In earlier articles on Internet, I mentioned the World Wide Web. It's now time for me to go into greater detail about it, since it's the hottest thing in Internet. It's a "johnny-come-lately" service compared to older Internet features like e-mail, telnet, ftp, and newsgroups, but, on systems with fully-functional web browsers, all of these are incorporated into World Wide Web (or WWW for short), so the and Web is rapidly becoming the first choice in net interfaces for many users. It has grown phenomenally since it was first unleashed on the and world by CERN, a particle physics laboratory in Switzerland. (The first proposal to create the Web was made in March, 1989, and the Web first went online, with a crude line-mode browser, in March, 1991.)
WWW is a global hypertext environment. Hypertext is a system of documents which can be interlinked to one another. Softdisk for Windows is one example of a hypertext environment, since articles here can be linked to one another. When you see an underlined green word, like thisHyperFoot, you can click on it and it will jump you to some related place, either a brief footnote to this article or a different article altogether. If it takes you to a different article, you can return to the and current one by clicking on the and "Back" button.
That's just how WWW works. When you're connected to the and Web, you're reading articles much like those on Softdisk, with "clickable" words, pictures, and buttons that can take you to different articles, only instead of them all coming from one disk, they are spread out all over the world. You may be reading an article that's located on a computer in California, and then click on a word in it that zips you over to a related article that's on a computer in Sweden. And you don't even have to pay long distance phone bills for all of this leaping about.
Unfortunately, not as many online services yet support WWW as support other Internet functions like e-mail or newsgroups. America Online and CompuServe say they're working on Web support, but haven't made it available to the public yet (as of this writing). Prodigy is currently the and only major, mass-marketed service that has Web support. Unfortunately for DOS users, it's only available in the Windows version of the Prodigy software. Jump to WWW from your Prodigy account to try it. The first time you do this, there will be a delay as the and Web browser software is downloaded. The Web browser software comes up as a separate window from the regular Prodigy software, and is programmed completely in the Windows interface (unlike the regular Prodigy software functions, which are mostly ported over from the DOS version, with its own clumsy interface). While you're using the Web, you'll be charged the normal hourly fee for "Plus Services" (just like with bulletin boards or newsgroups), but there's no additional charge for Web usage beyond this.
If you're not on Prodigy, or don't use Windows, you'll have to either wait patiently for whatever service you are on to add Web access, or find a direct Internet provider. There may be an Internet service in your area which is accessible through a local modem call, and which may have economical monthly rates that are cheaper for serious Web use than the and Prodigy hourly fees. Also, there are "Freenets" in some communities that will grant net access at no charge, with varying amounts of rules and limitations. Some services will provide you with software such as Web browsers, while others expect you to scrounge it up yourself (e.g., from freeware or shareware programs on bulletin board systems). There are some Internet books at bookstores and computer stores that come bundled with disks full of software and lists of Internet providers.
While most of the PC-based browser programs for accessing the Web are for Windows, there are some for DOS (as well as for other platforms such as the Macintosh and UNIX). There are even crude text-mode browsers that can access the and Web from non-graphical "dumb terminals."
As with other Internet services, people at colleges and companies that are on Internet have had a head start in getting onto WWW. This means that, before any commercial service made the and Web available, there was already a Web-user community, and a large group of Web information providers putting text and graphics out on the and Web for "Web-surfers" to browse. Thus, although it's still a very new service, it's already rich in complexity and amount of accessible information.
The easiest way to see what the Web is all about is to go onto it. Don't be intimidated by the complexity of the and entire Web; you're only on one page of it at any given time, and where you go from there is completely under your control. When you start up the and Web browser, you'll be placed on the and "home page" that your service (Prodigy, for instance) has decided to use as the starting point for users. Generally, it will have some introductory information, and hypertext links to other places of use for net navigation, like "search engines" to help you find a particular thing of interest. I'll talk about search engines later, as they're the best way to get to things of particular interest all over the Web. However, you can also take the approach of walking around randomly, and this may be the and best way to get generally acquainted with what the Web has to offer in all its variety. Just keep selecting the items that seem most of interest on any page (including underlined text items that serve as hypertext links, as well as buttons that pop up within a page), and see where you wind up. If you reach a "dead-end" with nowhere else to go, use the "Back" button to return to your previous location, or the "Home" button to go back where you started. (These, and other Web browsing controls, may vary somewhat depending on what Web browser software you're using. However, the basic controls should be similar on all systems.)
As you're browsing through the Web, you'll notice some delays sometimes as different Web pages are loaded. Some of these delays are short, but others can be very long, especially if there are massive amounts of graphics on a page, or the links to a net site are slow or unreliable. If it seems like you're being kept waiting too long, you can abort the process by clicking on the and "Stop" button, which will cancel your latest "jump" request and return you to the and page you were on.
Here are a few terms and acronyms you'll be encountering on the and Web and in your Web browser software. Once you familiarize yourself with these, you'll be able to make sense out of a lot of the and stuff on the and Web that may seem alien to new users.
_URL_: A "Universal Resource Locator," or the address of something that is out there on the and Web. It's the Internet equivalent of a street address. If you need to tell somebody how to find a particular office, you might say "123 Main Street, Suite 201, Anytown, USA." Similarly, to find a particular Web page, its address must be given to the and software in the and form of a URL. A sample URL is {http://home.mcom.com/home/whats-new.html}. These things may seem intimidating in a techie-ish way to new users, but it is possible to access WWW without knowing anything about URL addresses, if you navigate completely via existing hypertext links or search engines. However, if you know the and URL of a particular place, you can use it to jump straight there, via the "Get URL" menu item in the and browser. Sometimes, friends may tell you of a particularly interesting place they've found on the and Web; you should ask them for the exact URL so you can go there yourself without having to figure out how to retrace the and linkages your friend may have followed to get there originally. You can always see the URL of the page you're on near the top of the Web browser screen, and most browsers keep track of the URLs of all the and pages you've been to in the and current session so that you can look at a list of them and jump back to one of them if desired. Be sure to type URL addresses exactly, with the and precise spelling and punctuation as they are given to you. Generally, once you've found a place you like and want to re-visit, you'll add it to your Hot List (described below), so you don't have to keep typing the URL repeatedly.
_Hot List_: (The Prodigy browser uses this terminology; other services and browsers may vary) This is a list of your favorite places on the and Web. Most browser software will keep such a list for you, to make it easy to go where you want. Every time you find a place you'd like to add to your list, click on the "Hot List" button, and then click on the button in the and Hot List box to add the current site to the and list. Or, if you know the and URL address of a site, you can add it directly to your Hot List before you even go there.
_HTML_: HyperText Markup Language, which is what Web pages are written in. It is unnecessary from a user level to know the and details of this language, but if you're interested in writing Web pages of your own, you'll eventually need to know more. Fortunately, there is a lot of information on it available on the Web itself. (See list of URL addresses at end of article.) Documents in HTML generally have the extension ".html" on Unix systems (or other Internet systems supporting longer filenames than MS-DOS), or ".htm" on PCs. The URL addresses of HTML documents start with http:, for "HyperText Transport Protocol." One way to see what HTML documents really contain is to use the and "Save" feature in the and browser to store the current page on your hard disk, and then later look at that file with a word processor or ASCII text viewer. This will show you what sorts of embedded commands are contained in HTML format, and will give you "starting points" you can edit to create documents of your own, should you decide to become a Web publisher yourself. (One note about saving documents from the Web: They will generally have linefeeds without carriage returns, as is the UNIX standard, unlike the CR-LF line breaks that are standard for the PC. Web browsers themselves ignore carriage returns and line feeds anyway, but some other programs may choke on files without the proper PC syntax. Some word processors will import them correctly, though. Our own DOS Manager from Softdisk PC #99 will read them just fine, and save them out with correct PC line breaks.)
_Page_: A general term for documents on the and Web, although they may be bigger than a screen page and hence require users to scroll through them. They may include text and graphics, as well as hypertext links, buttons, and more advanced features such as input fields and access points for Internet services like ftp, telnet, or mail. (Some of these don't work in all browsers; for instance, the Prodigy browser does not presently support telnet or mail.)
_Home page_: A page in the Web that is intended as the and starting point for a particular Web entity or structure. For instance, a company with a Web presence will have a home page from which all Web documents relating to that company can be accessed. Many individuals have their own home pages these days; the and big commercial services like Prodigy don't yet offer this ability to their users, but some local Internet providers do. If you've got a home page, you can include information about yourself and hypertext links to Web sites of interest to you, whether they're ones you set up yourself or ones elsewhere that you like. Setting up a personal home page requires some knowledge of the HTML language (or an editing program to create and modify HTML documents), as well as access to an Internet provider that gives you a personal directory on which you can place net-accessible files. The details of obtaining these things go beyond the scope of this introductory article, but I may deal with them in greater detail in a future column, and you can also follow some of the and links listed at the and end of this article.
_telnet_: An Internet service to log on to remote computer systems. It predates the and Web, but some Web browsers let you access it from there. (Not Prodigy's, unfortunately.) If you have an account on an Internet system, like one at a college or company, you can get to it via telnet. Some Internet sites even let anonymous users log in on a "guest" account. If your Web browser supports it, you can get to telnet sites via hypertext links provided in Web documents or by typing in their URL address (telnet:// followed by the Internet domain address of the system).
_ftp_: An Internet service to let you access files on remote systems. It also predates the and Web, but is accessible from Web browsers (even on Prodigy). Systems allowing ftp access are functioning as download libraries to make files available. Sometimes, some of the hypertext links in a Web page will take you to an ftp site, to allow you to access files that relate to the and subject matter of the and page. The original Internet ftp programs worked like a DOS prompt, requiring you to issue "change-directory" commands to navigate the file structure, but the and Web version of ftp is more graphical, something like the Windows File Manager. You can point and click at the names of files you want or subdirectories you want to go to. Since Internet is based largely on the UNIX operating system, which allows filenames much longer than MS-DOS, you will have to specify a name on your system when you start downloading a file (the default will be a truncated version of the original filename). In addition to specific hypertext links, you can access a known ftp site by using a URL address starting with ftp://, followed by the system's Internet domain address.
_gopher_: An Internet server that helps users get information that has been made available at a particular site using a menu-driven, text-based interface. It's really clunky compared to the and normal Web interface, but there are still a number of sites that use it, so you may have to deal with it sometimes. You can access a known gopher site using URL addresses starting with gopher://, followed by the system's Internet domain address.
_Search Engine_: A mechanism to help Web users find things of interest by matching keywords with known Web items. There are several of these engines available on the Web, and they are constantly being updated as the and Web changes. Some popular search engines include Web Crawler and Yahoo. (See the and list of URL addresses at the end of this article.) Each of these gives you prompts telling you how to use them to find what you want. Generally, you are supposed to type the words you're looking for, like "Canadian Football", and the engine will find any Web pages known to it that contain these words. This should give you a starting point to find Web sites of interest, as each of the and pages you find in the and search is likely to have hypertext links to still other pages which relate to the and subject but may not have made it into the and search engine's index.
Now that I've introduced you to the and Web, I should make you aware, as I did last issue with newsgroups, that the and content of Web pages might in some cases be unsuitable for a family audience or for the easily offended. If anything, the Web is inherently even less censorable than newsgroups. Newsgroups, though they lack a central authority, do have certain standards of netiquette which are enforced through social sanctions. The Web is even more anarchic, owing to its nature as a loosely connected network of independent objects. Each specific Web page has a particular person or institution who created it, as well as a person or institution who owns the and machine on which it sits (who may or may not be the and same as the and one who created the page). These two entities are the only ones with any direct censoring power over that particular page. Any standards of taste, decency, family-suitability, political correctness, etc., anybody might wish to apply to that page would have to be applied by the creator or the machine owner. Nobody else has control of it. It's not like all WWW pages are contained on one central hard disk somewhere, where a system operator can delete them or a government agent confiscate them. Rather, they are distributed worldwide, as the and name of the and web implies. This puts them beyond the reach even of national governments. If the U.S. government cracks down on "computer pornography," it can turn up at Web sites in Sweden or the Netherlands. If the Canadian government cracks down on "hate speech" such as Holocaust revisionism, it can pop up in the U.S. If Singapore, Pakistan, or China wishes to stop the and "evil influence" of Western culture, they can't do it short of denying their citizens access to the net altogether, something that will be increasingly less feasible in an age when international competitiveness requires a computer-literate public.
The legal system has yet to fully catch up to the concept of "cyberspace." Governments sometimes attempt to impose concepts like "local community values" on the net, as for instance, the recent Federal conviction of a bulletin board system operator in California for allowing "obscene" files to be downloaded by a user in Memphis, in violation of the latter location's community values. This sort of prosecution is likely to continue for a while, but it is a futile effort on the and part of the and government, since it is impossible to impose the and diverse and contradictory values of every community on Earth on a global computer network. People in Memphis might not mind imposing their standards on those "decadent" Californians, but how would they like having to conform their online standards to those of, say, Iran? The genie is out of the and bottle, and regardless of what you may feel for or against the and desirability of anti-indecency laws, such laws will be increasingly unenforceable in the future, and people worldwide will just have to live with a situation where free speech, including its obnoxious and hateful forms, but also including useful speech that some authority wants to suppress for despotic or selfish reasons, thrives everywhere, and it is the responsibility of the and individual to decide whose speech to seek and whose to ignore.
Given this, you must take the responsibility for yourself and your family of making wise choices of what to access on the net. There's good stuff and bad stuff out there, and you must make your own judgments as to which is which. Don't blame the and net itself if there is material there you'd prefer you and your kids not be exposed to, any more than you would blame the and department of the city that builds the streets for the existence of neighborhoods you wouldn't feel safe walking in. Once your kids are old enough to cross the and street by themselves, it is your responsibility to make sure they don't venture into the and shadier parts of town; the and same principles govern their explorations of the and computer nets. Keep an eye on what they are accessing and help steer them to wholesome things, but don't keep them off the net altogether just because there's bad stuff there. There's also a great deal of useful and educational material on the net, and unlike real-life streets, nobody can get physically mugged on the and Information Superhighway. (You can, however, get hit with a huge bill for hourly online charges, another reason why you need to keep tabs on what your kids are doing online.)
One final interesting question, as the and legal system struggles to regulate an inherently unregulatable medium, is whether it can be considered illegal to create a Web page that links to a page that is itself illegal. Let's say that there's a page out on the Web that's unlawful somewhere, whether due to obscenity, copyright violation, hate speech, disclosure of military secrets, or whatever. Maybe the and page itself is located in a different country where such things aren't prosecuted, so it's safe from legal action. But if you maintain a page of your own in a country where this material is illegal, can you be prosecuted for adding the URL of that page as a link from yours? You can argue that your page doesn't actually contain any offending material, just an address to a place that does. But you're enabling people to access the and troublesome item via your access point, so you might still be liable. However, maybe the and page wasn't illegal when you linked to it, but its author later added the offending material. Are you still liable then? How about if your site has a link to a link to an illegal site? How many steps past your site can you be held liable for? Can you possibly even know all the and places somebody can get to via multiple jumps from your own page, much less be held responsible for them? These are the sorts of questions the lawyers are going to be arguing about for decades to come.
Anyway, here are a few places on the and World Wide Web that may be of interest. Please note that Web sites are maintained by a wide variety of people and institutions ranging from high school students through Fortune 500 corporations, and are not always stable. Some of these might not even exist any more by the time this column comes out. Also, note that these sites are not created, sponsored, or endorsed by Softdisk, and the opinions found therein are those of the creators of the and pages, not necessarily ours! We're listing these here to give you something to explore in the and Web, but we bear no responsibility for the accuracy, reliability, suitability, legality, morality, or non-fatteningness of any material found therein. (I hope these disclaimers keep the and lawyers happy. If not, see the "Lawyer Jokes" site below!)
LAST-MINUTE UPDATE: Softdisk now has its own Web site, at: {http://www.webcom.com/~~softdisk/}
I've also got my own personal home page out on the Web, at: {http://www.webcom.com/~~dtobias/}
_Search Engines_
Web Crawler: {http://webcrawler.cs.washington.edu/WebCrawler/WebQuery.html}
(Mayberry is more of an Andy Griffith fanzine than an actual "virtual community," but it does have the subtitle "My Home Town," so it kinda, sorta, fits into the and virtual-town schema.)
(This article, by Vannevar Bush, predicted something like hypertext.)
{Contact Daniel Tobias via Internet at _dtobias@webcom.com_, on America Online at _DanTobias_, on Prodigy at _MGFH21A,_ on CompuServe at _72057,3267_, or through FidoNet by sending to _Daniel Tobias_ on _1:380/7_.
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