NCSA Mosaic is an Internet navigation and data retrieval tool that allows you to
access network information with the click of a mouse button. Mosaic is capable of
accessing data from World Wide Web servers (HTTP), Gopher servers, FTP servers and
Usenet News servers (NNTP). Mosaic can also access other data services through
gateway servers. These services provide search capabilities in database environments
such as PH, Archie, WAIS, and Veronica. NCSA Mosaic software is copyright The Board
of Trustees of the University of Illinois (UI), and ownership remains with the UI. The
UI grants you a license without a fee to use the Mosaic software for personal,
academic, research, United States government and internal business purposes.
Mosaic is a Win32 application and is native to Windows 95 and Windows NT and Mosaic
will operate under Windows 3.1x and Windows for Workgroups 3.1x with the Win32s
subsystem installed.
NCSA Mosaic 2.0 Release Notes
Windows NT Users and Window 95 Users
Windows NT and Win95 users don't need Win32s. The operating systems
are 32-bit operating systems with OLE support built-in. Do not install
Win32s on WinNT or Win95 systems.
Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups Users
The Latest Release of Win32s is:
Win32s with OLE, version 1.25
This latest version of Win32s addresses the National Language Support problem and
the compobj.dll problem some Windows users were experiencing with Win32s v1.20. We recommend you
upgrade to this latest version if you use a language other than English(American) in your Windows
environment. We also recommend you upgrade if you have experienced problems with the compobj.dll
library while using Microsoft Office, Excel or Word. In general, if you are NOT experiencing
problems with Win32s v1.20, upgrading to Win32s v1.25 is not necessary.
Features, Enhancements, and Bug fixes
Wow... It's finally here. After a year and a half of Alpha and Beta testing, NCSA is pleased
to announce the official release of NCSA Mosaic for Microsoft Windows version 2.0. Version
2.0 is definitely a step in the right direction and we feel it is a solid piece of software.
We've taken our time and have addressed numerous bugs, we've added an informative Help file
and we're touching ground on some new concepts and features. These include:
Features and Enhancements
**Check the Mosaic Help file for details about the new feature.
Squashed Bugs
- Numerous Forms Bugs
- Internal .au support removed. Use a viewer like
wplany.
- Background color in 256 color mode looks much better.
- Several Find related bugs.
- Network related abort bugs addressed.
- Socket problems are gone!
- Printing greatly improved.
- Printing Transparent Images works
- FTP bugs fixed.
Known Bugs with version 2.0 :(
- Users of Windows 3.1 will not be able to host a collaborative session. Windows 3.11, Windows 95
& Windows NT users will be able to host a collaborative session.
- The Microsoft Mail Address Book crashes while Mosaic is running under Windows & WfW 3.1x. We've
checked and tested Mosaic and can't seem to find a problem with Mosaic. We've contacted Microsoft and hope
to have this problem resolved soon. We will post any information we receive from Microsoft on our
home page.
- Some of the white backgrounds are appearing as an ugly shade of green in Mosaic Help while in
256 color mode.
- Add Anchor To Hotlist
- Adds the current document to your hotlist.
- Document Header Information
- Queries the information server for size and date information about the
current file.
Advanced Hotlist Manager
- The following right mouse button options can be applied to both hotlist
folder and hotlist items.
- Properties
- Delete
- Alphabetize Folder
- AutoSurf Folder
- Update Time Stamps in Folder
- What's New in Folder/Item
- What's New Since...
Mosaic supports WAV audio files internally. Use the Viewers Preferences menu to configure
Mosaic to display images within the Mosaic windows. Open the viewers preferences menu and
scroll or add the audio/x-wav & audio/wav MIME types. In the "Associate MIME Type of:"
field, enter "internal" in the "To This Application" field. For Example:
| Associate MIME Type of: | audio/wav |
|---|
| Description of MIME Type: | WAV audio file |
|---|
| With this/these Extension: | .wav |
|---|
| To This Application: | internal |
|---|
| Find | Alt + F3 |
| Find Again | F3 |
| Stop Transfer | S |
Mosaic can use multiple cache directories. Simply change the cache directory in the
Cache Preferences sheet and Mosaic will use that directory. You can build several
cache directories and use anyone one you wish to work from.
Mosaic is
HTML 2.0 compliant
- <CITE> </CITE>
- Citation(CITE) is used to indicate the title of a book or another
citation.
- <CODE> </CODE>
- CODE is used to indicate example code.
- <KBD> </KBD>
- Keyboard(KBD) elements indicate text typed by a user. Usually used in
instruction manuals.
- <SAMP> </SAMP>
- Used in a sequence of literal characters.
- <VAR> </VAR>
- VAR is used as a place holder variable and are usually rendered in
italic.
- <TT> </TT>
- Teletype(TT) text is mono-spaced.
- <BLOCKQUOTE> </BLOCKQUOTE>
- Block Quote text has a left and right indent. Mosaic also supports
nested block quotes.
- <META>
- Allows Mosaic to be prompted to display another HTML page after a defined number of
seconds.
HTML 3.0 draft and proposed HTML tags
-
- The non-breaking space entity.
- <SOUND SRC="audio.*">
- This proposed new HTML tag has not yet been approved by the HTML working group.
This tag enables the use of audio files for in-line sound. Inline sound files can
be placed in any part of the document and Mosaic will act on the sound file when its
position is visible to the document view window. Sound files can implemented as
a background sounds using the LOOP attribute. An HTML author can also delay the
play of an inline sound for X number of seconds using the DELAY attribute.
NOTE: Microsoft's <BGSOUND> is supported
- The Attributes of the sound tag are:
- LOOP=infinite and DELAY=sec.
- Examples:
- <SOUND SRC="*.wav" LOOP=infinite>
- <SOUND SRC="*.wav" DELAY=10>
The referrer field is sent to an HTTPd when "Send Referer Field" is active in the
preferences settings and you make a request for a document. The referrer
field is used by HTTPD administrators for statistical purposes to determine the
origin of their network traffic. This field is optional and can be turned
off from the Document Preference sheet.
That's about it. We hope you enjoy this latest release of NCSA Mosaic for Microsoft Windows.
Version 3.0 is closer than you might think. ;^)
Questions, Suggestions, Comments, Wishes, etc...... send'em to:
mosaic-w@ncsa.uiuc.edu
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign