will spell the end of Internet users having to type indecipherable commands. Web pages are replete with hyperlinks, which connect you to sites with related information. When you see one of these on the screen, simply mouse over to the link and click. Automatically, your computer will connect you to the remote machine (no matter where it is on the Internet), and you can download the page into your browser. Usually, a page will contain additional links, which you can use to retrieve even more pages.

Unbounded Horizons

Once you get onto the Web, you'll quickly find yourself surfing from page to page, accelerating through cyberspace like an expert veteran. There's no end to the number of sites you can visit, and some of the sites have numerous pages of their own. Endless reading, viewing, learning, and, yes, playing will ensue.

But, you may ask, doesn't Gopher (see pages 46-47) let you do the same thing the Web does? Yes, but there are two crucial differences. First, the Web was designed to allow multimedia displays. As a result, Web pages usually have full-color graphics, and many have audio and video clips as well. These take a long time to download, but as Internet connection speeds improve, the potential for full multimedia access will increase dramatically.

Second, Gopher lets you point and click, but everything in Gopher is presented as a list. On the Web, the hyperlinks can appear anywhere on the page, even inside the graphics.

The result is that the Web looks and feels more like the printed page, which is something we're all extremely familiar and comfortable with. Read a few sentences in a paragraph, click on the link, navigate your way back to read some more, then click on the graphic to go somewhere else -- and so on.

Web Browsers

To navigate the Web, you need a piece of software called a browser. Officially, it's called a client, but because nobody but techies uses that term, we'll stick with browser.

The first browser to enable non-techie Internet users to access the Web with a simple point-and-click command structure was Mosaic, developed at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. It was so successful that NCSA licensed the technology for commercial marketing to a company called Spyglass. It also licensed the software code underlying Mosaic to more than 20 other companies, including Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, and Digital Equipment. As a result, commercial browsers are sprouting like proverbial weeds.

If you have a UNIX dial-in connection only, your choices are limited, and you won't get the Web's rich graphics. However, the most important text browser, Lynx, is widely available and easy to use. (It's also free, so if it's not on your system -- type Lynx at the prompt -- ask for it.) Lynx is designed for the near-standard VT100 terminal emulation, and navigating is mostly a matter of using the arrow keys.

Two browsers are available for the three main platforms: Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and XWindows. These browsers are Mosaic and Netscape Navigator, and both are immensely popular.

To get your personal copy of Mosaic, launch an anonymous FTP to ftp.nsca.uiuc.edu and go into the Mosaic directory. For Netscape, anonymous FTP to ftp.mcom.com and change to the Netscape directory. You simply can't go wrong with either of these two browsers.

Mac users should try out at least one other browser -- MacWeb from the EINet Galaxy (ftp.einet.net). This browser is similar to Mosaic, but kinder on systems resources. The Windows counterpart for MacWeb is WinWeb, available from the same location. WinWeb is always at least a step behind MacWeb, but it's capable nonetheless.

Microsoft Windows users have a horde of browsers to choose from beyond Mosaic, Netscape, and WinWeb. Cello is a popular choice (FTP to fatty.law.cornell), and should be available in version 2.0 by the time you read this. Air Mosaic comes with Spry's Internet in a Box (reviewed on page 72), WebSurfer is part of Netmanage's Chameleon suite, and QMosaic is an excellent browser from Quarterdeck. Two others, both of which are superb multipurpose browsers, are WinTapestry from FTP Software and Internet Works from America Online. In addition, Prodigy now has a built-in browser available to anyone with Windows and a Prodigy account. To use the graphical browsers, you need either SLIP or PPP access (except for Prodigy users). In fact, using the Web is the primary reason for getting SLIP/PPP.

If you've ever had any doubts about the Internet's potential as an information provider, surfing the Internet for a few hours with a program like Mosaic or Netscape will cure that skepticism for good.

Whether you seek entertainment, education, current events, sports scores, financial information, or even government reports, the Web is out there waiting for your call.

Many Web pages even offer fill-in sales forms in which you can type your name, address, and credit card information. Some of these pages are becoming sophisticated shopping sites, and a considerable amount of corporate money is being pumped into making the Web a safe and viable place for you to spend your cash. This, quite clearly, is one of the waves of the future.
-- Neil Randall

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