I will be using the term Mosaic quite frequently. Since this is the FAQ for the Macintosh version, it can be assumed that Mosaic will almost certainly be referring to NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh.
A certain amount of familiarity with the Macintosh computer, InterNet, and the World Wide Web (WWW) and associated terms is assumed.
The writer of this FAQ does some of the technical support for the Macintosh version of NCSA Mosaic. You can generally regard the information in this FAQ to be up-to-date as of the last revision of NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh.
As with any instruction manual or other document, read this whole thing twice. Once to get a good idea of what is discussed, and then again to make sure that you clearly understand everything that is being said.
While reading this HTML version of the FAQ, you can return to the topics section by entering the relative URL #top.
Like any other human, I am prone to making mistakes and oversights. If you come across such a thing, please let me know!
You can get the latest version of NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh from the site that provides it. The file is compressed with StuffIt, and then BinHexed, so to use it, you will need StuffIt Expander or other comparable decoding programs. Download the file as ascii. Make sure to get the other documents that you may need. Anonymous FTP:
File Name: NCSAMosaicMac.103.sit.hqx (and other files) Directory: /Mac/Mosaic Site Name: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu Site IP : 141.142.20.50
If you have difficulties downloading Mosaic, e-mail your problems to
mosaic-mac@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Mosaic is available for Microsoft Windows on the PC, as well as the various platforms that support X-Windows. The site is the same as above, the only difference is the directory.
MS-Windows for the PC: /PC/Mosaic X-Windows platforms : /Mosaic
For more specific information regarding these versions, please mail your questions to:
mosaic-win@ncsa.uiuc.edu (MS-Windows version) mosaic-x@ncsa.uiuc.edu (X-Windows versions)
If all goes as planned, the next version of Mac Mosaic, 2.0, will be out in early summer. Among the new features will be forms support and an eyeball mode (or header mode) to retrieve data about a file before transferring it. Some things that will be changed or improved includes the hotlist and the organization of some of the menu items.
A Power PC version of Mosaic will be released at the same time as 2.0.
The documentation for Mac Mosaic may seem somewhat difficult to come by. Hard copy versions are in the final editing stages and you should be able to get them soon. A copy of the html version of the documentation is available from the FTP server, ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the /Mac/Mosaic/Documents directory. A normal Microsoft Word version of the documents will be made available at the same time as the hard copy version.
If you have been able to get a Mosaic up and running, then you might be able to access the documents online. To access them, start up Mosaic. Once the home page has loaded, choose Mac Mosaic Documentation from the Balloon Help menu. Note that there are several other help files there.
Balloon Help items should be fully functional in the 2.0 version of Mosaic.
Another document giving a walk through of all the menu items will be available at a future time as well.
If you are stuck, have a question or any suggestions, please mail them to:
mosaic-mac@ncsa.uiuc.edu
You can also reach the same e-mail address by selecting Mail Developers from the File menu. If you wish to get a response, you will need to first enter your e-mail address in the Preferences, which can be reached from the Options menu. Please be as specific and as informative as you can so that we can provide you with the best possible response.
Currently, there is no world-wide group dedicated to the discussion of Mosaic. There are groups of a more general nature that might include talk of Mosaic. These world-wide groups are listed below:
comp.infosystems.www (Discussions about the World Wide Web) comp.sys.mac.comm (Discussions about communications on the Macintosh)
To my knowledge, there is only one newsgroup dedicated to talks about Mosaic. This newsgroup was created at the University of Illinois. If your site has access to the uiuc.* newsgroups, then you might be able to read and/or post to this newsgroup:
uiuc.sw.mosaic
Mosaic will run on any Macintosh with these specs:
Mac Mosaic will run with earlier versions of MacTCP, but because of bugs in those versions, each document loaded will cause memory usage to increase by 12 KB. Eventually you will run out of memory, and be forced to restart either Mosaic or your computer.
MacTCP is not really required, per se. Only if you wish to use Mosaic to the fullest is this needed. Without a TCP connection, the only files you will be able to view are those on your own hard disk(s).
If you do not have, or want to get the 2.0.2 version of MacTCP, it is available from Apple as part of the "TCP/IP Connection" product. You can order it through Apple catalog sales. They can be reached at:
1-800-795-1000
For a single user (Order Number D1785), it will cost $59. A 20-user site license (Order Number D1786) costs $128.
To upgrade from MacTCP 2.0.x to version 2.0.4, you can find the updater via anonymous FTP:
File Name: MacTCP 2.0.x -> 2.0.4.hqx Directory: /ess/public/mactcp/MacTCP_2.0.4 Site Name: seeding.apple.com Site IP : 130.43.3.3
In addition to this site, it can be found at many other major FTP sites, probably under a similar file name.
**Recently, I have been informed that this product no longer exists. I am fairly certain that you can get a 2.0.x version of MacTCP with some sort of Internet starters book (approximately $30.00). If anyone has information regarding getting the most recent version of MacTCP, I would be grateful to receive it.
There are two ways to access the net. One way is a through a direct network connection the other is through a modem connection. You can connect to the networked world with Mosaic through the use of a modem.The only catch is that you will need a TCP connection of some sort.
To come about something like this, you will need to know if your dial-in server can provide the appropriate type of connection for you. The most common easy method is SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol). Other methods include ARA (Apple Remote Access), and PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol).
Your provider should be able to provide you with help regarding the set-up and proper use of your TCP connection.
In addition to Mosaic, This type of TCP connection will allow you to use a number of other applications such as NCSA Telnet and Dartmouth's Fetch.
The speed of the modem is probably going to be a lot slower than Mosaic will be. So if Mosaic seems super-slow, then the modem is probably the bottle neck. Even at 14400, Mosaic is slow, but not as slow as speeds of 2400 or 4800 baud. I would use Mosaic over a modem if it was the only way to run it.
If you need more information regarding the use of Mac Mosaic with a modem, send a message to mosaic-mac@ncsa.uiuc.edu requesting information regarding the use of Mac Mosaic with a modem, and a help file will be sent to you.
Locations of documents are specified with a URL. The main idea behind the URL is that you can locate anything on the WWW if you know it's URL. If there is a file out there, you can view it, as long as you know the URL. A URL is on the general form:
http://host.name/path/to/file (for HTTP connections) file://host.name/path/to/file (for FTP connections) ftp://host.name/path/to/file (another way to specify FTP) gopher://host.name/path/to/file (for Gopher connections) telnet://host.name (to open a telnet session) news:news.group.name (reading USENET newsgroups)
You may specify a specific port on a server by replacing the host.name part with host.name:port. The /path/to/file portion is not completely necessary for FTP and Gopher, but will allow you to directly access a document without having to search for it first.
You can access a specific URL with Mosaic by using the Open URL... option on the File menu. A box will appear. Type the URL in the box and then hit return. If the URL is correct, then that document should appear in the Mosaic window. You can access a file that is local to your Macintosh by using the Open Local option. When you use this option, a file box will be brought up. You will then need to point Mosaic to a file that is to be viewed. Mosaic has no way of telling you a file is HTML or not. Mosaic will just open the file and view it according to the file extension. These mappings can be seen and changed on the Helper Application menu in the Preferences.
Mosaic is capable of reading USENET newsgroups and their articles. That is about it. Mosaic is not a full-fledged news reader. Right now, there are a number of other applications devoted to news reading only.
If you wish to be able to sort posts in any fashion, reply or follow-up to any posting, then Mosaic will not help you. Right now, Mosaic can only read the news, nothing more.
To access the newsgroup of your choice, you will need to specify a server from which to read the news (this is done in the Preferences). It is preferable that you use the local news server if one exists. You will need to put the name of the news server you wish to read news from in the appropriate box in the Preferences window. The URL format below should be used when accessing a news group:
news:news.group.name
news.group.name is, of course, the name of the newsgroup that you wish to read. For more information regarding URLs, please see that section.
Since Mosaic is a WWW client, many of the servers that will be queried are HTTP servers. You may be interested in making documents on your own Mac available for others to use. If that is the case, then there is an application that makes this possible.
Mac HTTP server software will allow you to make documents available to the WWW. You may get this via anonymous FTP:
File Name: machttp.sit.hqx Directory: /public/mac/MacHTTP Site Name: oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu Site IP : 129.106.30.1
Please read the documentation for this carefully. You must have Mac HTTP running on your machine if others are to have access to the pages from the WWW. If you have questions about Mac HTTP, please refer them to:
cshotton@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu
**NOTE: This is not an NCSA product, therefore we do not support it.
A mailing list had been created to determine what is needed to use Mosaic through a firewall, but the objective of the mailing list -- understanding what is needed to get Mac Mosaic through the firewall -- has been accomplished, and mailing list has been discontinued.
Two solutions have been described, and source code donated. The solutions are:
The code to implement both SOCKS and proxy gateway solutions has been donated to us. Since Mac Mosaic is going to major code rewrite, changes will not be integrated until our next release. Until then, if you would like to try out an experimental Mac Mosaic that works with SOCKS, you can download it.
File Name: sock.sea.hqx Directory: /outgoing/atotic/ Site Name: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu Site IP : 141.142.20.50
Incomplete archives of the mailings to this mailing list can be found here.
When Mosaic opens a new window, it will attempt to read in the URL that is specified in the Home Page selection of the Preferences. This file can be any valid URL. This URL can be on a nearby machine, a remote machine, even your own computer.
It is easy to set it to any machine that is on the WWW. Simply enter the URL of the file you wish to see as the home page. Every time you open a new window, or click on the home icon in the Mosaic window, you will be taken to this page.
Not everyone wants their home page to be on a WWW machine. You might want to have your home page on one of your disks. If that is the case, the solution is the same: enter the correct URL for the file. Often times, the problem here is getting the correct URL.
The easiest way is to put the document where you will like to access it from. Then using Open Local from the File menu, locate and double click on the file you want. The file will be opened for you. To get the URL for the file you have just opened, you must have selected Show URLs from the Options menu. When you have this selected, the URL of the current document is displayed in the Mosaic window. You can simply copy-and-paste this URL into the Preferences.
Macintosh users are faily unlimited as to what characters they can put in their file names. The platform on which a great deal of the WWW is based is not so fortunate, however. In order to keep things simple, Mosaic uses the lowest common denominator.
This means that Macintosh file names cannot use the character '/' or ':'. Mosaic uses the '/' as part of the path. If you use a URL with this character in it, then the part after the '/' will be interpretted as a file in a directory specified by the part before the '/'. The same goes for the ':' character. Mosaic uses that as a special character in the URL specfication. The URL will not be interpretted correctly if a it contains a ':' as part of the file name.
Additionally, files (both Mac and UNIX) should not contain the '#' character as part of the filename. This is a problem since the standard for specifying a link within a page uses the '#' as a delimiter.
Activation of a link is the most basic way to move around with Mosaic. You simply need to find a link, and click once on it. You will be able to tell if the link was activated by the status of the Mosaic logo icon in the upper left hand corner of the Mosaic window. If the graphic is animated then it is a good bet the connection was made.
You can tell where a link will connect to by turning the Show Status Messages option on. You will find this under the Options menu. On the Mosaic window a grey bar will appear just above the text window. As you move the pointer over the various links in the page you are looking at, you will see various messages and URLs appear. A URL should appear when you move over a link. If you click when the URL appears in the status bar, you will be taken to the link that is shown. This feature allows you to get an idea of where you will be connecting, and also allows you to write down the URL of that link.
You can click on a new link while a document is still loading, however the response may be slower than usual. This feature allows you to get to another link without having to wait for the current document to load.
A lot of times, you might find yourself wishing you had not clicked on a link either because it was too slow, the file is turning out to be much too large, or it was an accident. There is some hope...
As in most other Macintosh applications, you can use Command-. to cancel. You canalso click once on the Mosaic logo icon in the upper left hand corner of the screen to cancel the transfer. There is a minor problem with version 1.0.3 of Mosaic that might cause it to freeze, or even crash the computer. This should be fixed in the future versions of Mosaic.
This cancellation will work on any type of URL, no matter what is on the other end of the transfer. Just hit Command-. once or twice. Be patient, and it should work fine.
Mosaic is set to load images specified as inline (see the Preferences for the mappings) directly into the Mosaic window. There may be a time at which you do not wish to have these pictures loaded right away. Under the Options menu, there is an option called Auto-Load Images. If there is a check mark beside that line, then all images that are specified as inline pictures will be loaded automatically. If there is no check mark, then those pictures will not be loaded.
Setting this option to off or on will take effect with the next page that is loaded. So, if you have the images turned off, and come to a page where you want to see all the pictures, turn Auto-Load Images on, and then use Reload (or Command-R) from the File menu. The page will then be loaded with all the images.
If the images are not loaded, and you wish to view a particular one, then you can click on the place holder that Mosaic uses. A connection will then be made and the picture will be displayed.
Right now, Mosaic in general will only allow .xbm and .gif files as inline. In addition, the Macintosh version will support .pict files. In the future Mosaic may be able to load .jpeg files as inline images.
To run QuickTime movies on your Macintosh, you will need to get the QuickTime extension. Put it in the Extensions folder. The newest version is 1.6.1.
The movie player is called Simple Player. Simple Player is a Quicktime viewer from Apple that comes packaged with most distributions of QuickTime. It is copyrighted and not public domain.
File Name: SimplePlayer.sit.hqx Directory: /Mac/Mosaic/Apple Site Name: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu Site IP : 141.142.20.50
There are many docuements that are linked to that require the use of an external application to allow you to view them. Mosaic loads these applications when necessary. Some people may not be able to run more than one application due to memory problems on their computer. If this is the case, then you can store the file for later viewing.
This is accomplished by using Load to Disk from the Options menu. It is similar to Auto-Load Images option in that it takes effect with the next activated link. This option will save whatever you click on as a file. You will need to set the file name and directory to something that will be easy for you to remember.
Be sure to turn this option off when you return to the normal use of Mosaic. If you leave this on, and did not want to load the link to disk, you may cancel the operation, and then turn the option off.
As far as I know, there are two applications that will convert a certain type of text file into HTML.
One of these, Hotlist2Html, is designed to make a Mosaic hotlist into an HTML document. This application will leave the original file untouched, and create a new text file in HTML format with the titles and links intact.
The other converter takes an RTF file and makes an HTML approximation out of it. RTF is rich text format, and you should be able to convert just about any word processor document to RTF. Once you have an RTF file, you only need to start the converter application and follow the instructions. The original file is left alone, of course. This is also useful if someone has an RTF document available, but you don't have the right application to view it as RTF.
You can get these converters as listed below:
File Name: Hotlist2HTML.sit.hqx Directory: /Mac/Mosaic/Helpers Site Name: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu Site IP : 141.142.20.50
File Name: rtf-to-html-converter-25.hqx Directory: /info-mac/text Site Name: sumex-aim.stanford.edu Site IP : 36.44.0.6
There is not a true 'what you see is what you get' or 'WYSIWYG' HTML editor available yet. In fact, I know of only two things that make writing your own HTML documents easier. Not intuitive, just easier. You will still need to know a little bit about HTML to know how it will look ahead of time, but you can edit then save your changes and bring it up on Mosaic to see what it looks like.
I use BB Edit Lite and it's HTML extensions on occasion. You simply need to get the two BB Edit files that are listed, and read the instructions. You can begin editing and creating HTML documents. One easy way to create an HTML document is to create a file on a word processor that can save in the RTF format. Then you can use the RTF2HTML converter and get a good approximation to the page.
File Name: bbedit-lite-232.hqx File Name: bbedit-html-ext-b3.hqx (you need BB Edit Lite) File Name: html-editor-10b18.hqx Directory: /info-mac/text Site Name: sumex-aim.stanford.edu Site IP : 36.44.0.6
If there is more information regarding this, please let me know.
At some point you might want to FTP to a site that does not allow anonymous connections. In order to do this, you must have a login and password on that system. The URL for this is longer than normal:
ftp://login:password@host/path
Unfortunately, when the URL is showing in the window that is created with the Show URL option, the password will not be blocked out. Of course it is never a good idea to allow your password, let alone the login, password, and host, be out in the open. The best two alternatives to this problem are to simply hide the URLs or to use another program that does not have this problem, such as Fetch.
Likewise, it is probably not a very good idea to use non-anonymous FTP URLs in your documents. This could lead to serious problems for you in the future.
Changing the size of the Mosaic window will affect how the page is printed. If you use the default window size to print out your documents, then you can leave the print mode on portrait style. If you widen the window, then you will need to change the print mode to landscape if you want to get all the text on the right hand side of the page to completely appear. If you are unsure if the active window is the default size, click in the zoom box a few times. The window will grow and shrink. The correct size should be the smaller window.
If you are running on a small screen, and find that you want more vertical space for the hyper text in the Mosaic window, you can get more space by making sure that Show URLs and Show Status Messages from the Options menu are turned off. To make sure, it will have Show URLs and Show Status Messages shown. If these options are on, then the word Show will be replaced with Hide.
Mosaic uses two colors of anchors. Links that have not been visited yet are blue, and links that have been previously visited are red (these colors may be changed in the Preferences). No global history is kept for Mosaic yet, so everytime you start a new Mosaic session, all links will be blue. In the future versions of Mosaic, a global history is planned, so that all links visited in the past will be red. However, these links will change in color towards the blue, unvisited link as time passes. This will give you an idea how long it has been since you last visited that link.
Anchors are also underlined. This another feature that you can turn off if you like in the Preferences.
I can think of two instances when you'd want to search for something. The most obvious example is to search a particular document for an occurance of a particular string of characters. If this is the case, then the Search button and the field to it's right does not apply. This is actually done as in just about every other Macintosh application. Under the Edit menu, there is a Find command. Make the appropriate selection and you will see a new box appear on the screen. Enter the string and select the options that you wish to use, and then hit enter. The current document will be seached for the next occurence of the indicated string. If you wish to continue searching for additional occurances of the word in the same document you should choose Find Again.
The other instance will involve using the Search field and button at the top of the Mosaic window. This is only available for use with searchable indexes. That search field will always be active, but the button will not. If the current document is searchable by these means, then the Search button will become active. Type in appropriate data and then click the Search button. Pressing return in the search box will not begin the search for you. This feature will be eliminated in the 2.0 release of NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh since this type of search will be done using the FORMS interface.
A number of applications can be used with Mosaic. The mappings for the file name extensions are intialized to common values. If there is something that you wish to change, or there is something that is not working properly, you should be able to fix it by using the Helper Applications window in the Preferences.
There are a lot of applications out there that will work, but there are a few that can handle almost whatever types of files you will come across. I will not be listing the sites where they can be found since they are not as uncommon as some of the other file listed above. You should have no trouble finding them at any major FTP site. You might be able to find one you are looking for by checking the /Mac/Mosaic/Helpers directory on the FTP site, ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu.
JPEG View (for JPEG and GIF images) GIF Converter (for TIFF images) Teach Text (can view PICT files) SoundMachine (just about any sound file) Sparkle (MPEG movie format) Simple Player (ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu, /Mac/Mosaic/Apple, QuickTime movies) Ulaw and UlawPlay (more sound files)
Since either of these topics covers a rather large amount of space, I will keep this simple. You can get information about getting the source code or licensing by mailing:
mosaic@ncsa.uiuc.edu (for any version of Mosaic) mosaic-mac@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Macintosh version only)