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- Archive-name: www/faq/part1
- Last-modified: 1994/11/4
-
- 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.
-
-
- WORLD WIDE WEB FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
-
-
- _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!_
-
- _ Last update: 11/4/94 _
-
- 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: What are SGML and HTML?
- + 3.4: 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: VM/CMS browsers
- o 4.3.9: 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?
- + 4.12: I can't get SLIP. I want Mosaic. Is there a way?
- (YES!)
- * 5: Providing Information to the Web (Provider Questions)
- 5.1: 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, Windows NT and OS/2 Servers
- o 5.2.4: MSDOS Servers
- o 5.2.5: VMS Servers
- o 5.2.6: Amiga Servers
- o 5.2.7: VM/CMS 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
- o 5.3.4: Checking your HTML for errors
- + 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 <PRE>...</PRE>?
- 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?
- o 5.6.13: How can I keep statistics about my web site?
- * 6: What newsgroups discuss the web?
- * 7: I want to know more.
- * 8: Credits
-
- 1: RECENT ADDITIONS AND CHANGES TO THE FAQ
-
- * 10/26/94: Corrections to the TIA section
- * 10/26/94: Client for VM/CMS
- * 10/26/94: Server for VM/CMS
- * 10/26/94: Updated mirrors of HoTMetaL
- * 10/26/94: Fixed URL for web page leasing
- * 11/3/94: Updates to web-by-mail section
- * 11/3/94: How to get the HTML version of the FAQ via email
- * 11/3/94: gwstat added to wwwstat description
- * 11/3/94: Spaces follow all plaintext URLs to make Netscape,
- etc.
- happy
- * 11/3/94: Gabriel White's HTML editor reviews linked
- * 11/3/94: Webmaster's Starter Kit
- * 11/3/94: WebLint
- * 11/3/94: Added comp.internet.net-happenings
- * 11/3/94: Added MosaicMail to section on piping to Mosaic
- * 11/3/94: Added Netscape to clients section ( Mac, Windows, X
- Window System)
-
-
-
-
-
- 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 and best
- version is always available on the web as
- http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html , and is mirrored
- in
- Japan (URL is
-
- http://www.glocom.ac.jp/mirror/sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.htm
- l ). (see section 3.2, "What is a URL?" to understand what this
- term
- means.) If you run a mirror site which automatically mirrors this
- document, please submit the URL for inclusion in the list of
- mirrors.
- Thanks to both Sunsite and Glocom.
-
- 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.
-
-
-
- If you want the HTML version but are located behind a firewall, you
- can acquire it from CERN's WWW email server. Send mail to
- listproc0@www.cern.ch with the following single line in the body
- (leave the subject blank):
-
- source http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html
-
- 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: What are SGML and HTML?
-
- Documents on the World Wide Web are written in a simple "markup
- language" called HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language.
- See
- section 5.3 for more information about creating HTML documents for
- use
- on the web.
-
- SGML is a much broader language which is used to define particular
- markup languages for particular purposes. HTML is just a specific
- application of SGML. You can learn more about SGML, and the
- rationale
- behind HTML, by reading A Gentle Introduction to SGML (URL is
- http://etext.virginia.edu/bin/tei-tocs?div=DIV1&id=SG ), a document
- provided by the Text Encoding Initiative. (_Note:_ Some browsers
- apparently crash on this URL. There's nothing wrong with the
- document;
- try another browser if you have problems.)
-
-
-
- 3.4: 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.
-
- World Wide Web usage grew far beyond Gopher usage in the last few
- months, 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.) WWW has long since
- reached
- critical mass, with new commercial and noncommercial sites
- appearing
- daily.
-
-
-
- 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!_). Note that
- "your machine" can be defined as a system you dial into from home,
- such as netcom or another account provider. Running a text-based
- browser on such a system is still preferable to telnetting to a
- faraway site.
-
- 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 listproc0@www.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. You can do this one of two ways: using a proper SLIP
- account,
- which requires the active cooperation of your network provider or
- educational institution, or using The Internet Adapter (section
- 4.12),
- a product which simulates SLIP through your dialup Unix shell
- account.
- If you only have non-Unix based dialup shell access, or have no PC
- at
- home, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the VMS (or
- Unix, 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.
-
- WinWeb From EINet. Available by anonymous FTP from
- ftp.einet.net
- in the directory /einet/pc/winweb as the file winweb.zip.
-
- Netscape From Mosaic Communications Corp (URL is:
- http://home.mcom.com/info/index.html ). Downloads and displays
- images
- incrementally while you read pages, which also display
- incrementally,
- making it the best browser at the time of this writing for those
- who
- connect to the web via modems. Also supports many extensions to
- HTML,
- although not all conform to the proposed standard. Netscape is a
- commercial product but is free for personal use by individuals.
- Version 0.9 (available to the public as of this writing) does not
- support printing, but this is promised in the forthcoming version
- 1.0.
- _Contrary to popular myth, version 1.0 will be free for personal
- use,
- just like version 0.9._ The 16-bit version works under OS/2 as well
- as
- Windows 3.1. Available by anonymous FTP from the following sites
- (use
- the mirror closest to you; see the URL above for the latest list):
- * ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape/
- * ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/info-service/www/mcc/
- * ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/net/infosys/Mosaic_Comm/Netscape/
- * ftp://ftp.icsi.net/pub/packages/netscape/
- * ftp://www.sandia.gov/Netscape/
- * ftp://lark.cc.ukans.edu/Netscape/
- * ftp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/netscape/
- * ftp://ftp.meer.net/pub/Netscape/
- * ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/Netscape/
-
- Spry Mosaic From Spry. Available by anonymous FTP from
- ftp.spry.com
- in the directory AirMosaicDemo as the file AMOSDEMO.EXE. Spry
- Mosaic
- is a commercial product but a demonstration version is available
- and
- can be registered inexpensively. Works under OS/2. Supports the
- mailto: URL, transparent GIFs, ALT tags, etc.; also supports
- hierarchical hotlists, a unique feature at the time of this
- writing.
-
-
-
- 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. You can do this one of two ways: using a proper SLIP
- account,
- which requires the active cooperation of your network provider or
- educational institution, or using The Internet Adapter (section
- 4.12),
- a product which simulates SLIP through your dialup Unix shell
- account.
- If you only have non-Unix based dialup shell access, or have no PC
- at
- home, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the VMS (or
- Unix, 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. You can do this one of two ways: using a proper SLIP
- account,
- which requires the active cooperation of your network provider or
- educational institution, or using The Internet Adapter (section
- 4.12),
- a product which simulates SLIP through your dialup Unix shell
- account.
- If you only have non-Unix based dialup shell access, or have no PC
- at
- home, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the VMS (or
- Unix, 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.
-
- Netscape
- From Mosaic Communications Corp (URL is:
- http://home.mcom.com/info/index.html ). Downloads and
- displays
- images incrementally while you read pages, which also
- display
- incrementally, making it the best browser at the time of
- this
- writing for those who connect to the web via modems. Also
- supports many extensions to HTML, although not all conform
- to
- the proposed standard. Netscape is a commercial product but
- is
- free for personal use by individuals. Version 0.9 (available
- to
- the public as of this writing) does not support printing,
- but
- this is promised in the forthcoming version 1.0. _Contrary
- to
- popular myth, version 1.0 will be free for personal use,
- just
- like version 0.9._ Available by anonymous FTP from the
- following sites (use the mirror closest to you; see the URL
- above for the latest list):
-
- + ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/info-service/www/mcc/
- +
- ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/net/infosys/Mosaic_Comm/Netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.icsi.net/pub/packages/netscape/
- + ftp://www.sandia.gov/Netscape/
- + ftp://lark.cc.ukans.edu/Netscape/
- + ftp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.meer.net/pub/Netscape/
- + ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/Netscape/
-
- 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;
- 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. The original multimedia
- browser.
- Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image
- maps,
- etc. Version 2.5 beta 2 has introductory support for tables.
- 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. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms,
- image
- maps, etc. Probably the best browser available for VMS.
- Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the
- directory Mosaic.
-
- Netscape
- From Mosaic Communications Corp (URL is:
- http://home.mcom.com/info/index.html ). Downloads and
- displays
- images incrementally while you read pages, which also
- display
- incrementally, making it the best browser at the time of
- this
- writing for those who connect to the web via modems. Also
- supports many extensions to HTML, although not all conform
- to
- the proposed standard. Netscape is a commercial product but
- is
- free for personal use by individuals. Version 0.9 (available
- to
- the public as of this writing) does not support printing,
- but
- this is promised in the forthcoming version 1.0. _Contrary
- to
- popular myth, version 1.0 will be free for personal use,
- just
- like version 0.9._ Available by anonymous FTP from the
- following sites (use the mirror closest to you; see the URL
- above for the latest list):
-
- + ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/info-service/www/mcc/
- +
- ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/net/infosys/Mosaic_Comm/Netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.icsi.net/pub/packages/netscape/
- + ftp://www.sandia.gov/Netscape/
- + ftp://lark.cc.ukans.edu/Netscape/
- + ftp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.meer.net/pub/Netscape/
- + ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/Netscape/
-
- 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
- A WWW browser for emacs. Runs under Xwindows, NeXTstep, VMS,
- OS/2, Windows NT, Windows 3.1, AmigaDOS, or just about any
- Unix
- system. Supports multiple fonts, color, and mouse support if
- using Lemacs, Epoch, or Emacs 19. Also works in local mode
- under DOS and on the Macintosh. Available by anonymous ftp
- from
- ftp.cs.indiana.edu in the directory pub/elisp/w3.
-
-
-
-
-
- 4.3.9: VM/CMS BROWSERS
-
- Albert
- A WWW browser for the VM/CMS operating system. Available by
- anonymous FTP from gopher.ufl.edu in the directory
- pub/vm/www/.
-
-
-
-
-
- 4.3.9: 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).
-
- You can also check out the newsgroup comp.internet.net-happenings,
- which carries WWW announcements and many other Internet-related
- announcements. The ball is rolling to create
- comp.infosystems.www.announce, but this group does not yet exist.
- You
- can follow the discussion in news.groups.
-
-
-
- 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. However, it does a good
- job
- of sorting the documents it finds according to how closely they
- match your search.
- * 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.
- * Lycos (URL is http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/lycos-home.html )
- is
- another web-indexing robot, which includes the ability to
- submit
- the URLs of your own documents by hand, ensuring that they are
- available for searching.
-
- 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
- documen
- t
- // you supply the blank line
- HTTP/1.0 200 OK // the rest of this comes from
- the
- serve
- r 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):
-
-
- #!/bin/sh
- echo \<PRE\> > .article.html
- cat >> .article.html
- echo \</PRE\> >> .article.html
- lynx .article.html < /dev/tty
- rm .article.html
-
- Then add the following line to your .rnmac file (create it if you
- don't already have one):
-
-
- W |readwebpost %C
-
- Now, when you press "W" while reading a post in rn, a message will
- be
- sent to Lynx, and the links enclosed in it will be live.
-
- Larry W. Virden provides the following version which invokes Mosaic
- instead, and is also capable of communicating with an already-
- running
- copy of Mosaic instead of launching another. (You can use the same
- rn
- macro as above, invoking "goto-xm" instead of "readwebpost".) Read
- the
- comments for details on the assumptions made by the script.
-
-
- #! /bin/sh
- # goto-xm, by Joseph T. Buck
- # Modified heavily by Larry W. Virden
- # Script for use with newsreaders such as trn. Piping the article
- # through this command causes xmosaic to pop up, pointing to the
- # article. If an existing xmosaic (version 1.1 or later) exists,
- # the USR1 method will be used to cause it to point to the correct
- # article, otherwise a new one will be started.
-
- # assumptions: ps command works as is on SunOS 4.1.x, may need changes
- # on other platforms.
-
- URL=`/bin/grep '^Message-ID:' | /bin/sed -e 's/.*</news:/' -e
- 's/>.*//'`
- if [ "X$URL" = "X" ]; then
- echo "USAGE: $0 [goto] [once] < USENET_msg" >&2
- exit 1
- fi
-
- pid=`ps -xc | egrep '[Mm]osaic' | awk 'NR == 1 {print $1}'`
- p=`which Mosaic`
- gfile=/tmp/Mosaic.$pid
-
- $p "$URL" &
-
- if [ "$#" -gt 0 ] ; then
- if [ "$1" = "goto" -o "$1" = "same" ] ; then
- shift
- echo "goto" > $gfile
- else
- echo "newwin" > $gfile
- fi
- else
- echo "newwin" > $gfile
- fi
- /bin/awk 'END { printf "'"$URL"'" }' </dev/null >> $gfile
-
- trap "echo signal encountered" 30
- kill -USR1 $pid
-
- exit 0
-
-
-
- See also MosaicMail (URL is
- http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/mhonarc.doc.html ), a Perl
- script
- which pipes email and/or news to your current Mosaic session.
-
-
-
- 4.12: I can't get SLIP. I want Mosaic. Is there a way?
-
- YES! If you have a plain old Unix shell account on a Unix system,
- such
- as a SunOS or Ultrix system, you can run The Internet Adapter
- (TIA), a
- program which provides a pseudo-SLIP connection. TIA is _not_ free
- software, but there is a free two-week trial period and it is very
- cheap to register.
-
- "So what do I run on my machine at home?"
-
- Exactly the same software you would use for real SLIP; as far as
- your
- PC is concerned, it _is_ a SLIP connection. If you're unfamiliar
- with
- SLIP please check out a newsgroup relevant to your particular type
- of
- PC (Windows, Mac, etc). (This isn't restricted to common systems;
- because all the emulation happens on your Unix shell account, your
- client machine can run anything that supports SLIP.)
-
- "Details, please! I'm confused."
-
- Check out the TIA home page (URL is
- http://marketplace.com/tia/tiahome.html ), or send email to
- info@marketplace.com and request details about TIA.
-
-
-
- @FROM :boutell@netcom.com
- @SUBJECT:World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 2/2
- @PACKOUT:11-20-94
- Message-ID: <www/faq/part2_785319255@rtfm.mit.edu>
- Path:
- ns.channel1.com!wizard.pn.com!Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net
- gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv
- From: boutell@netcom.com (Thomas Boutell)
- Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www,comp.infosystems.www.misc
- comp.infosystems.www.users,comp.infosystems.www.providers
- comp.infosystems.wais,comp.infosystems.gopher,comp.infosystems,alt.hyp
- ertext
- comp.answers,alt.answers,news.answers
- Subject: World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 2/2
- Supersedes: <www/faq/part2_784698325@rtfm.mit.edu>
- Followup-To: comp.infosystems.www.misc
- Date: 20 Nov 1994 08:15:26 GMT
- Organization: Nerdsholm
- Lines: 736
- Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
- Distribution: world
- Expires: 11 Dec 1994 08:14:15 GMT
- Message-ID: <www/faq/part2_785319255@rtfm.mit.edu>
- References: <www/faq/part1_785319255@rtfm.mit.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu
- Summary: beginner & advanced world wide web questions-read before
- posting to
- comp.infosystems.www.[...] newsgroups
- X-Last-Updated: 1994/11/04
- Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU
- Xref: ns.channel1.com comp.infosystems.www.misc:9374
- comp.infosystems.www.users:8149 comp.infosystems.www.providers:8828
- comp.infosystems.wais:3825 comp.infosystems.gopher:15103
- comp.infosystems:4441
- alt.hypertext:6226 comp.answers:8219 alt.answers:5421
- news.answers:31718
-
-
- Archive-name: www/faq/part2
- Last-modified: 1994/11/4
-
- WORLD WIDE WEB FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
-
- This is part 2 of a 2-part posting.
- Part 2 begins with section 5 (providing
- information to the web). Part 1 should be the
- previous posting in this thread.
-
- 5.1: HOW CAN I PROVIDE INFORMATION TO THE WEB?
-
-
- Information providers run programs that the browsers can obtain
- hypertext from. These programs can either be WWW servers that
- understand the HyperText Transfer Protocol HTTP (best if you are
- creating your information database from scratch), "gateway"
- programs
- that convert an existing information format to hypertext, or a
- non-HTTP server that WWW browsers can access -- anonymous FTP or
- gopher, for example.
-
- To learn more about World Wide Web servers, you can consult a www
- server primer by Nathan Torkington, available at the URL
- http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-servers.html .
-
- If you only want to provide information to local users, placing
- your
- information in local files is also an option. This means, however,
- that there can be no off-machine access.
-
-
-
- 5.2: Obtaining Servers
-
- Servers are available for Unix, Macintosh, MS Windows, and VMS
- systems. If you know of a server for another operating system,
- please
- contact me.
-
- See http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Overview.html for more
- information on writing servers and gateways in general.
-
-
-
- 5.2.1: UNIX SERVERS
-
- NCSA httpd
- NCSA has released a server, known as the NCSA httpd; it is
- available at the URL ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/ncsa_httpd
- .
-
- EIT httpd
- EIT has created the Webmaster's Starter Kit, which installs
- their WWW server on your system via the web through a
- painless
- forms interface. Recommended for those unfamiliar with
- server
- installation. You can learn more about the starter kit and
- the
- EIT httpd at the starter kit site (URL is
- http://wsk.eit.com/wsk/doc/ ).
-
- CERN httpd
- CERN's server is available for anonymous FTP from
- info.cern.ch
- (URL is http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Status.html
- )
- and many other places. Use your local copy of archie to
- search
- for "www" in order to find a nearby site.
-
- GN Gopher/HTTP server
- The GN server is unique in that it can serve both WWW and
- Gopher clients (in their native modes). This is a good
- server
- for those migrating from Gopher to WWW, although it does not
- have the server-side-script capabilities of the NCSA and
- CERN
- servers. See the URL http://hopf.math.nwu.edu/.
-
- Perl server
- There is also a server written in the Perl scripting
- language,
- called Plexus, for which documentation is available at the
- URL
- http://bsdi.com/server/doc/plexus.html .
-
-
-
- 5.2.2: MACINTOSH SERVERS
-
- There is a server for the Macintosh, MacHTTP, available at the URL
- http://www.uth.tmc.edu/mac_info/machttp_info.html .
-
-
-
- 5.2.3: MS WINDOWS AND WINDOWS NT SERVERS
-
- HTTPS (Windows NT)
- HTTPS is a server for Windows NT systems, both Intel and
- Alpha
- -- based. It is available via anonymous FTP from
- emwac.ed.ac.uk
- in the directory pub/https (URL is
- ftp://emwac.ed.ac.uk/pub/https). (Be sure to download the
- version appropriate to your processor.) You can read a
- detailed
- announcement at the FTP site, or by using the URL
- ftp://emwac.ed.ac.uk/pub/https/https.txt.
-
- NCSA httpd for Windows
- The NCSA httpd for Windows has most of the features of the
- Unix
- version, including scripts (which generate pages on the fly
- based on user input). It is available by anonymous FTP from
- ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the Web/ncsa_httpd/contrib directory as
- the file whtp11a6.zip, or at the URL
- ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/ncsa_httpd/contrib/whtp11a6.zip.
-
- SerWeb
- A simple, effective server for Windows writtten by Gustavo
- Estrella. Available by anonymous ftp from
- winftp.cica.indiana.edu (or one of its mirror sites, such as
- nic.switch.ch), as the file serweb03.zip, in the directory
- /pub/pc/win3/winsock.
-
- There is also a Windows NT version of SerWeb, available by
- anonymous FTP from emwac.ed.ac.uk as
- /pub/serweb/serweb_i.zip.
-
- WEB4HAM
- Another Windows-based server, available by anonymous FTP
- from
- ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de as
- /pub/net/winsock/web4ham.zip.
-
- OS2HTTPD
- An OS/2 server, written by Frankie Fan. See the home page
- (URL
- is ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/kfan/overview.html ) for
- details,
- or fetch the package by anonymous FTP from ftp.netcom.com in
- the directory pub/kfan.
-
-
-
- 5.2.4: MSDOS SERVERS
-
- KA9Q NOS (nos11c.exe) is a internet server package for DOS that
- includes HTTP and Gopher servers. It can be obtained via anonymous
- FTP
- from one of the following sites:
-
-
- inorganic5.chem.ufl.edu
- biochemistry.cwru.edu
-
-
-
-
-
- 5.2.5: VMS SERVERS
-
- CERN HTTP for VMS
- A port of the CERN server to VMS. Available at the URL
-
- http://delonline.cern.ch/disk$user/duns/doc/vms/distribution.ht
- ml .
-
- Region 6 Threaded HTTP Server
- A native VMS server which uses DECthreads(tm). This is a
- potentially major performance advantage because VMS has a
- high
- overhead for each process, which is a problem for the
- frequently-forking NCSA and CERN servers that began life
- under
- Unix. A multithreaded server avoids this overhead. Available
- at
- the URL http://kcgl1.eng.ohio-
- state.edu/www/doc/serverinfo.html
- .
-
-
-
-
-
- 5.2.6: AMIGA SERVERS
-
- NCSA's Unix server has been ported to the Amiga, and is bundled
- with
- the AMosaic browser. See the URL
- http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/AMosaic/home.html for details.
-
-
-
- 5.2.7: VM/CMS SERVERS
-
- A VM/CMS web server is available; see the URL
- http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~troth/rickvmsw/rickvmsw.html for more
- information. If you don't yet have a web browser to try this URL
- with,
- check out the VM/CMS Browsers section.
-
-
-
- 5.2.6: AMIGA SERVERS
-
- 5.3: Producing HTML documents
-
- HTML is the simple markup system used to create hypertext
- documents.
- There are three ways to produce HTML documents: writing them
- yourself,
- which is not a very difficult skill to acquire, using an HTML
- editor,
- which assists in doing the above, and converting documents in other
- formats to HTML. The following three sections cover these
- possibilities in sequence.
-
-
-
- 5.3.1: WRITING HTML DOCUMENTS YOURSELF
-
- You can write an HTML document with any text editor. Try the
- "source"
- button of your browser (or "save as" HTML) to look at the HTML for
- a
- page you find particularly interesting. The odds are that it will
- be a
- great deal simpler than you would expect. If you're used to marking
- up
- text in any way (even red-pencilling it), HTML should be rather
- intuitive.
-
- A beginner's guide to HTML is available at the URL
- http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html . You
- can also find a plain text version (at the URL
- ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ncsapubs/WWW/HTMLPrimer.txt) and a
- compressed
- Postscript version (at the URL
- ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ncsapubs/WWW/HTMLPrimer.ps.Z). (Since the
- latter two are FTP URLs, you can fetch them by hand using FTP if
- you
- do not yet have a web browser.)
-
- There is also a good set of HTML documentation available at the URL
- http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/htmldoc.html .
-
- There is also an HTML primer by Nathan Torkington at the URL
- http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-html.html .
-
-
-
- 5.3.2: HTML EDITORS
-
- Of course, most folks would still prefer to use a friendlier,
- graphical editor. Some editors are WYSIWYG (What You See Is What
- You
- Get), or close to it; others simply assist you in writing HTML by
- plugging in the desired markup tags for you from a menu.
-
- Fans of the EMACS editor can use EMACS and html-helper-mode , an
- EMACS
- "mode" for HTML editing (URL is
- http://www.reed.edu/~nelson/tools/).
-
- There is also another Emacs HTML mode, html-mode.el (URL is
- ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/elisp/html-mode.el).
-
- For Microsoft Windows users, there is an editor called HTML
- Assistant
- with features to assist in the creation of HTML documents. It can
- be
- had by anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.dal.ca in the directory
- /htmlasst/.
- Read the README.1ST file in this directory for information on which
- files to download.
-
- A WYSIWYG editor for the Web, SoftQuad HoTMetaL, is available for
- downloading at NCSA and other Mosaic server sites. Many mirror
- sites
- exist; if you can't get through to one, try another, don't give up!
- That's what mirror sites are for. (Also be sure to use the copy
- closest to you geographically if possible.) Hotmetal is available
- for
- both Sun Sparc systems and Windows systems; note that Windows users
- need at least 6 megabytes of free memory. (A 2-megabyte swap file
- should just barely do the trick on a 4MB machine.)
-
- Known mirrors:
- * ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/html/hotmetal/
- * ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/SGML/HoTMetaL
- * ftp://sgml1.ex.ac.uk/SoftQuad
- * ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/WWW/ncsa/html/hotmetal/
- *
- ftp://askhp.ask.uni-
- karlsruhe.de/pub/infosystems/mosaic/contrib/Sof
- tQuad
- * ftp://ftp.cs.concordia.ca/pub/www
- *
-
- You need a Sun SPARC or Microsoft Windows system and 6MB of disk
- (6MB
- of RAM minimum for MS Windows; swap files count). Other Unix
- systems
- may be supported by the time you read this; have a look on one of
- the
- sites above.
-
- Because it is context-sensitive, HoTMetaL guides users in creating
- new
- HTML documents and in cleaning up old ones. A Publish command
- changes
- appropriate SRC and HREF attributes from local paths to http
- locations. For more information, FTP the README file from the same
- directory, or send email to hotmetal@sq.com. A HoTMetaL Pro
- commercially supported version is available for purchase from
- SoftQuad
- and its resellers.
-
- Also see Gabriel White's reviews of MS Windows HTML editors (URL is
- http://werple.apana.org.au/~gabriel/html-editors/ ). Another
- option,
- if you have an SGML editor, is to use it with the HTML DTD (URL is
- http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/DTDHeading.html ).
-
- An editor for all X users: TkWWW (listed above under X browsers)
- supports WYSIWYG HTML editing; and since it's a browser, you can
- try
- out links immediately after creating them.
-
- Also for X users, there is a package called htmltext which supports
- WYSIWYG HTML editing. More information is available at the URL
- http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/homes/njw/htmltext/htmltext.html .
-
- For Macintosh users, there is evidently a near-WYSIWYG package
- called
- HTML Editor (URL is
- http://dragon.acadiau.ca:1667/~giles/HTML_Editor).
-
-
- Also for Macintosh users, the BBEdit HTML extensions allow the
- BBEdit
- and BBEdit Lite text editors for the Macintosh to conveniently edit
- HTML documents. (URL is http://www.uji.es/bbedit-html-
- extensions.html
- .) You can also obtain the extensions package by anonymous ftp from
- sumex-aim.stanford.edu as info-mac/bbedit-html-ext-b3.hqx.
-
- There is an alternative BBEdit extension package available as well
- (URL is http://www.york.ac.uk/~ld11/BBEditTools.html ). it is
- available by FTP from ftp.york.ac.uk in the directory
- /pub/users/ld11/BBEdit_HTML_Tools.sea.hqx.
-
- NCSA's List of Filters and Editors, for which the URL is
- http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/faq-software.html
- #editors, mentions several editors, including two for MS Windows.
- In
- some cases, the "editor" amounts to a set of macros for an existing
- word processor, which can provide a near-WYSIWYG environment.
-
- Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters;
- certain
- operating systems won't allow mixed case on the command line, or
- will
- only allow it if it is quoted (VMS), so if you are launching Lynx
- or
- another client and specifying a URL at the command line, try
- quoting
- the URL in double-quotes ("URL").
-
-
-
- 5.3.3: CONVERTING OTHER FORMATS TO HTML
-
- There is a collection of filters for converting your existing
- documents (in TeX and other non-HTML formats) into HTML
- automatically,
- including filters that can allow more or less WYSIWYG editing using
- various word processors:
-
- Rich Brandwein and Mike Sendall's List at CERN (URL is
- http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/Filters.html ).
-
- (Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters;
- certain
- operating systems such as VMS require you to quote mixed-case URLs
- when launching a borwser from the command line. This is NOT a bug
- in
- the browser.)
-
- There is also a Word for Windows template for writing HTML
- documents,
- available at the URL http://www.gatech.edu/word_html/release.htm .
-
-
-
- 5.3.3: CHECKING YOUR HTML FOR ERRORS
-
- Tools to validate your HTML documents (check them for errors) are
- available. There is a form at the URL
- http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly/html-test/service/validation-
- form.html
- which will check HTML documents for errors according to the latest
- specification; note that you are encouraged to set up the program
- on
- your own system if you make heavy use of the form. There is also a
- tool which will check the links in your documents for links to
- nonexistent resources, such as pages that have moved (URL is
- http://wsk.eit.com/wsk/dist/doc/admin/webtest/verify_links.html ).
-
- Also try web-lint (URL is http://www.unipress.com/web-lint/ ),
- which
- will check your HTML for errors when you supply it with the URL or
- paste your page into a form.
-
-
-
- 5.4: How do I publicize my work?
-
- There are several things you can do to publicize your new HTML
- server
- or other offering:
- * Submit it to the NCSA What's New Page at the URL
- http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-
- new.html
- (see the page for details on how to submit your listing!).
- * Post it to the newsgroup comp.infosystems.announce. Please read
- the group first to get a feel for the contents. You should not
- post to comp.infosystems.www.users,.misc,.providers, etc., but
- if
- you feel compelled to do so, please choose .misc as
- announcements
- are of interest to both providers and users (and those who wear
- both hats).
- * Submit it to the maintainers of various catalogs, such as the
- WWW
- Virtual Library (at the URL
-
- http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html
- ) and the ALIWEB index (at the URL
- http://web.nexor.co.uk/aliweb/doc/aliweb.html ).
- * Read Gareth Rees' guide to publishing on the World Wide Web.
- (URL
- is http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/gdr11/publish.html ).
-
-
-
- 5.5: Can I buy space on an existing server?
-
-
- ·
- Yes, you can. A list of sites offering WWW space for lease is
- available (at the URL http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/www/leasing.shtml
- ).
-
-
-
- 5.6.1: HOW DO I SET UP A CLICKABLE IMAGE MAP?
-
-
-
- There are really two issues here: how to indicate in HTML that you
- want an image to be clickable, and how to configure your server to
- do
- something with the clicks returned by Mosaic, Chimera, and other
- clients capable of delivering them.
-
- You can read about image maps and the NCSA server at the URL
- http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/setup/admin/Imagemap.html .
-
- Using imagemaps requires that you create a map file; you can do
- this
- by hand or with a WYSIWYG tool. I wrote Mapedit (URL is:
- http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/mapedit/mapedit.html ), which is
- such a
- tool for Microsoft Windows and the X Window System. Other tools are
- available. (URLs, anyone?)
-
- _Important Note:_ Creating imagemaps requires a cooperative server
- administrator and a real web server. Don't waste time making maps
- before making sure you have the necessary tools to deliver them.
-
-
-
- 5.6.2: HOW DO I MAKE A "LINK" THAT DOESN'T LOAD A NEW PAGE?
-
-
-
- Such links are useful when a form is intended to perform some
- action
- on the server machine without sending new information to the
- client,
- or when a user has clicked in an undefined area in an image map;
- these
- are just two possibilities.
-
- Rob McCool of NCSA provided the following wisdom on the subject:
-
-
- Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund (sg04@gte.com) wrote:
- : Ok, here is another bizzare request from me:
-
- : I am currently running scripts which I "DO NOT" want to return
- : any visible result. That is, not text/plain, not text/HTML, not
- : image/gif. The entire results are the side effects of the
- : script and nothing should be returned to the viewer.
-
- : It would be nice to have an internally supported null viewer
- : so that I could do this, more "cleanly" (ok, ok, I hear your
- groans).
-
-
-
- HTTP now supports a response code of 204, which is no operation.
- Some
- browsers such as Mosaic/X 2.* support it. To use it, make your
- script
- a nph script and output an HTTP/1.0 204 header. Something like:
-
- HTTP/1.0 204 No response Server: Myscript/NCSA httpd 1.1
-
- (You can learn more about nph scripts from the NCSA server
- documentation at the URL http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs.)
- Essentially they are scripts that handle their own HTTP response
- codes.
-
-
-
- 5.6.3: WHERE CAN I LEARN HOW TO CREATE FILL-OUT FORMS?
-
- You can read about the Common Gateway Interface (at the URL
- http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu:80/cgi/). In addition to documenting
- the
- standard interface for which scripts can now be written for both
- NCSA
- and CERN-derived servers, these pages also cover HTML forms and how
- to
- handle the results on the server side. See the section on email
- forms
- for a simple solution to the most commonly desired form.
-
-
-
- 5.6.3.1: How can I create hidden fields in forms (keeping state)?
-
- Use INPUT TYPE=hidden. An example:
-
-
- <INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=state VALUE="hidden info to be returned with
- form">
-
- By now, most if not all browsers can handle the hidden type. Note
- that
- "hidden" doesn't mean "secret"; the user can always click on "view
- source".
-
-
-
- 5.6.3.2: How can users send me email through their browsers?
-
- If you have access to the server's configuration files, or if your
- server administrator permits users to create their own CGI scripts,
- you can arrange it. I've written a simple email forms package (URL
- is:
- http://siva.cshl.org/email/index.html ), which does it in ANSI C.
- There is also a package floating around in Perl (URL, anyone?).
-
-
-
- 5.6.4: HOW DO I COMMENT AN HTML DOCUMENT?
-
-
-
- Use the <!-- tag at the beginning of EACH line commented out; close
- this for EACH line with the --> tag. Note that comments do not
- nest,
- and the sequence "--" may not appear inside a comment except as
- part
- of the closing --> tag.
-
- You should _not_ try to use this to "comment out" HTML that would
- otherwise be shown to the user, since some browsers (notably
- Mosaic)
- will still pay attention to tags inside the comment and close it
- prematurely.
-
- _Thanks to Joe English for clearing up this issue._
-
-
-
- 5.6.5: HOW CAN I CREATE DECENT-LOOKING TABLES AND STOP USING
- <PRE>...
- </PRE>?
-
- 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
- <PRE>...</PRE> 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 <IMG SRC...>.
-
- GIF does a better job with crisp, sharp images, such as those
- typically used to construct buttons, graphs and the like. All
- browsers
- that can display graphics at all can display GIFs inline.
-
-
-
- 5.6.11: HOW CAN I MIRROR PART OF ANOTHER SERVER?
-
- Scripts are available to do this, but at this time they are not
- very
- friendly to the server you are attempting to mirror; their behavior
- resembles that of the more poorly written WWW robots. If you are
- trying to improve access times to a distant server, you will likely
- find the "proxy" capabilities of CERN's WWW server to be a more
- effective and general solution to your problem.
-
-
-
- 5.6.12: HOW CAN I KEEP ROBOTS OFF MY SERVER?
-
- Programs that automatically traverse the web can be quite useful,
- but
- have the potential to make a serious mess of things. Every so often
- someone will write a "depth-first" searching robot that brings
- servers
- to their knees. See the section on writing robots (4.10) for
- details.
-
- Fortunately, most robots on the web follow a simple protocol by
- which
- you can keep them off your server if you wish, or keep them out of
- portions of your server which are robot traps (ie, they contain an
- infinite number of possible links). Read 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,
- including useful cataloging robots you probably do _not_ want to
- keep
- off your server.
-
-
-
- 5.6.13: HOW CAN I KEEP STATISTICS ABOUT MY WEB SERVER?
-
- There are several tools which can generate statistics about your
- web
- server:
-
- getstats
- getstats is a versatile log analyzer, also written in C,
- which
- provides reports for various time periods with a high degree
- of
- flexibility. Add-on packages have been written to generate
- reports in HTML and also to generate graphs. You can access
- the
- getstats home page for more information (URL is
- http://www.eit.com/software/getstats/getstats.html ), or
- obtain
- the package by anonymous FTP from ftp.eit.com in the
- directory
- /pub/web.software/getstats.
-
- WebStat
- WebStat is a package written in the language Python which
- supplies statistics on usage by domain, country, etc., with
- daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports available. You
- will
- need Python in order to use it. See the WebStat home page
- (URL
- is
-
- http://www.pegasus.esprit.ec.org/people/sijben/statistics/adver
- tisment.html ) for details, or obtain Python from ftp.cwi.nl
- in
- the directory /pub/python and WebStat from
- ftp.pegasus.esprit.ec.org in the directory /pub/misc.
-
- Wusage
- Wusage, which I wrote, is a C program which generates simple
- weekly reports in HTML, with inline image graphs displaying
- server growth and the distribution of accesses by continent.
- You can also exclude irrelevant accesses (inline images,
- local
- machines, etc.) from the results. Read the Wusage home page
- (URL is http://siva.cshl.org/wusage.html ) for more
- information, or obtain Wusage by anonymous FTP from
- isis.cshl.org in the directory pub/wusage.
-
- wwwstat
- wwwstat is a full-featured log analyzer written in the
- language
- Perl. (See the newsgroup comp.lang.perl for more information
- about the language.) See the wwwstat home page (URL is
- http://www.ics.uci.edu/WebSoft/wwwstat/) for more
- information,
- or obtain the package by anonymous FTP from
- liege.ics.uci.edu
- in the directory /pub/arcadia/wwwstat. See also gwstat (URL
- is
- http://dis.cs.umass.edu/stats/gwstat.html ), a package which
- produces GIF graphs from the output of wwwstat.
-
-
-
-
-
- 6: WHAT NEWSGROUPS DISCUSS THE WEB?
-
- You can find discussion of World Wide Web topics in three
- newsgroups,
- and one newsgroup which will soon be removed:
-
- comp.infosystems.www.users
- A forum for the discussion of WWW client software and its
- use
- in contacting various Internet information sources. New user
- questions, client setup questions, client bug reports,
- resource-discovery questions on how to locate information on
- the web that can't be found by the means detailed in the FAQ
- and comparison between various client packages are among the
- acceptable topics for this group. Please specify what
- browser
- and what system type (Windows, Mac, Unix, etc.) your post is
- about if you are asking questions about a specific program.
-
- comp.infosystems.www.providers
- A forum for the discussion of WWW server software and the
- use
- of said software to present information to users. General
- server design, setup questions, server bug reports, security
- issues, HTML page design and other concerns of information
- providers are among the likely topics for this group.
-
- comp.infosystems.www.misc
- A forum for general discussion of WWW (World Wide Web)-
- related
- topics that are NOT covered by the other newsgroups in the
- hierarchy. This will likely include discussions of the Web's
- future, politicking regarding changes in the structure and
- protocols of the web that affect both clients and servers,
- et
- cetera.
-
- comp.infosystems.www (DEFUNCT)
- The old catch-all newsgroup, which may still exist on your
- system but was officially removed on September 7th,
- according
- to David Lawrence, moderator of news.announce.newgroups. If
- your system still carries this group, ask your administrator
- to
- remove it.
-
-
-
-
-
- 7: I WANT TO KNOW MORE
-
-
-
- To find out more, use the web. This FAQ hopefully provides enough
- information for you to locate and install a browser on your system.
- If
- you have system specific questions regarding FTP, networking and
- the
- like, please consult newsgroups relevant to your particular
- hardware
- and operating system!
-
- Once you're up and running, you may wish to consult the World Wide
- Web
- Primer by Nathan Torkington. It is available at the URL
- http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-primer.html .
-
- Later you may return to this FAQ for answers to some of the more
- advanced questions. I encourage you to check out the changes listed
- early in the document each time the FAQ appears.
-
-
-
- 8: CREDITS
-
- Present Maintainer: Thomas Boutell, _boutell@netcom.com_
-
- Former Maintainers:
- * Nathan Torkington, _Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz_
- * Marc Andreessen, _marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu_
- * Tony Johnson
-
-
-
-
- @FROM :boutell@netcom.com
- @SUBJECT:World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 1/2
- @PACKOUT:11-20-94
- Message-ID: <www/faq/part1_785319255@rtfm.mit.edu>
- Path:
- ns.channel1.com!wizard.pn.com!Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net
- gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv
- From: boutell@netcom.com (Thomas Boutell)
- Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www,comp.infosystems.www.misc
- comp.infosystems.www.users,comp.infosystems.www.providers
- comp.infosystems.wais,comp.infosystems.gopher,comp.infosystems,alt.hyp
- ertext
- comp.answers,alt.answers,news.answers
- Subject: World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 1/2
- Supersedes: <www/faq/part1_784698325@rtfm.mit.edu>
- Followup-To: comp.infosystems.www.misc
- Date: 20 Nov 1994 08:15:15 GMT
- Organization: Nerdsholm
- Lines: 1088
- Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
- Distribution: world
- Expires: 11 Dec 1994 08:14:15 GMT
- Message-ID: <www/faq/part1_785319255@rtfm.mit.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu
- Summary: beginner & advanced world wide web questions-read before
- posting to
- comp.infosystems.www.[...] newsgroups
- X-Last-Updated: 1994/11/04
- Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU
- Xref: ns.channel1.com comp.infosystems.www.misc:9373
- comp.infosystems.www.users:8148 comp.infosystems.www.providers:8827
- comp.infosystems.wais:3824 comp.infosystems.gopher:15102
- comp.infosystems:4440
- alt.hypertext:6225 comp.answers:8218 alt.answers:5420
- news.answers:31717
-
-
- Archive-name: www/faq/part1
- Last-modified: 1994/11/4
-
- 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.
-
-
- WORLD WIDE WEB FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
-
-
- _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!_
-
- _ Last update: 11/4/94 _
-
- 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: What are SGML and HTML?
- + 3.4: 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: VM/CMS browsers
- o 4.3.9: 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?
- + 4.12: I can't get SLIP. I want Mosaic. Is there a way?
- (YES!)
- * 5: Providing Information to the Web (Provider Questions)
- 5.1: 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, Windows NT and OS/2 Servers
- o 5.2.4: MSDOS Servers
- o 5.2.5: VMS Servers
- o 5.2.6: Amiga Servers
- o 5.2.7: VM/CMS 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
- o 5.3.4: Checking your HTML for errors
- + 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 <PRE>...</PRE>?
- 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?
- o 5.6.13: How can I keep statistics about my web site?
- * 6: What newsgroups discuss the web?
- * 7: I want to know more.
- * 8: Credits
-
- 1: RECENT ADDITIONS AND CHANGES TO THE FAQ
-
- * 10/26/94: Corrections to the TIA section
- * 10/26/94: Client for VM/CMS
- * 10/26/94: Server for VM/CMS
- * 10/26/94: Updated mirrors of HoTMetaL
- * 10/26/94: Fixed URL for web page leasing
- * 11/3/94: Updates to web-by-mail section
- * 11/3/94: How to get the HTML version of the FAQ via email
- * 11/3/94: gwstat added to wwwstat description
- * 11/3/94: Spaces follow all plaintext URLs to make Netscape,
- etc.
- happy
- * 11/3/94: Gabriel White's HTML editor reviews linked
- * 11/3/94: Webmaster's Starter Kit
- * 11/3/94: WebLint
- * 11/3/94: Added comp.internet.net-happenings
- * 11/3/94: Added MosaicMail to section on piping to Mosaic
- * 11/3/94: Added Netscape to clients section ( Mac, Windows, X
- Window System)
-
-
-
-
-
- 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 and best
- version is always available on the web as
- http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html , and is mirrored
- in
- Japan (URL is
-
- http://www.glocom.ac.jp/mirror/sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.htm
- l ). (see section 3.2, "What is a URL?" to understand what this
- term
- means.) If you run a mirror site which automatically mirrors this
- document, please submit the URL for inclusion in the list of
- mirrors.
- Thanks to both Sunsite and Glocom.
-
- 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.
-
-
-
- If you want the HTML version but are located behind a firewall, you
- can acquire it from CERN's WWW email server. Send mail to
- listproc0@www.cern.ch with the following single line in the body
- (leave the subject blank):
-
- source http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html
-
- 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: What are SGML and HTML?
-
- Documents on the World Wide Web are written in a simple "markup
- language" called HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language.
- See
- section 5.3 for more information about creating HTML documents for
- use
- on the web.
-
- SGML is a much broader language which is used to define particular
- markup languages for particular purposes. HTML is just a specific
- application of SGML. You can learn more about SGML, and the
- rationale
- behind HTML, by reading A Gentle Introduction to SGML (URL is
- http://etext.virginia.edu/bin/tei-tocs?div=DIV1&id=SG ), a document
- provided by the Text Encoding Initiative. (_Note:_ Some browsers
- apparently crash on this URL. There's nothing wrong with the
- document;
- try another browser if you have problems.)
-
-
-
- 3.4: 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.
-
- World Wide Web usage grew far beyond Gopher usage in the last few
- months, 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.) WWW has long since
- reached
- critical mass, with new commercial and noncommercial sites
- appearing
- daily.
-
-
-
- 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!_). Note that
- "your machine" can be defined as a system you dial into from home,
- such as netcom or another account provider. Running a text-based
- browser on such a system is still preferable to telnetting to a
- faraway site.
-
- 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 listproc0@www.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. You can do this one of two ways: using a proper SLIP
- account,
- which requires the active cooperation of your network provider or
- educational institution, or using The Internet Adapter (section
- 4.12),
- a product which simulates SLIP through your dialup Unix shell
- account.
- If you only have non-Unix based dialup shell access, or have no PC
- at
- home, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the VMS (or
- Unix, 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.
-
- WinWeb From EINet. Available by anonymous FTP from
- ftp.einet.net
- in the directory /einet/pc/winweb as the file winweb.zip.
-
- Netscape From Mosaic Communications Corp (URL is:
- http://home.mcom.com/info/index.html ). Downloads and displays
- images
- incrementally while you read pages, which also display
- incrementally,
- making it the best browser at the time of this writing for those
- who
- connect to the web via modems. Also supports many extensions to
- HTML,
- although not all conform to the proposed standard. Netscape is a
- commercial product but is free for personal use by individuals.
- Version 0.9 (available to the public as of this writing) does not
- support printing, but this is promised in the forthcoming version
- 1.0.
- _Contrary to popular myth, version 1.0 will be free for personal
- use,
- just like version 0.9._ The 16-bit version works under OS/2 as well
- as
- Windows 3.1. Available by anonymous FTP from the following sites
- (use
- the mirror closest to you; see the URL above for the latest list):
- * ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape/
- * ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/info-service/www/mcc/
- * ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/net/infosys/Mosaic_Comm/Netscape/
- * ftp://ftp.icsi.net/pub/packages/netscape/
- * ftp://www.sandia.gov/Netscape/
- * ftp://lark.cc.ukans.edu/Netscape/
- * ftp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/netscape/
- * ftp://ftp.meer.net/pub/Netscape/
- * ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/Netscape/
-
- Spry Mosaic From Spry. Available by anonymous FTP from
- ftp.spry.com
- in the directory AirMosaicDemo as the file AMOSDEMO.EXE. Spry
- Mosaic
- is a commercial product but a demonstration version is available
- and
- can be registered inexpensively. Works under OS/2. Supports the
- mailto: URL, transparent GIFs, ALT tags, etc.; also supports
- hierarchical hotlists, a unique feature at the time of this
- writing.
-
-
-
- 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. You can do this one of two ways: using a proper SLIP
- account,
- which requires the active cooperation of your network provider or
- educational institution, or using The Internet Adapter (section
- 4.12),
- a product which simulates SLIP through your dialup Unix shell
- account.
- If you only have non-Unix based dialup shell access, or have no PC
- at
- home, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the VMS (or
- Unix, 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. You can do this one of two ways: using a proper SLIP
- account,
- which requires the active cooperation of your network provider or
- educational institution, or using The Internet Adapter (section
- 4.12),
- a product which simulates SLIP through your dialup Unix shell
- account.
- If you only have non-Unix based dialup shell access, or have no PC
- at
- home, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the VMS (or
- Unix, 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.
-
- Netscape
- From Mosaic Communications Corp (URL is:
- http://home.mcom.com/info/index.html ). Downloads and
- displays
- images incrementally while you read pages, which also
- display
- incrementally, making it the best browser at the time of
- this
- writing for those who connect to the web via modems. Also
- supports many extensions to HTML, although not all conform
- to
- the proposed standard. Netscape is a commercial product but
- is
- free for personal use by individuals. Version 0.9 (available
- to
- the public as of this writing) does not support printing,
- but
- this is promised in the forthcoming version 1.0. _Contrary
- to
- popular myth, version 1.0 will be free for personal use,
- just
- like version 0.9._ Available by anonymous FTP from the
- following sites (use the mirror closest to you; see the URL
- above for the latest list):
-
- + ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/info-service/www/mcc/
- +
- ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/net/infosys/Mosaic_Comm/Netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.icsi.net/pub/packages/netscape/
- + ftp://www.sandia.gov/Netscape/
- + ftp://lark.cc.ukans.edu/Netscape/
- + ftp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.meer.net/pub/Netscape/
- + ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/Netscape/
-
- 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;
- 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. The original multimedia
- browser.
- Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image
- maps,
- etc. Version 2.5 beta 2 has introductory support for tables.
- 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. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms,
- image
- maps, etc. Probably the best browser available for VMS.
- Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the
- directory Mosaic.
-
- Netscape
- From Mosaic Communications Corp (URL is:
- http://home.mcom.com/info/index.html ). Downloads and
- displays
- images incrementally while you read pages, which also
- display
- incrementally, making it the best browser at the time of
- this
- writing for those who connect to the web via modems. Also
- supports many extensions to HTML, although not all conform
- to
- the proposed standard. Netscape is a commercial product but
- is
- free for personal use by individuals. Version 0.9 (available
- to
- the public as of this writing) does not support printing,
- but
- this is promised in the forthcoming version 1.0. _Contrary
- to
- popular myth, version 1.0 will be free for personal use,
- just
- like version 0.9._ Available by anonymous FTP from the
- following sites (use the mirror closest to you; see the URL
- above for the latest list):
-
- + ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/info-service/www/mcc/
- +
- ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/net/infosys/Mosaic_Comm/Netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.icsi.net/pub/packages/netscape/
- + ftp://www.sandia.gov/Netscape/
- + ftp://lark.cc.ukans.edu/Netscape/
- + ftp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/netscape/
- + ftp://ftp.meer.net/pub/Netscape/
- + ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/Netscape/
-
- 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
- A WWW browser for emacs. Runs under Xwindows, NeXTstep, VMS,
- OS/2, Windows NT, Windows 3.1, AmigaDOS, or just about any
- Unix
- system. Supports multiple fonts, color, and mouse support if
- using Lemacs, Epoch, or Emacs 19. Also works in local mode
- under DOS and on the Macintosh. Available by anonymous ftp
- from
- ftp.cs.indiana.edu in the directory pub/elisp/w3.
-
-
-
-
-
- 4.3.9: VM/CMS BROWSERS
-
- Albert
- A WWW browser for the VM/CMS operating system. Available by
- anonymous FTP from gopher.ufl.edu in the directory
- pub/vm/www/.
-
-
-
-
-
- 4.3.9: 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).
-
- You can also check out the newsgroup comp.internet.net-happenings,
- which carries WWW announcements and many other Internet-related
- announcements. The ball is rolling to create
- comp.infosystems.www.announce, but this group does not yet exist.
- You
- can follow the discussion in news.groups.
-
-
-
- 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. However, it does a good
- job
- of sorting the documents it finds according to how closely they
- match your search.
- * 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.
- * Lycos (URL is http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/lycos-home.html )
- is
- another web-indexing robot, which includes the ability to
- submit
- the URLs of your own documents by hand, ensuring that they are
- available for searching.
-
- 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
- documen
- t
- // you supply the blank line
- HTTP/1.0 200 OK // the rest of this comes from
- the
- serve
- r 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):
-
-
- #!/bin/sh
- echo \<PRE\> > .article.html
- cat >> .article.html
- echo \</PRE\> >> .article.html
- lynx .article.html < /dev/tty
- rm .article.html
-
- Then add the following line to your .rnmac file (create it if you
- don't already have one):
-
-
- W |readwebpost %C
-
- Now, when you press "W" while reading a post in rn, a message will
- be
- sent to Lynx, and the links enclosed in it will be live.
-
- Larry W. Virden provides the following version which invokes Mosaic
- instead, and is also capable of communicating with an already-
- running
- copy of Mosaic instead of launching another. (You can use the same
- rn
- macro as above, invoking "goto-xm" instead of "readwebpost".) Read
- the
- comments for details on the assumptions made by the script.
-
-
- #! /bin/sh
- # goto-xm, by Joseph T. Buck
- # Modified heavily by Larry W. Virden
- # Script for use with newsreaders such as trn. Piping the article
- # through this command causes xmosaic to pop up, pointing to the
- # article. If an existing xmosaic (version 1.1 or later) exists,
- # the USR1 method will be used to cause it to point to the correct
- # article, otherwise a new one will be started.
-
- # assumptions: ps command works as is on SunOS 4.1.x, may need changes
- # on other platforms.
-
- URL=`/bin/grep '^Message-ID:' | /bin/sed -e 's/.*</news:/' -e
- 's/>.*//'`
- if [ "X$URL" = "X" ]; then
- echo "USAGE: $0 [goto] [once] < USENET_msg" >&2
- exit 1
- fi
-
- pid=`ps -xc | egrep '[Mm]osaic' | awk 'NR == 1 {print $1}'`
- p=`which Mosaic`
- gfile=/tmp/Mosaic.$pid
-
- $p "$URL" &
-
- if [ "$#" -gt 0 ] ; then
- if [ "$1" = "goto" -o "$1" = "same" ] ; then
- shift
- echo "goto" > $gfile
- else
- echo "newwin" > $gfile
- fi
- else
- echo "newwin" > $gfile
- fi
- /bin/awk 'END { printf "'"$URL"'" }' </dev/null >> $gfile
-
- trap "echo signal encountered" 30
- kill -USR1 $pid
-
- exit 0
-
-
-
- See also MosaicMail (URL is
- http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/mhonarc.doc.html ), a Perl
- script
- which pipes email and/or news to your current Mosaic session.
-
-
-
- 4.12: I can't get SLIP. I want Mosaic. Is there a way?
-
- YES! If you have a plain old Unix shell account on a Unix system,
- such
- as a SunOS or Ultrix system, you can run The Internet Adapter
- (TIA), a
- program which provides a pseudo-SLIP connection. TIA is _not_ free
- software, but there is a free two-week trial period and it is very
- cheap to register.
-
- "So what do I run on my machine at home?"
-
- Exactly the same software you would use for real SLIP; as far as
- your
- PC is concerned, it _is_ a SLIP connection. If you're unfamiliar
- with
- SLIP please check out a newsgroup relevant to your particular type
- of
- PC (Windows, Mac, etc). (This isn't restricted to common systems;
- because all the emulation happens on your Unix shell account, your
- client machine can run anything that supports SLIP.)
-
- "Details, please! I'm confused."
-
- Check out the TIA home page (URL is
- http://marketplace.com/tia/tiahome.html ), or send email to
- info@marketplace.com and request details about TIA.
-
-
-
- @FROM :boutell@netcom.com
- @SUBJECT:World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 2/2
- @PACKOUT:11-20-94
- Message-ID: <www/faq/part2_785319255@rtfm.mit.edu>
- Path:
- ns.channel1.com!wizard.pn.com!Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net
- gatech!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv
- From: boutell@netcom.com (Thomas Boutell)
- Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www,comp.infosystems.www.misc
- comp.infosystems.www.users,comp.infosystems.www.providers
- comp.infosystems.wais,comp.infosystems.gopher,comp.infosystems,alt.hyp
- ertext
- comp.answers,alt.answers,news.answers
- Subject: World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 2/2
- Supersedes: <www/faq/part2_784698325@rtfm.mit.edu>
- Followup-To: comp.infosystems.www.misc
- Date: 20 Nov 1994 08:15:26 GMT
- Organization: Nerdsholm
- Lines: 736
- Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
- Distribution: world
- Expires: 11 Dec 1994 08:14:15 GMT
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- References: <www/faq/part1_785319255@rtfm.mit.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu
- Summary: beginner & advanced world wide web questions-read before
- posting to
- comp.infosystems.www.[...] newsgroups
- X-Last-Updated: 1994/11/04
- Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU
- Xref: ns.channel1.com comp.infosystems.www.misc:9374
- comp.infosystems.www.users:8149 comp.infosystems.www.providers:8828
- comp.infosystems.wais:3825 comp.infosystems.gopher:15103
- comp.infosystems:4441
- alt.hypertext:6226 comp.answers:8219 alt.answers:5421
- news.answers:31718
-
-
- Archive-name: www/faq/part2
- Last-modified: 1994/11/4
-
- WORLD WIDE WEB FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
-
- This is part 2 of a 2-part posting.
- Part 2 begins with section 5 (providing
- information to the web). Part 1 should be the
- previous posting in this thread.
-
- 5.1: HOW CAN I PROVIDE INFORMATION TO THE WEB?
-
-
- Information providers run programs that the browsers can obtain
- hypertext from. These programs can either be WWW servers that
- understand the HyperText Transfer Protocol HTTP (best if you are
- creating your information database from scratch), "gateway"
- programs
- that convert an existing information format to hypertext, or a
- non-HTTP server that WWW browsers can access -- anonymous FTP or
- gopher, for example.
-
- To learn more about World Wide Web servers, you can consult a www
- server primer by Nathan Torkington, available at the URL
- http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-servers.html .
-
- If you only want to provide information to local users, placing
- your
- information in local files is also an option. This means, however,
- that there can be no off-machine access.
-
-
-
- 5.2: Obtaining Servers
-
- Servers are available for Unix, Macintosh, MS Windows, and VMS
- systems. If you know of a server for another operating system,
- please
- contact me.
-
- See http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Overview.html for more
- information on writing servers and gateways in general.
-
-
-
- 5.2.1: UNIX SERVERS
-
- NCSA httpd
- NCSA has released a server, known as the NCSA httpd; it is
- available at the URL ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/ncsa_httpd
- .
-
- EIT httpd
- EIT has created the Webmaster's Starter Kit, which installs
- their WWW server on your system via the web through a
- painless
- forms interface. Recommended for those unfamiliar with
- server
- installation. You can learn more about the starter kit and
- the
- EIT httpd at the starter kit site (URL is
- http://wsk.eit.com/wsk/doc/ ).
-
- CERN httpd
- CERN's server is available for anonymous FTP from
- info.cern.ch
- (URL is http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Status.html
- )
- and many other places. Use your local copy of archie to
- search
- for "www" in order to find a nearby site.
-
- GN Gopher/HTTP server
- The GN server is unique in that it can serve both WWW and
- Gopher clients (in their native modes). This is a good
- server
- for those migrating from Gopher to WWW, although it does not
- have the server-side-script capabilities of the NCSA and
- CERN
- servers. See the URL http://hopf.math.nwu.edu/.
-
- Perl server
- There is also a server written in the Perl scripting
- language,
- called Plexus, for which documentation is available at the
- URL
- http://bsdi.com/server/doc/plexus.html .
-
-
-
- 5.2.2: MACINTOSH SERVERS
-
- There is a server for the Macintosh, MacHTTP, available at the URL
- http://www.uth.tmc.edu/mac_info/machttp_info.html .
-
-
-
- 5.2.3: MS WINDOWS AND WINDOWS NT SERVERS
-
- HTTPS (Windows NT)
- HTTPS is a server for Windows NT systems, both Intel and
- Alpha
- -- based. It is available via anonymous FTP from
- emwac.ed.ac.uk
- in the directory pub/https (URL is
- ftp://emwac.ed.ac.uk/pub/https). (Be sure to download the
- version appropriate to your processor.) You can read a
- detailed
- announcement at the FTP site, or by using the URL
- ftp://emwac.ed.ac.uk/pub/https/https.txt.
-
- NCSA httpd for Windows
- The NCSA httpd for Windows has most of the features of the
- Unix
- version, including scripts (which generate pages on the fly
- based on user input). It is available by anonymous FTP from
- ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the Web/ncsa_httpd/contrib directory as
- the file whtp11a6.zip, or at the URL
- ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/ncsa_httpd/contrib/whtp11a6.zip.
-
- SerWeb
- A simple, effective server for Windows writtten by Gustavo
- Estrella. Available by anonymous ftp from
- winftp.cica.indiana.edu (or one of its mirror sites, such as
- nic.switch.ch), as the file serweb03.zip, in the directory
- /pub/pc/win3/winsock.
-
- There is also a Windows NT version of SerWeb, available by
- anonymous FTP from emwac.ed.ac.uk as
- /pub/serweb/serweb_i.zip.
-
- WEB4HAM
- Another Windows-based server, available by anonymous FTP
- from
- ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de as
- /pub/net/winsock/web4ham.zip.
-
- OS2HTTPD
- An OS/2 server, written by Frankie Fan. See the home page
- (URL
- is ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/kfan/overview.html ) for
- details,
- or fetch the package by anonymous FTP from ftp.netcom.com in
- the directory pub/kfan.
-
-
-
- 5.2.4: MSDOS SERVERS
-
- KA9Q NOS (nos11c.exe) is a internet server package for DOS that
- includes HTTP and Gopher servers. It can be obtained via anonymous
- FTP
- from one of the following sites:
-
-
- inorganic5.chem.ufl.edu
- biochemistry.cwru.edu
-
-
-
-
-
- 5.2.5: VMS SERVERS
-
- CERN HTTP for VMS
- A port of the CERN server to VMS. Available at the URL
-
- http://delonline.cern.ch/disk$user/duns/doc/vms/distribution.ht
- ml .
-
- Region 6 Threaded HTTP Server
- A native VMS server which uses DECthreads(tm). This is a
- potentially major performance advantage because VMS has a
- high
- overhead for each process, which is a problem for the
- frequently-forking NCSA and CERN servers that began life
- under
- Unix. A multithreaded server avoids this overhead. Available
- at
- the URL http://kcgl1.eng.ohio-
- state.edu/www/doc/serverinfo.html
- .
-
-
-
-
-
- 5.2.6: AMIGA SERVERS
-
- NCSA's Unix server has been ported to the Amiga, and is bundled
- with
- the AMosaic browser. See the URL
- http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/AMosaic/home.html for details.
-
-
-
- 5.2.7: VM/CMS SERVERS
-
- A VM/CMS web server is available; see the URL
- http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~troth/rickvmsw/rickvmsw.html for more
- information. If you don't yet have a web browser to try this URL
- with,
- check out the VM/CMS Browsers section.
-
-
-
- 5.2.6: AMIGA SERVERS
-
- 5.3: Producing HTML documents
-
- HTML is the simple markup system used to create hypertext
- documents.
- There are three ways to produce HTML documents: writing them
- yourself,
- which is not a very difficult skill to acquire, using an HTML
- editor,
- which assists in doing the above, and converting documents in other
- formats to HTML. The following three sections cover these
- possibilities in sequence.
-
-
-
- 5.3.1: WRITING HTML DOCUMENTS YOURSELF
-
- You can write an HTML document with any text editor. Try the
- "source"
- button of your browser (or "save as" HTML) to look at the HTML for
- a
- page you find particularly interesting. The odds are that it will
- be a
- great deal simpler than you would expect. If you're used to marking
- up
- text in any way (even red-pencilling it), HTML should be rather
- intuitive.
-
- A beginner's guide to HTML is available at the URL
- http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html . You
- can also find a plain text version (at the URL
- ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ncsapubs/WWW/HTMLPrimer.txt) and a
- compressed
- Postscript version (at the URL
- ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ncsapubs/WWW/HTMLPrimer.ps.Z). (Since the
- latter two are FTP URLs, you can fetch them by hand using FTP if
- you
- do not yet have a web browser.)
-
- There is also a good set of HTML documentation available at the URL
- http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/htmldoc.html .
-
- There is also an HTML primer by Nathan Torkington at the URL
- http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-html.html .
-
-
-
- 5.3.2: HTML EDITORS
-
- Of course, most folks would still prefer to use a friendlier,
- graphical editor. Some editors are WYSIWYG (What You See Is What
- You
- Get), or close to it; others simply assist you in writing HTML by
- plugging in the desired markup tags for you from a menu.
-
- Fans of the EMACS editor can use EMACS and html-helper-mode , an
- EMACS
- "mode" for HTML editing (URL is
- http://www.reed.edu/~nelson/tools/).
-
- There is also another Emacs HTML mode, html-mode.el (URL is
- ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/elisp/html-mode.el).
-
- For Microsoft Windows users, there is an editor called HTML
- Assistant
- with features to assist in the creation of HTML documents. It can
- be
- had by anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.dal.ca in the directory
- /htmlasst/.
- Read the README.1ST file in this directory for information on which
- files to download.
-
- A WYSIWYG editor for the Web, SoftQuad HoTMetaL, is available for
- downloading at NCSA and other Mosaic server sites. Many mirror
- sites
- exist; if you can't get through to one, try another, don't give up!
- That's what mirror sites are for. (Also be sure to use the copy
- closest to you geographically if possible.) Hotmetal is available
- for
- both Sun Sparc systems and Windows systems; note that Windows users
- need at least 6 megabytes of free memory. (A 2-megabyte swap file
- should just barely do the trick on a 4MB machine.)
-
- Known mirrors:
- * ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/html/hotmetal/
- * ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/SGML/HoTMetaL
- * ftp://sgml1.ex.ac.uk/SoftQuad
- * ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/WWW/ncsa/html/hotmetal/
- *
- ftp://askhp.ask.uni-
- karlsruhe.de/pub/infosystems/mosaic/contrib/Sof
- tQuad
- * ftp://ftp.cs.concordia.ca/pub/www
- *
-
- You need a Sun SPARC or Microsoft Windows system and 6MB of disk
- (6MB
- of RAM minimum for MS Windows; swap files count). Other Unix
- systems
- may be supported by the time you read this; have a look on one of
- the
- sites above.
-
- Because it is context-sensitive, HoTMetaL guides users in creating
- new
- HTML documents and in cleaning up old ones. A Publish command
- changes
- appropriate SRC and HREF attributes from local paths to http
- locations. For more information, FTP the README file from the same
- directory, or send email to hotmetal@sq.com. A HoTMetaL Pro
- commercially supported version is available for purchase from
- SoftQuad
- and its resellers.
-
- Also see Gabriel White's reviews of MS Windows HTML editors (URL is
- http://werple.apana.org.au/~gabriel/html-editors/ ). Another
- option,
- if you have an SGML editor, is to use it with the HTML DTD (URL is
- http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/DTDHeading.html ).
-
- An editor for all X users: TkWWW (listed above under X browsers)
- supports WYSIWYG HTML editing; and since it's a browser, you can
- try
- out links immediately after creating them.
-
- Also for X users, there is a package called htmltext which supports
- WYSIWYG HTML editing. More information is available at the URL
- http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/homes/njw/htmltext/htmltext.html .
-
- For Macintosh users, there is evidently a near-WYSIWYG package
- called
- HTML Editor (URL is
- http://dragon.acadiau.ca:1667/~giles/HTML_Editor).
-
-
- Also for Macintosh users, the BBEdit HTML extensions allow the
- BBEdit
- and BBEdit Lite text editors for the Macintosh to conveniently edit
- HTML documents. (URL is http://www.uji.es/bbedit-html-
- extensions.html
- .) You can also obtain the extensions package by anonymous ftp from
- sumex-aim.stanford.edu as info-mac/bbedit-html-ext-b3.hqx.
-
- There is an alternative BBEdit extension package available as well
- (URL is http://www.york.ac.uk/~ld11/BBEditTools.html ). it is
- available by FTP from ftp.york.ac.uk in the directory
- /pub/users/ld11/BBEdit_HTML_Tools.sea.hqx.
-
- NCSA's List of Filters and Editors, for which the URL is
- http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/faq-software.html
- #editors, mentions several editors, including two for MS Windows.
- In
- some cases, the "editor" amounts to a set of macros for an existing
- word processor, which can provide a near-WYSIWYG environment.
-
- Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters;
- certain
- operating systems won't allow mixed case on the command line, or
- will
- only allow it if it is quoted (VMS), so if you are launching Lynx
- or
- another client and specifying a URL at the command line, try
- quoting
- the URL in double-quotes ("URL").
-
-
-
- 5.3.3: CONVERTING OTHER FORMATS TO HTML
-
- There is a collection of filters for converting your existing
- documents (in TeX and other non-HTML formats) into HTML
- automatically,
- including filters that can allow more or less WYSIWYG editing using
- various word processors:
-
- Rich Brandwein and Mike Sendall's List at CERN (URL is
- http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/Filters.html ).
-
- (Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters;
- certain
- operating systems such as VMS require you to quote mixed-case URLs
- when launching a borwser from the command line. This is NOT a bug
- in
- the browser.)
-
- There is also a Word for Windows template for writing HTML
- documents,
- available at the URL http://www.gatech.edu/word_html/release.htm .
-
-
-
- 5.3.3: CHECKING YOUR HTML FOR ERRORS
-
- Tools to validate your HTML documents (check them for errors) are
- available. There is a form at the URL
- http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly/html-test/service/validation-
- form.html
- which will check HTML documents for errors according to the latest
- specification; note that you are encouraged to set up the program
- on
- your own system if you make heavy use of the form. There is also a
- tool which will check the links in your documents for links to
- nonexistent resources, such as pages that have moved (URL is
- http://wsk.eit.com/wsk/dist/doc/admin/webtest/verify_links.html ).
-
- Also try web-lint (URL is http://www.unipress.com/web-lint/ ),
- which
- will check your HTML for errors when you supply it with the URL or
- paste your page into a form.
-
-
-
- 5.4: How do I publicize my work?
-
- There are several things you can do to publicize your new HTML
- server
- or other offering:
- * Submit it to the NCSA What's New Page at the URL
- http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-
- new.html
- (see the page for details on how to submit your listing!).
- * Post it to the newsgroup comp.infosystems.announce. Please read
- the group first to get a feel for the contents. You should not
- post to comp.infosystems.www.users,.misc,.providers, etc., but
- if
- you feel compelled to do so, please choose .misc as
- announcements
- are of interest to both providers and users (and those who wear
- both hats).
- * Submit it to the maintainers of various catalogs, such as the
- WWW
- Virtual Library (at the URL
-
- http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html
- ) and the ALIWEB index (at the URL
- http://web.nexor.co.uk/aliweb/doc/aliweb.html ).
- * Read Gareth Rees' guide to publishing on the World Wide Web.
- (URL
- is http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/gdr11/publish.html ).
-
-
-
- 5.5: Can I buy space on an existing server?
-
-
- ·
- Yes, you can. A list of sites offering WWW space for lease is
- available (at the URL http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/www/leasing.shtml
- ).
-
-
-
- 5.6.1: HOW DO I SET UP A CLICKABLE IMAGE MAP?
-
-
-
- There are really two issues here: how to indicate in HTML that you
- want an image to be clickable, and how to configure your server to
- do
- something with the clicks returned by Mosaic, Chimera, and other
- clients capable of delivering them.
-
- You can read about image maps and the NCSA server at the URL
- http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/setup/admin/Imagemap.html .
-
- Using imagemaps requires that you create a map file; you can do
- this
- by hand or with a WYSIWYG tool. I wrote Mapedit (URL is:
- http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/mapedit/mapedit.html ), which is
- such a
- tool for Microsoft Windows and the X Window System. Other tools are
- available. (URLs, anyone?)
-
- _Important Note:_ Creating imagemaps requires a cooperative server
- administrator and a real web server. Don't waste time making maps
- before making sure you have the necessary tools to deliver them.
-
-
-
- 5.6.2: HOW DO I MAKE A "LINK" THAT DOESN'T LOAD A NEW PAGE?
-
-
-
- Such links are useful when a form is intended to perform some
- action
- on the server machine without sending new information to the
- client,
- or when a user has clicked in an undefined area in an image map;
- these
- are just two possibilities.
-
- Rob McCool of NCSA provided the following wisdom on the subject:
-
-
- Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund (sg04@gte.com) wrote:
- : Ok, here is another bizzare request from me:
-
- : I am currently running scripts which I "DO NOT" want to return
- : any visible result. That is, not text/plain, not text/HTML, not
- : image/gif. The entire results are the side effects of the
- : script and nothing should be returned to the viewer.
-
- : It would be nice to have an internally supported null viewer
- : so that I could do this, more "cleanly" (ok, ok, I hear your
- groans).
-
-
-
- HTTP now supports a response code of 204, which is no operation.
- Some
- browsers such as Mosaic/X 2.* support it. To use it, make your
- script
- a nph script and output an HTTP/1.0 204 header. Something like:
-
- HTTP/1.0 204 No response Server: Myscript/NCSA httpd 1.1
-
- (You can learn more about nph scripts from the NCSA server
- documentation at the URL http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs.)
- Essentially they are scripts that handle their own HTTP response
- codes.
-
-
-
- 5.6.3: WHERE CAN I LEARN HOW TO CREATE FILL-OUT FORMS?
-
- You can read about the Common Gateway Interface (at the URL
- http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu:80/cgi/). In addition to documenting
- the
- standard interface for which scripts can now be written for both
- NCSA
- and CERN-derived servers, these pages also cover HTML forms and how
- to
- handle the results on the server side. See the section on email
- forms
- for a simple solution to the most commonly desired form.
-
-
-
- 5.6.3.1: How can I create hidden fields in forms (keeping state)?
-
- Use INPUT TYPE=hidden. An example:
-
-
- <INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=state VALUE="hidden info to be returned with
- form">
-
- By now, most if not all browsers can handle the hidden type. Note
- that
- "hidden" doesn't mean "secret"; the user can always click on "view
- source".
-
-
-
- 5.6.3.2: How can users send me email through their browsers?
-
- If you have access to the server's configuration files, or if your
- server administrator permits users to create their own CGI scripts,
- you can arrange it. I've written a simple email forms package (URL
- is:
- http://siva.cshl.org/email/index.html ), which does it in ANSI C.
- There is also a package floating around in Perl (URL, anyone?).
-
-
-
- 5.6.4: HOW DO I COMMENT AN HTML DOCUMENT?
-
-
-
- Use the <!-- tag at the beginning of EACH line commented out; close
- this for EACH line with the --> tag. Note that comments do not
- nest,
- and the sequence "--" may not appear inside a comment except as
- part
- of the closing --> tag.
-
- You should _not_ try to use this to "comment out" HTML that would
- otherwise be shown to the user, since some browsers (notably
- Mosaic)
- will still pay attention to tags inside the comment and close it
- prematurely.
-
- _Thanks to Joe English for clearing up this issue._
-
-
-
- 5.6.5: HOW CAN I CREATE DECENT-LOOKING TABLES AND STOP USING
- <PRE>...
- </PRE>?
-
- 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
- <PRE>...</PRE> 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 <IMG SRC...>.
-
- GIF does a better job with crisp, sharp images, such as those
- typically used to construct buttons, graphs and the like. All
- browsers
- that can display graphics at all can display GIFs inline.
-
-
-
- 5.6.11: HOW CAN I MIRROR PART OF ANOTHER SERVER?
-
- Scripts are available to do this, but at this time they are not
- very
- friendly to the server you are attempting to mirror; their behavior
- resembles that of the more poorly written WWW robots. If you are
- trying to improve access times to a distant server, you will likely
- find the "proxy" capabilities of CERN's WWW server to be a more
- effective and general solution to your problem.
-
-
-
- 5.6.12: HOW CAN I KEEP ROBOTS OFF MY SERVER?
-
- Programs that automatically traverse the web can be quite useful,
- but
- have the potential to make a serious mess of things. Every so often
- someone will write a "depth-first" searching robot that brings
- servers
- to their knees. See the section on writing robots (4.10) for
- details.
-
- Fortunately, most robots on the web follow a simple protocol by
- which
- you can keep them off your server if you wish, or keep them out of
- portions of your server which are robot traps (ie, they contain an
- infinite number of possible links). Read 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,
- including useful cataloging robots you probably do _not_ want to
- keep
- off your server.
-
-
-
- 5.6.13: HOW CAN I KEEP STATISTICS ABOUT MY WEB SERVER?
-
- There are several tools which can generate statistics about your
- web
- server:
-
- getstats
- getstats is a versatile log analyzer, also written in C,
- which
- provides reports for various time periods with a high degree
- of
- flexibility. Add-on packages have been written to generate
- reports in HTML and also to generate graphs. You can access
- the
- getstats home page for more information (URL is
- http://www.eit.com/software/getstats/getstats.html ), or
- obtain
- the package by anonymous FTP from ftp.eit.com in the
- directory
- /pub/web.software/getstats.
-
- WebStat
- WebStat is a package written in the language Python which
- supplies statistics on usage by domain, country, etc., with
- daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports available. You
- will
- need Python in order to use it. See the WebStat home page
- (URL
- is
-
- http://www.pegasus.esprit.ec.org/people/sijben/statistics/adver
- tisment.html ) for details, or obtain Python from ftp.cwi.nl
- in
- the directory /pub/python and WebStat from
- ftp.pegasus.esprit.ec.org in the directory /pub/misc.
-
- Wusage
- Wusage, which I wrote, is a C program which generates simple
- weekly reports in HTML, with inline image graphs displaying
- server growth and the distribution of accesses by continent.
- You can also exclude irrelevant accesses (inline images,
- local
- machines, etc.) from the results. Read the Wusage home page
- (URL is http://siva.cshl.org/wusage.html ) for more
- information, or obtain Wusage by anonymous FTP from
- isis.cshl.org in the directory pub/wusage.
-
- wwwstat
- wwwstat is a full-featured log analyzer written in the
- language
- Perl. (See the newsgroup comp.lang.perl for more information
- about the language.) See the wwwstat home page (URL is
- http://www.ics.uci.edu/WebSoft/wwwstat/) for more
- information,
- or obtain the package by anonymous FTP from
- liege.ics.uci.edu
- in the directory /pub/arcadia/wwwstat. See also gwstat (URL
- is
- http://dis.cs.umass.edu/stats/gwstat.html ), a package which
- produces GIF graphs from the output of wwwstat.
-
-
-
-
-
- 6: WHAT NEWSGROUPS DISCUSS THE WEB?
-
- You can find discussion of World Wide Web topics in three
- newsgroups,
- and one newsgroup which will soon be removed:
-
- comp.infosystems.www.users
- A forum for the discussion of WWW client software and its
- use
- in contacting various Internet information sources. New user
- questions, client setup questions, client bug reports,
- resource-discovery questions on how to locate information on
- the web that can't be found by the means detailed in the FAQ
- and comparison between various client packages are among the
- acceptable topics for this group. Please specify what
- browser
- and what system type (Windows, Mac, Unix, etc.) your post is
- about if you are asking questions about a specific program.
-
- comp.infosystems.www.providers
- A forum for the discussion of WWW server software and the
- use
- of said software to present information to users. General
- server design, setup questions, server bug reports, security
- issues, HTML page design and other concerns of information
- providers are among the likely topics for this group.
-
- comp.infosystems.www.misc
- A forum for general discussion of WWW (World Wide Web)-
- related
- topics that are NOT covered by the other newsgroups in the
- hierarchy. This will likely include discussions of the Web's
- future, politicking regarding changes in the structure and
- protocols of the web that affect both clients and servers,
- et
- cetera.
-
- comp.infosystems.www (DEFUNCT)
- The old catch-all newsgroup, which may still exist on your
- system but was officially removed on September 7th,
- according
- to David Lawrence, moderator of news.announce.newgroups. If
- your system still carries this group, ask your administrator
- to
- remove it.
-
-
-
-
-
- 7: I WANT TO KNOW MORE
-
-
-
- To find out more, use the web. This FAQ hopefully provides enough
- information for you to locate and install a browser on your system.
- If
- you have system specific questions regarding FTP, networking and
- the
- like, please consult newsgroups relevant to your particular
- hardware
- and operating system!
-
- Once you're up and running, you may wish to consult the World Wide
- Web
- Primer by Nathan Torkington. It is available at the URL
- http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-primer.html .
-
- Later you may return to this FAQ for answers to some of the more
- advanced questions. I encourage you to check out the changes listed
- early in the document each time the FAQ appears.
-
-
-
- 8: CREDITS
-
- Present Maintainer: Thomas Boutell, _boutell@netcom.com_
-
- Former Maintainers:
- * Nathan Torkington, _Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz_
- * Marc Andreessen, _marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu_
- * Tony Johnson
-
-
-
-