═══ 1. IBM WebExplorer V1.01 - README ═══ 1. Overview 2. What's New 3. Getting Started 4. Basic Functions a. Loading Documents b. Keeping a QuickList c. Seeing Where You've Been d. Stopping the WebExplorer 5. Technical Features 6. The WWW Frequently Asked Questions ═══ 1.1. Overview ═══ Welcome to the IBM WebExplorer, a world-wide web browser for OS/2. This program supplies a graphically rich, interactive interface to the fascinating world of the Internet. Users of the WebExplorer can jump from one Internet location to another by simply selecting highlighted text or images in the main window. The behavior is very similar to that of "Mosaic", which is a trademark of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois (NCSA). For your convenience, we've attached below a copy of the World Wide Web FAQ (list of Frequently Asked Questions). The FAQ answers many questions for net newbies (people who've never used the Internet), as well as net surfers (people who interact with the Internet on a daily basis). The development team is very proud to deliver the WebExplorer. Below are the members of the development team: David Greenwood, PhD. IBM Networking Systems, RTP Scott Penberthy, PhD. IBM T. J. Watson Research Center Barbara Walters IBM Networking Systems, RTP Michael Ward IBM T.J. Watson Research Center ═══ 1.2. What's New ═══ We have changed the following since the Beta version of WebExplorer: o Increased support for viewers. Additional file types are now supported and you can add support for other file types in your EXPLORE.INI file. o Added support for customized animations. o Added option of having the current URL displayed in a window below the toolbar. Additionally, you can use this window to access another URL. o Changed status area of the WebExplorer window. The status area now displays separate status information for the document being loaded and any associated images. o Enhanced the multi-threaded processes. WebExplorer now retrieves document and associated images simultaneously from the network. o Improved codepage support. WebExplorer now correctly handles documents with ISOLatin characters. o Enhanced drag-n-drop support. Dragging images from WebExplorer now stores the original image in its original format (e.g. GIF, JPEG). o Improved performance, cacheing, and document formatting. ═══ 1.3. Getting Started ═══ The WebExplorer must be told a few things about your network before it can help you surf the Internet. On the main menu, select Servers from the Configure pull-down menu. Fill out your Home document (your favorite World Wide Web server, such as http://www.ibm.com), your email address and news server. The last two fields are for advanced users, and tell WebExplorer how your network is connected to the Internet. If you are using a dial-in access (via SLIP) you most likely won't need to specify a proxy or socks server. There are three main ways for you to access the Internet; see which one below matches your configuration, then follow the instructions. After you're done, select the OK push button. 1. A direct (SLIP, T1, network) connection If you're using Advantis and a modem, then you have a direct connection. In this case, you only need to fill out your email address and the name of your NEWS server. The Home document will default to the Advantis Home document, but you may change it. 2. Connection through a CERN proxy A CERN proxy is one type of "firewall" that protects computers in a business from being exposed directly to the hackers of the Internet. The proxy performs the following functions. First, it verifies that your machine and userid are allowed to have external (public) access. Second, it redirects all of WebExplorer requests for documents so that they go outside the company. Third, it captures data coming back from external computers and forwards it to the WebExplorer. Currently, the CERN proxy code only supports a few, limited protocols. If this is what you have, then enter the name of the proxy in the proxy slot. Contact your system administrator to ensure that you are authorized to use the proxy services. 3. Connection through a SOCKS server A SOCKS (SOCKet Secure) server is a more robust firewall than a CERN proxy. The SOCKS server first verifies that your machine and user id are allowed to access the external Internet. Whenever the WebExplorer requests a document, the SOCKS server establishes a direct connection between the WebExplorer and an external computer. This avoids a level of redirection required by the CERN proxy server. If you have a SOCKS server, enter its host name in the appropriate slot. Contact your system administrator to ensure that you are authorized to use the SOCKS services. ═══ 1.4. Basic Functions ═══ Listed below are instructions for some of the more basic functions of the WebExplorer. 1. Loading Documents 2. Keeping a QuickList 3. Seeing Where You've Been 4. Stopping the WebExplorer If, at any time while using the WebExplorer, you are unsure what to do, select Help or press the F1 key. WebExplorer provides comprehensive help information to aide you in your exploration of the Web. For example, Getting Started provides how-to tips on accessing the Information Highway. ═══ 1.4.1. Loading Documents (NetSurfing) ═══ Select Open document (URL) from the File pull-down menu. In the blank box, enter a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and select the Load pushbutton. Note that these document locations are case-sensitive. Alternatively, you can select the button on the toolbar for quick access. You can also select an item from the QuickList pull-down menu to jump directly to one of several documents. If you see a document in the window, move your mouse over the text and graphics. If the mouse changes to a paper icon () at a particular location, you can select the item using mouse button 1 to load the referenced document. These highlighted areas are called "anchors" or "hyperlinks". ═══ 1.4.2. Keeping a QuickList ═══ You can store references to documents on a "quick list" for future uses of the WebExplorer. If you're currently viewing a page, select the button on the toolbar. This will add the currently viewed document to the QuickList. If you want to add or remove items from the QuickList directly, select the button (currently shown as a page with red bullet items, where red is supposed to mean "hot" or "interesting"). You can use EDIT to change the title of a selected document, ADD to include the current document in the QuickList, and DELETE to remove one from the QuickList. ═══ 1.4.3. Seeing Where You've Been ═══ The WebExplorer builds a Web "Map" of your exploits as you surf the Internet. The WebMap can be accessed by selecting the button, currently shown as a map of the world representing the scope of the Information Highway! The WebMap currently uses an outline format to display where you've been. When you access a new document by selecting a hypertext link, the document is added to the WebMap below the current document. The new document then becomes a "child" of the previous "parent" document. When you access a new document by typing it in directly, it is added to the bottom of the WebMap as a new outline item. All directly accessed pages are called "parents". You can think of this as a simple hierarchical outline format. To see where you've been, or where you are, the WebMap will highlight the current document with a marker, a green arrow. Also, any item from your QuickList will be shown on the WebMap with a special red bullet. This should help you as you navigate the World Wide Web. The BACK () and FORWARD () buttons are defined in terms of the WebMap outline. BACK moves from a child to its parent. FORWARD moves from a parent to its first child. When no parent exists, then BACK button is turned off. When no children exist, the FORWARD button is turned off. If you are not sure where you are, just select the WebMap button. ═══ 1.4.4. Stopping the WebExplorer ═══ To stop loading a document, do one of the following: o Select the animated icon in the upper right corner o Select Halt loading document from the File pull-down menu o Press the Escape (ESC) key ═══ 1.5. Technical Features ═══ The WebExplorer has many unique features that make surfing a fun, entertaining experience. o DOCUMENT STREAMING The WebExplorer displays the document as it arrives from the network. Since images usually take much longer than text, the WebExplorer senses the size of the image and displays a blank, raised box until all data has arrived. If you want to interact with a document before it is completely loaded, you can stop the loading process by pressing the escape (ESC) key or by selecting the animated icon. Within milliseconds you will be able to continue clicking your way through the World Wide Web. o MULTI-THREADED DESIGN A "thread" is a tiny, independent computer program within a larger, more complex program. Think of threads as tiny workers that coordinate to achieve an overall task. The WebExplorer uses separate threads to load documents and images simultaneously, display graphics, and format the screen. This capability enables users to view and interact with one document while loading others in the background. o INTERNAL VIEWER By default, the WebExplorer will show images by using its own internal mechanisms for handling GIF, JPEG, XBM, TIFF, and OS/2 BMP graphics. If you want to use your own program to view images, select Internal Viewer from the Options pull-down menu to toggle this feature on or off. The WebExplorer supports true-color displays - those with 65,000 or 1.67 million colors. o IMAGE DRAG 'N DROP Placing the mouse over an image, pressing the right mouse button, and then moving the mouse while the right mouse button is down will "drag" an image from the document to another location. Drop it on a file folder or the desktop to keep it around for future use. If you can't find a place to drop it, WebExplorer will place the image on the clipboard so that other applications may then "Paste" it. Similarly, you can drag image files from other applications or file folders and drop them on the WebExplorer to view them. o PRESENTATION MODE Using local files, the WebExplorer can help you make outstanding sales pitches, scientific presentations, and public talks. Simply create and link your documents in local files using the HTML language. Next, use the WebExplorer to retrieve all of the documents into memory. Finally, go back to the start of the document and press Alt-P, which will cause the WebExplorer to take over the entire OS/2 desktop. Use Ctrl-P to return the WebExplorer to its normal size. We suggest a black background, white text, green links, no underlining, and the Very Large font for presentations. o CONFIGURABLE DOCUMENT AND IMAGE CACHING Depending on how much memory and disk space you have, you may want to increase or decrease the memory used by the WebExplorer. Select Caching from the Configure pull-down menu to tell the WebExplorer how many documents and images to keep in memory. If you want to disable all caching, select the "Disable all caching" checkbox. If the WebExplorer runs out of image space while loading a single document, tiny stub images will be used in their place. The final release will allow you to specify the number of kilobytes dedicated to images and documents. o HTML/2 and HTTP/1 COMPLIANCE The WebExplorer supports all markup in the HTML/2.0 standard, including forms, ISO-Latin-1 fonts, inline graphics, glossaries, and more. Since some documents on the Internet are not compliant with the proposed standard, the WebExplorer attempts to clean up the document by introducing markup where appropriate. While we claim to handle all correct markup, we may not handle incorrect markup in the same way that Mosaic does. We also support HTTP/1.0 which includes GET and POST access methods, image maps, and MIME headers. IBM is committed to supporting these public standards as they evolve. o COLOR WYSIWYG PRINTING Advanced image processing techniques are used to accurately display images and text on both color and monochrome printers. The entire document is also reformatted on the fly to exactly fit the margins of the printer, producing high-quality output for archival or hardcopy distribution of Web documents. o TOTAL CONFIGURABILITY The size, position, colors, fonts, quick list selections, network servers, and home page are all remembered between uses of the WebExplorer in the EXPLORE.INI file. By using the -i flag when starting the WebExplorer, users can specify a particular .INI file to use. This allows a network administrator to make one copy of the executable file accessible by users, while each user can maintain individual .INI files on their local disk. o QUICKLIST ARCHIVAL IN HTML The QuickLists are written to both the initialization file EXPLORE.INI as well as a separate WEBMAP.HTM file in HTML format. These web maps may then be exchanged among user groups, renamed and organized into directories, or stored in databases to maintain an entire library of topical QuickLists. Future releases of WebExplorer will learn and categorize topical QuickLists on the fly using proven AI technologies. We are also planning to allow loading and saving of QuickLists into separate HTML files. o ADVANCED VIEWER CONFIGURATION In this version, we have increased the list of viewers that can be configured. If, however, you find that you need to configure a viewing program for file types that are not listed, you can modify the [advanced] stanza of the EXPLORE.INI file to associate a file type with a mime type and to assign a viewing program for the mime type. ═══ 1.6. The WWW Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) ═══ WORLD WIDE WEB FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS This is part 1 of a 2-part posting. Part 2 begins with section 5 (providing information to the web). It should be the next posting in this thread. _This document resides on the World Wide Web on Sunsite (URL is http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html). If you are unfamiliar with the term "URL", read on and learn!_ Contents * 1: Recent changes to the FAQ * 2: Information about this document * 3: Elementary Questions + 3.1: What are WWW, hypertext and hypermedia? + 3.2: What is a URL? + 3.3: How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS? * 4: Accessing the Web (User Questions) + 4.1: Introduction: How can I access the web? (Even by email!) + 4.2: Browsers Accessible by Telnet + 4.3: Obtaining browsers o 4.3.1: Microsoft Windows browsers o 4.3.2: MSDOS browsers o 4.3.3: Macintosh browsers o 4.3.4: Amiga browsers o 4.3.5: NeXTStep browsers o 4.3.6: X/DecWindows (graphical UNIX, VMS) browsers o 4.3.7: Text-based Unix and VMS browsers o 4.3.8: Batch-mode "browsers" + 4.4: How can I access the web through a firewall? + 4.5: What is on the web? o 4.5.1: How do I find out what's new on the web? o 4.5.2: Where is the subject catalog of the web? o 4.5.3: How can I search through ALL web sites? + 4.6: How can I save an inline image to disk? + 4.7: How can I get sound from the PC speaker with WinMosaic? + 4.8: I have a Windows PC (or a Macintosh). Why can't I open WAIS URLs? + 4.9: I'm running XMosaic. Why can't I get external viewers working? + 4.10: Hey, I know, I'll write a WWW-exploring robot! Why not? + 4.11: How do I send newsgroup posts in HTML to my web client? * 5: Providing Information to the Web (Provider Questions) 5.1: Introduction: How can I provide information to the web? + 5.2: Obtaining Servers o 5.2.1: Unix Servers o 5.2.2: Macintosh Servers o 5.2.3: Windows and Windows NT Servers o 5.2.4: MSDOS Servers o 5.2.5: VMS Servers o 5.2.6: Amiga Servers + 5.3: Producing HTML documents o 5.3.1: Writing HTML directly o 5.3.2: HTML editors o 5.3.3: Converting other formats to HTML + 5.4: How do I publicize my work? + 5.5: Can I buy space on an existing server? + 5.6: Advanced Provider Questions o 5.6.1: How do I set up a clickable image map? o 5.6.2: How do I make a "link" that doesn't load a new page? o 5.6.3: Where can I learn how to create fill-out forms? # 5.6.3.1: How can I create hidden fields in forms (keeping state)? # 5.6.3.2: How can users email me through their browsers? o 5.6.4: How do I comment an HTML document? o 5.6.5: How can I create decent-looking tables and stop using
...? o 5.6.6: What is HTML Level 3 and where can I learn more about it? o 5.6.7: How can I make transparent GIFs? o 5.6.8: Which format is better for WWW images, JPEG or GIF? o 5.6.9: How can I mirror part of another server? o 5.6.10: How come mailto: URLs don't work? o 5.6.11: How can I restrict and control access to my server? o 5.6.12: How can I keep robots off my server? * 6: What newsgroups discuss the web? * 7: I want to know more. * 8: Credits 1: RECENT ADDITIONS AND CHANGES TO THE FAQ * 9/2/94: Email forms * 9/2/94: Keeping robots off your server * 9/2/94: Quadralay commercial-grade Mosaic * 9/2/94: New location of alternate BBEdit tools * 9/2/94: Emacs-W3 browser works on the Amiga * 9/2/94: Enhanced imagemaps section (URLs for other editors wanted!) * 9/2/94: Big Dummy's Guide is now EFF's Guide * 9/2/94: Fixed location of Postscript HTML tutorial * 9/2/94: Added Mac program to transparent section * 9/2/94: Enhanced section on problems with XMosaic external viewers * 9/2/94: Removed references to obsolete HTML+ draft * Closed all tags. Should make browsers happier. * 9/2/94: Updated location of WinMosaic * 9/2/94: Updated URL of web space leasing document * 9/2/94: Email access to the web 2: INFORMATION ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT This is an introduction to the World Wide Web project, describing the concepts, software and access methods. It is aimed at people who know a little about navigating the Internet, but want to know more about WWW specifically. If you don't think you are up to this level, try an introductory Internet book such as Ed Krol's "The Whole Internet" or "EFF's Guide to the Internet". The latter is available electronically by anonymous FTP from ftp.eff.org in the directory pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide. This informational document is posted to news.answers, comp.infosystems.www.users, comp.infosystems.www.providers, comp.infosystems.www.misc, comp.infosystems.gopher, comp.infosystems.wais and alt.hypertext every four days (please allow a day or two for it to propagate to your site). The latest version is always available on the web as http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html. (see the section titled "What is a URL?" to understand what this means.) The most recently posted version of this document is kept on the news.answers archive on rtfm.mit.edu in /pub/usenet/news.answers/www/faq. For information on FTP, send e-mail to _mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu_ with: send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources in the body (not subject line) of your message, instead of asking me. Thomas Boutell maintains this document. Feedback about it is to be sent via e-mail to boutell@netcom.com. In all cases, regard this document as out of date. Definitive information should be on the web, and static versions such as this should be considered unreliable at best. The most up-to-date version of the FAQ is the version maintained on the web. Please excuse any formatting inconsistencies in the posted version of this document, as it is automatically generated from the on-line version. 3: ELEMENTARY QUESTIONS 3.1: What are WWW, hypertext and hypermedia? WWW stands for "World Wide Web". The WWW project, started by CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics), seeks to build a distributed hypermedia system. The advantage of hypertext is that in a hypertext document, if you want more information about a particular subject mentioned, you can usually "just click on it" to read further detail. In fact, documents can be and often are linked to other documents by completely different authors -- much like footnoting, but you can get the referenced document instantly! To access the web, you run a browser program. The browser reads documents, and can fetch documents from other sources. Information providers set up hypermedia servers which browsers can get documents from. The browsers can, in addition, access files by FTP, NNTP (the Internet news protocol), gopher and an ever-increasing range of other methods. On top of these, if the server has search capabilities, the browsers will permit searches of documents and databases. The documents that the browsers display are hypertext documents. Hypertext is text with pointers to other text. The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way -- select the pointer, and you are presented with the text that is pointed to. Hypermedia is a superset of hypertext -- it is any medium with pointers to other media. This means that browsers might not display a text file, but might display images or sound or animations. 3.2: What is a URL? URL stands for "Uniform Resource Locator". It is a draft standard for specifying an object on the Internet, such as a file or newsgroup. URLs look like this: (file: and ftp: URLs are synonymous.) * file://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip * ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors * http://info.cern.ch:80/default.html * news:alt.hypertext * telnet://dra.com The first part of the URL, before the colon, specifies the access method. The part of the URL after the colon is interpreted specific to the access method. In general, two slashes after the colon indicate a machine name (machine:port is also valid). When you are told to " check out this URL", what to do next depends on your browser; please check the help for your particular browser. For the line-mode browser at CERN, which you will quite possibly use first via telnet, the command to try a URL is "GO URL" (substitute the actual URL of course). In Lynx you just select the "GO" link on the first page you see; in graphical browsers, there's usually an "Open URL" option in the menus. 3.3: How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS? While all three of these information presentation systems are client-server based, they differ in terms of their model of data. In gopher, data is either a menu, a document, an index or a telnet connection. In WAIS, everything is an index and everything that is returned from the index is a document. In WWW, everything is a (possibly) hypertext document which may be searchable. In practice, this means that WWW can represent the gopher (a menu is a list of links, a gopher document is a hypertext document without links, searches are the same, telnet sessions are the same) and WAIS (a WAIS index is a searchable page, returning a document with no links) data models as well as providing extra functionality. Gopher and World Wide Web usage are now running neck and neck, according to the statistics-keepers of the Internet backbone. (Of course, World Wide Web browsers can also access Gopher servers, which inflates the numbers for the latter.) This is changing as WWW reaches critical mass (usage of the server at CERN doubles every 4 months -- twice the rate of Internet expansion). 4.1: Introduction: how can I access the web? You have three options: use a browser on your own machine (the best option), use a browser that can be telnetted to (not as good), or access the web by email (the least attractive, but for some it's the only way). It is always best to run a browser on your own machine, unless you absolutely cannot do so; but feel free to telnet to a browser for your first look at the web, or use email if the telnet command does not work on your system (_try it first!_ The following sections cover telnetting to a browser and obtaining your own browser; if neither of these are possible for you (because you have only an email-and-news connection to the Internet), here is how to access a web page by email: Send email to listserv@info.cern.ch containing the following single line. (What you put on the subject line doesn't matter; blank is OK. This line should go in the text of the message.) You will receive as a reply a simple page intended to help you learn more about the Web. send http://www.earn.net/gnrt/www.html 4.2: Browsers accessible by telnet An up-to-date list of these is available on the Web as http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/FAQ/Bootstrap.html and should be regarded as an authoritative list. info.cern.ch No password is required. This is in Switzerland, so continental US users might be better off using a closer browser. www.cc.ukans.edu A full screen browser "Lynx" which requires a vt100 terminal. Log in as www. Does not allow users to "go" to arbitrary URLs, so GET YOUR OWN COPY of Lynx and install it on your system if your administrator has not done so already. The best plain-text browser, so move mountains if necessary to get your own copy of Lynx! www.njit.edu (or telnet 128.235.163.2) Log in as www. A full-screen browser in New Jersey Institute of Technology. USA. www.huji.ac.il A dual-language Hebrew/English database, with links to the rest of the world. The line mode browser, plus extra features. Log in as www. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. sun.uakom.cs Slovakia. Has a slow link, only use from nearby. info.funet.fi (or telnet 128.214.6.102). Log in as www. Offers several browsers, including Lynx (goto option is disabled there also). fserv.kfki.hu Hungary. Has slow link, use from nearby. Login is as www. 4.3: Obtaining browsers The preferred method of access of the Web is to run a browser yourself. Browsers are available for many platforms, both in source and executable forms. Here is a list generated from the authoritative list, http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html. 4.3.1: MICROSOFT WINDOWS BROWSERS NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so. Cello Browser from Cornell LII. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.law.cornell.edu in the directory /pub/LII/cello. Mosaic for Windows From NCSA. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory PC/Windows/Mosaic. 4.3.2: MSDOS BROWSERS NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so. DosLynx DosLynx is an excellent text-based browser for use on DOS systems. You must have a level 1 packet driver, or an emulation thereof, or you will only be able to browse local files; essentially, if your PC has an Ethernet connection, or you have SLIP, you should be able to use it. DosLynx can view GIF images, but not when they are inline images (as of this writing). See the README.HTM file at the DosLynx site for details. You can obtain DosLynx by anonymous FTP from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in the directory pub/WWW/DosLynx; the URL is ftp://ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/WWW/DosLynx/. 4.3.3: MACINTOSH BROWSERS NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so. Mosaic for Macintosh From NCSA. Full featured. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mac/Mosaic. Samba From CERN. Basic. Available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /ftp/pub/www/bin as the file mac. MacWeb From EINet. Has features that Mosaic lacks; lacks some features that Mosaic has. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.einet.net in the directory einet/mac/macweb. 4.3.4: AMIGA BROWSERS AMosaic Browser for AmigaOS, based on NCSA's Mosaic. Supports older Amigas as well as the newer machines in the latest versions, I am told; available for anonymous ftp from max.physics.sunysb.edu in the directory /pub/amosaic, or from aminet sites in /pub/aminet/comm/net. see the site for details. See the URL http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/AMosaic/home.html. Emacs-W3 The Emacs-W3 browser works under Gnu Emacs on the Amiga (see section 4.3.7). 4.3.5: NEXTSTEP BROWSERS Note: NeXT systems can also run X-based browsers using one of the widely used X server products for the NeXT. The browsers listed here, by contrast, are native NeXTStep applications. OmniWeb A World Wide Web browser for NeXTStep. The URL for more information is http://www.omnigroup.com/; you can ftp the package from ftp.omnigroup.com in the /pub/software/ directory. WorldWideWeb, CERN's NeXT Browser-Editor A browser/editor for NeXTStep. _Currently out of date; editor not operational._ Allows wysiwyg hypertext editing. Requires NeXTStep 3.0. Available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /pub/www/src. 4.3.6: X/DECWINDOWS (GRAPHICAL UNIX, VMS) BROWSERS NCSA Mosaic for X Unix browser using X11/Motif. Multimedia magic. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Recommended if you can run it. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic for VMS Browser using X11/DecWindows/Motif. For the VMS operating system. Multimedia magic. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Recommended if you can run it. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic. Quadralay GWHIS Viewer (Commercial Mosaic) Quadralay offers a commercial-grade (not free!) version of Mosaic for Unix systems, with Windows and Macintosh versions expected in the future. (URL is: http://www.quadralay.com/products/products.html#gwhis) tkWWW Browser/Editor for X11 Unix Browser/Editor for X11. (Beta test version.) Available for anonymous ftp from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu in the directory tkwww[extension] (followed by an extension possibly dependent on the current version). Please ftp to the site and look for the latest version (or use the link above). Supports WSYIWYG HTML editing. MidasWWW Browser A Unix/X browser from Tony Johnson. (Beta, works well.) Viola for X (Beta) Viola has two versions for Unix/X: one using Motif, one using Xlib (no Motif). Handles HTML Level 3 forms and tables. Has extensions for multiple columning, collapsible/expandable list, client-side document include. Available by anonymous FTP from ora.com in /pub/www/viola. More information available at the URL http://xcf.berkeley.edu/ht/projects/viola/README. Chimera Unix/X Browser using Athena (doesn't require Motif). Supports forms, inline images, etc.; closest to Mosaic in feel of the non-Motif X11 browsers. Available for anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.unlv.edu in the directory /pub/chimera. 4.3.7: Text-mode Unix and VMS browsers These are text-based browsers for Unix (and in some cases also VMS) systems. In many cases your system administrator will have already installed one or more of these packages; check before compiling your own copy. Line Mode Browser This program gives W3 readership to anyone with a dumb terminal. A general purpose information retrieval tool. Available by anonymous ftp from info.cern.ch in the directory /pub/www/src. The "Lynx" full screen browser This is a hypertext browser for vt100s using full screen, arrow keys, highlighting, etc. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu. Tom Fine's perlWWW A tty-based browser written in perl. Available by anonymous FTP from archive.cis.ohio-state.edu in the directory pub/w3browser as the file w3browser-0.1.shar. For VMS Dudu Rashty's full screen client based on VMS's SMG screen management routines. Available by anonymous FTP from vms.huji.ac.il in the directory www/www_client. Emacs w3-mode W3 browse mode for emacs. Uses multiple fonts when used with Lemacs or Epoch. See the documentation. Available by anonymous FTP from moose.cs.indiana.edu in the directory pub/elisp/w3 as the files w3.tar.Z and extras.tar.Z. 4.3.8: BATCH-MODE "BROWSERS" Batch mode browser A batch-mode "browser", url_get, which is available through the URL http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu/test/zippy/url_get.html. It can be retrieved via anonymous FTP to ftp.cc.utexas.edu, as the file /pub/zippy/url_get.tar.Z. This package is intended for use in cron jobs and other settings in which fetching a page in a command-line fashion is useful. 4.4: How can I access the web through a firewall? For information on using NCSA Mosaic from behind a firewall, please read the following. In general, browsers can be made useful behind firewalls through the use of a package called "SOCKS"; the source must be modified slightly and rebuilt to accommodate this. Whenever possible, work _with_ your network administrators to solve the problem, not against them. An excerpt from the NCSA Mosaic FAQ: NCSA Mosaic requires a direct Internet connection to work, but some folks have put together a package that works behind firewalls. This is _completely unsupported_ by NCSA, but here is the latest announcement: _November 15, 1993:_ C&C Software Technology Center (CSTC) of NEC Systems Lab has made available a version of SOCKS, a package for running Internet clients from behind firewalls without breaching security requirements, that includes a suitably modified version of Mosaic for X 2.0. _Beware: such a version is not supported by NCSA; we can't help with questions or problems arising from the modifications made by others._ But, we encourage you to check it out if it's interesting to you. Questions and problem notifications can be sent to Ying-Da Lee (_ylee@syl.dl.nec.com_). 4.5: What is on the web? Currently accessible through the web: * anything served through gopher * anything served through WAIS * anything on an FTP site * anything on Usenet * anything accessible through telnet * anything in hytelnet * anything in hyper-g * anything in techinfo * anything in texinfo * anything in the form of man pages * sundry hypertext documents 4.5.1: HOW DO I FIND OUT WHAT'S NEW ON THE WEB? The unofficial newspaper of the World Wide Web is What's New With NCSA Mosaic (URL is http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html), which carries announcements of new servers on the web and also of new web-related tools. This should be in your hot list if you're not using Mosaic (which can access it directly through the help menu). 4.5.2: WHERE IS THE SUBJECT CATALOG OF THE WEB? There are several. There is no mechanism inherent in the web which forces the creation of a single catalog (although there is work underway on automatic mechanisms to catalog web sites). The best-known catalog, and the first, is The WWW Virtual Library (URL is http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html), maintained by CERN. The Virtual Library is a good place to find resources on a particular subject, and has separate maintainers for many subject areas. There is also a newer cataloging system called ALIWEB that requires very little effort to maintain and is growing rapidly (URL is http://web.nexor.co.uk/aliweb/doc/aliweb.html). 4.5.3: HOW CAN I SEARCH THROUGH ALL WEB SITES? Several people have written robots which create indexes of web sites -- including sites which have not arranged to be mentioned in the newspapers and catalogs above. (Before writing your own robot, please read the section on robots.) Here are a few such automatic indexes you can search: * WebCrawler (URL is http://www.biotech.washington.edu/WebQuery.html) builds an impressively complete index; on the other hand, since it indexes the content of documents, it may find many links that aren't exactly what you had in mind. * World Wide Web Worm (URL is http://www.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWW.html) builds its index based on page titles and URL contents only. This is somewhat less inclusive, but pages it finds are more likely to be an exact match with your needs. You can read about other robots in the robots section. 4.6: How can I save an inline image to disk? Here are two ways: 1. Turn on "load to local disk" in your browser, if it has such an option; then reload images. You'll be prompted for filenames instead of seeing them on the screen. Be sure to shut it off when you're done with it. 2. Choose "view source" and browse through the HTML source; find the URL for the inline image of interest to you; copy and paste it into the "Open URL" window. This should load it into your image viewer instead, where you can save it and otherwise muck about with it. 4.7: How can I get sound from the PC speaker with WinMosaic? This piece of wisdom donated by Hunter Monroe: This section explains how to install sound on a PC which already has a working version of Mosaic for Microsoft Windows. Be warned in advance that the results may be poor. To get Mosaic to produce sound out of the PC speaker, first, you need a driver for the speaker. You can get the Microsoft speaker driver from the URL ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/SPEAK.EXE or by doing an Archie search to find it somewhere else. SPEAK.EXE is a self-extracting file. Copy the speak.exe file to a new directory, and then type "SPEAK" at the DOS prompt. Do not put the file SPEAKER.DRV in a separate directory from OEMSETUP.INF. Now, you need to install the driver. In Windows, from the Program Manager choose successively Main/Control Panel/Drivers/Add/Unlisted or updated drivers/(enter path of SPEAK.EXE)/PC Speaker. At this point some strange sounds come out as the driver is initialized. Change the settings to improve the sound quality on the various sounds: tada, chimes, etc. Click OK when you are finished and choose the Restart windows option. Having installed the speaker driver, you will now get sounds whenever you start Windows, make a mistake, or exit Windows. If you do not want this, from the Main/Control Panel/Sounds menu, make sure there is no X next to "Enable System Sounds." Now, you need a sound viewer program that Mosaic can call to display sounds. NCSA unfortunately recommend WHAM, which does not work well with a PC speaker. Get the program WPLANY instead. You can find a copy nearby with an Archie search on the string "wplny"; the current version is WPLNY09B.ZIP. For details on archie and other basic issues related to FTP, please read the Usenet newsgroup news.announce.newusers. Move the zip file to a new directory, and use an unzip program like pkunzip to unzip it, producing the files WPLANY.EXE and WPLANY.DOC. Then edit the MOSAIC.INI file to remove the "REM" before the line "TYPE9=audio/basic". Then, you need lines in the section below that read something like: audio/basic="c:\wplany\wplany.exe %ls" audio/wav="c:\wplany\wplany.exe %ls" where you have filled in the correct path for wplany.exe. The MOSAIC.INI file delivered with Mosaic may have NOTEPAD.EXE on the audio/basic line, but this will not work. Now, restart Mosaic, and you should now be able to produce sounds. To check this, with Mosaic choose File/Local File/\WINDOWS\*.WAV and then try to play TADA.WAV. Then, you might try the Mosaic Demo document for some .AU sounds, but you are lucky if your speaker produces something you can understand. 4.8: I have a Windows PC or Macintosh. Why can't I access WAIS URLs? This answer provided by Michael Grady (m-grady@uiuc.edu): The version of Mosaic for X has "wais client" code built-in to it. This was relatively easy for the developers to do, because there was already a set of library routines for talking to WAIS available for Unix as "public domain" (freeWAIS). I don't think there is such a library of routines for PC/Windows or Mac, which would make it much more difficult for the Mosaic versions for Windows and the Mac to add "wais client" capability. Therefore, at least for now, neither the Windows or Mac versions of Mosaic support direct query of a WAIS server (i.e. can act as wais clients themselves). 4.9: I'm running XMosaic. Why can't I get external viewers working... ... No matter what no matter what I do to my .mailcap and .mime.types files? Answer provided by Ronald E. Daniel (rdaniel@acl.lanl.gov): Mosaic only looks at the .mime.types file if it has no idea what the document's type is. This is actually a very rare situation. Essentially all servers now use the HTTP/1.0 protocol, which means that they tell Mosaic (or other browsers) what the document's MIME Content-type is. The servers use a file very much like Mosaic's .mime.types file to infer the Content-type from the filename's extension. It is pretty simple to find out if this really is the problem. Use telnet to talk to the server and find out if it is assigning a MIME type to the document in question. Here's an example, looking at the home page for my server. ( idaknow: is my shell prompt) idaknow: telnet www.acl.lanl.gov 80 // Connect to the httpd server Trying 128.165.148.3 ... Connected to www.acl.lanl.gov. Escape character is '^]'. HEAD /Home.html HTTP/1.0 // replace Home.html with your document // you supply the blank line HTTP/1.0 200 OK // the rest of this comes from the server Date: Wednesday, 25-May-94 19:18:11 GMT Server: NCSA/1.1 MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/html // Here's the MIME Content-type Last-modified: Monday, 16-May-94 16:21:58 GMT Content-length: 1727 Connection closed by foreign host. idaknow: In the example above, /Home.html will get http://www.acl.lanl.gov/Home.html. Normally servers will be configured to supply a Content-type of text/plain if they don't know what else to do. If this is the problem you are having, take a look at the TypesConfig documentation for NCSA's httpd. You can have the server look at the filename extension, supply the correct Content-type, then use your local .mailcap file to tell Mosaic what viewer to use to look at the document. Russ Segal adds: The answer from Ronald Daniel is essentially correct, but it needs a small addendum. When starting Moasic, you can specify a "fileProxy" which will fetch files for you: "*fileProxy: http://socks/" If you do this, file: URLs are no longer strictly local accesses. So even if the URL is not fttp:, the proxy server must be upgraded as Mr. Daniel suggests. 4.10: Hey, I know, I'll write a WWW-exploring robot! Why not? Programs that automatically traverse the web can be quite useful, but have the potential to make a serious mess of things. Robots have been written which do a "breadth-first" search of the web, exploring many sites in a gradual fashion instead of aggressively "rooting out" the pages of one site at a time. Some of these robots now produce excellent indexes of information available on the web. But others have written simple depth-first searches which, at the worst, can bring servers to their knees in minutes by recursively downloading information from CGI script-based pages that contain an infinite number of possible links. (Often robots can't realize this!) Imagine what happens when a robot decides to "index" the CONTENTS of several hundred mpeg movies. Shudder. The moral: a robot that does what you want may already exist; if it doesn't, please study the document World Wide Web Robots, Wanderers and Spiders (URL is: http://web.nexor.co.uk/mak/doc/robots/robots.html) and learn about the emerging standards for exclusion of robots from areas in which they are not wanted. You can also read about existing robots there. 4.11: How do I send newsgroup posts in HTML to my web client? How to do this depends greatly on your system; if you have a Mac or Windows system, the answer is completely different. But, as food for thought, here is a simple shell script I use on my Unix account to send posts from rn and related newsreaders to Lynx. Put this text in the file "readwebpost" and use the "chmod" command to make it executable, then put it somewhere in your path (such as your personal bin directory): Additional information is contained in Part 2. ═══
...? Tables are a standard feature in HTML Level 3, a new version of HTML. Unfortunately, they are at present implemented only by the Viola and Emacs-W3 browsers, to my knowledge. _However_, there is a way to use HTML Level 3 tables now and convert them automatically to HTML, allowing you to design proper tables and install those pages directly when table support arrives in the majority of clients. You can do this using the html+tables package, by Brooks Cutter (bcutter@paradyne.com), which is available for anonymous ftp from sunsite.unc.edu in the directory pub/packages/infosystems/WWW/tools/html+tables.shar. This package requires the shell language Perl, which is primarily used on Unix systems but is also available for other systems (such as MSDOS machines). html+tables accepts HTML Level 3 and outputs html using the
...construct to represent tables, allowing you to write HTML Level 3 now, knowing that it will look better when clients are ready for it. 5.6.6: WHAT IS HTML LEVEL 3 AND WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT IT? HTML Level 3, also known as HTML+, is an enhanced version of HTML designed to address some of the limitations of HTML. HTML Level 3 supports true tables, right-justified text, centered text, line breaks that do not double space, and many other desired features. However, most clients support only a handful of HTML Level 3 features (such as forms in Mosaic) at this time. You can access information about new developments in HTML at the CERN server (at the URL http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Markup/Markup.html ). (HTML Level 1 is the original version. HTML Level 2 is essentially the same, but with the addition of forms.) 5.6.7: HOW CAN I MAKE TRANSPARENT GIFS? Transparent GIFs are useful because they appear to blend in smoothly with the user's display, even if the user has set a background color that differs from that the developer expected. There is a document explaining transparent GIFs available at the URL http://melmac.corp.harris.com/transparent_images.html. You can fetch the program giftrans by anonymous ftp from ftp.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de at the path /pub/net/www/tools/giftrans.c. There is also a utility for the Macintosh, Transparency (URL is: http://www.med.cornell.edu/~giles/projects.html#transparency). 5.6.8: HOW COME MAILTO: URLS DON'T WORK? The mailto: URL is an innovation found in Lynx and a few other browsers. It is not yet found in Mosaic, the most popular browser. Hopefully it will be present in future versions. In the meantime, you can set up forms which send mail to you; there is documentation on this at the URL http://siva.cshl.org/email/index.html. 5.6.9: HOW CAN I RESTRICT AND CONTROL ACCESS TO MY SERVER? All major servers have features that allow you to limit access to particular sites, and many clients have authentication features that allow you to identify specific users. There is a tutorial on security and user authentication with the NCSA server and Mosaic available, written by Marc Andreessen (URL is http://wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8080/auth-tutorial/tutorial.html). See your server documentation for further information. 5.6.10: WHICH FORMAT IS BETTER FOR WWW IMAGE PURPOSES, JPEG OR GIF? JPEG does a better job with realistic images such as scanned photographs. Most browsers cannot handle inline JPEGs, however, so you must link to them as external images (using a regular <A HREF...> instead of