AIR Mosaic Help Contents

The following Help Topics are available:

Starting AIR Mosaic

The AIR Mosaic Console

Browsing with Mosaic

Using Hotlists

Opening Documents Directly

Using Mosaic for FTP, Gopher, and More

Saving Mosaic Documents

Printing in Mosaic

Finding Information in Mosaic

Configuring AIR Mosaic Options

Viewing Mosaic Document Source

Exiting Mosaic

AIR Mosaic Menu Commands

Mosaic Command Line Options

Special Mouseclick Features

For Help using Help, press [F1].  Help revised October, 94.


Starting AIR Mosaic

Although there are thousands of Mosaic sites on the Internet that you can explore, you may not know where to start.  AIR Mosaic comes pre-configured with a home page.  This is done so that you have a place to start looking for other WWW resources.

When you start AIR Mosaic, it will automatically connect you to the pre-configured home page.  From there, you can begin browsing the Internet and begin connecting to other home pages.  As you become an experienced browser, you'll be able to build a library of home pages that you like, using AIR Mosaic's "hotlist" feature.

You can start AIR Mosaic by clicking on the AIR Mosaic icon.  AIR Mosaic will immediately start connecting you to a home page.  (You will see the radar logo in the upper right hand corner of the AIR Mosaic console spinning as the home page is retrieved.)

Once you finish connecting to a home page, you can immediately begin browsing with Mosaic.

You can easily define your own home page to automatically connect to on startup.  Use the Configuration option in the Options menu to set up a default home page.

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Browsing with Mosaic


Browsing with Mosaic

World Wide Web uses hyperlinks (also referred to as anchors or hot spots) to allow you to jump to other resources.  Hyperlinks are indicated by blue, underlined text, or by graphics surrounded by a blue border (you can change the color that is used).  Another way to tell that you are on a hyperlink is to highlight the text or graphic with your mouse.  The mouse will turn into a pointing hand.

You can then click on a hyperlink to connect to another Mosaic document.  The new document will be opened (you will see the radar indicator in the upper right hand corner of your AIR Mosaic Console begin to spin).  If at any time you need to stop loading in a document, you can click the Stop button or choose Cancel Current Task from the Navigate menu.

You can continue to browse through Mosaic documents by simply clicking on the hyperlinks you find in the document.  You can also travel through Mosaic documents you encounter using the methods listed below.

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Back/Forward

Document Title/Document URL

History

Home

Reload


Back/Forward

You can click on the Back button (the third button on the Toolbar) to move back to the last document you viewed.  The Forward button (the fourth button on the Toolbar) can move you forward after you have moved back.  You can also type B for Back or F for Forward, or choose Back and Forward choose Back from the Navigate menu.


Document Title/Document URL

The Document Title: and Document URL: drop-down lists, under the Toolbar, contain a listing of the last several documents you've accessed in this session.  The lists are identical, but one shows the title of the document and the other shows that document's URL (http://www.bakerstreet.com).  You can go back to any of the displayed documents by choosing its title or URL from the lists.


History

You can also click History to access the History dialog.  The History dialog allows you to access documents you've already accessed in this session.  This is equivalent to using the drop down lists, above.  Select the document you want to go back to, and click on the Load button.


Home

At any time, you can click the Home button on the Toolbar, or choose Home from the Navigate menu to return to the document defined as your Home Page.  When you start using Mosaic, a home page is already defined as your home page; you can set up a new home page (or set AIR Mosaic to start without opening a home page) using Configuration in the Options menu.


Reload

You can reload the current AIR Mosaic document at any time by clicking the Reload button or choosing Reload from the Navigate menu.  You might want to do this if the document did not load properly.


Cancel Current Task

If at any time you need to stop loading in a document, you can click the Stop button or choose Cancel Current Task from the Navigate menu.


The AIR Mosaic Console

The AIR Mosaic Console is described below.

The Toolbar at the top of the Console contains buttons that serve as shortcuts for AIR Mosaic menu items.  The Toolbar style can be changed between Picture & Text, Picture only, and Text only by choosing Toolbar Style from the Options menu.

The Status Bar at the bottom of the Console displays the locations of resources you connect to, as well as indicating when a transfer is in progress or a graphic is being loaded.

Both the Toolbar and the Status Bar can be shown or hidden by checking or unchecking Show Status Bar or Show Toolbar using the Configuration option in the Options menu.

Below the Toolbar is the Document Title Bar, containing the Document Title and Document URL drop down lists.  The two lists contain a listing of the last several documents you've accessed.  The lists are identical, but one shows the Title of the document (such as "Wired Magazine's Rest Stop on the InfoBahn") and the other shows that document's URL (http://www.wired.com).  You can go back to any of the displayed documents by choosing its title or URL from the lists.  You can change the number of documents that are displayed in these lists using the Configuration option in the Options menu.

The Document Title Bar also contains the radar retrieval icon.  This icon moves when a document is being loaded or a graphic is being transferred (roughly, it indicates that AIR Mosaic is busy.)  You can disable the animation of this icon by unchecking Animate logo using the Configuration option in the Options menu.

You can temporarily hide the Toolbar and Document Title Bar using Kiosk Mode.


Kiosk Mode
Using Kiosk Mode

Kiosk Mode is available with AIR Mosaic; you can hide all the Console information except the actual document (in other words, the Toolbar, Status Bar, and Document Title Bar and the menu items and commands will be hidden).  This may be a useful mode to use when giving Mosaic presentations (it shows a lot of the screen) or when setting up Mosaic on an unattended workstation.

Click the Kiosk button on the Toolbar, or choose Kiosk Mode from the Options menu.  AIR Mosaic will change into Kiosk Mode.

You can move around in Mosaic as you would normally, except that the Toolbar buttons and menu options are not available to you.  Note that the shortcut movement keys of F (for Forward) and B (for Back) will be very helpful to you to move when in this mode, since the Forward and Back commands are not available.

Click the Esc key or Ctrl-K to exit Kiosk mode.


Using Hotlists

One of AIR Mosaic's strongest features is its ability to organize the information that you find on the World Wide Web.  There are so many documents out there with useful jumps to resources you might be interested in, that it is common to want to access these documents again and again.  You can save these documents and open them again later, but AIR Mosaic provides an easier way to re-access documents.

AIR Mosaic's Hotlists can be used to remember WWW document locations, so that you can easily locate and access them.  You can group Hotlists by subject (Games, Sports, Weather, Fun Stuff) or by any other criteria (if several people use one computer, they might each have their own hotlist).

Hotlists you create can then be accessed two ways:  they can be accessed with a couple of mouse clicks from the convenient Hotlists dialog, or you can make Hotlists into drop-down menus, so that you can choose them directly from the AIR Mosaic menu bar.

NCSA Mosaic users:  You can convert any menus you created in NCSA Mosaic to Hotlists.

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See

The Hotlists Dialog

Creating a New Hotlist

Adding a Document to a Hotlist


The Hotlists Dialog

You work with Hotlists in the <Hotlists> dialog, (accessed by pressing the Hotlists button or by choosing Open Hotlists in the File menu).  The <Hotlists> screen initially will show all the different Hotlists you have.  AIR Mosaic comes with several Hotlists pre-loaded.  You can remove any of the provided Hotlists, or add additional Hotlists of your own.

The Hotlist itself is shown as a flaming document in the <Hotlists> dialog.  Initially, Hotlists may be shown closed; you can open up (expand) the Hotlist by doubleclicking on the Hotlist icon.  Each Hotlist can contain many WWW documents, or it can contain folders that contain additional documents (you can use folders and subfolders to organize your documents any way you want).  You will see the documents and folders listed in a hierarchy similar to the Windows File Manager.

In the <Hotlists> dialog, you can create new Hotlists, add new Hotlist items, edit your existing items, or delete them.

At any time, you can check Use Hotlist as menu item to have a Hotlist added as a menu item.  You can add as many menu items as can fit in your AIR Mosaic menu bar.  When you choose this option, the Hotlist icon in the <Hotlists> dialog will change to a dialog containing the letter H.  If you add a Hotlist as a menu item, any folders within that Hotlist will appear as menu items that have sub-menu items beneath them.


Creating a New Hotlist

Choose Hotlists from the File menu, or click the Hotlist button on the Toolbar.  The <Hotlists> dialog will appear, containing any hotlists already created.

Click the New/Open button.  You will see a Windows file open dialog.  (You could specify the name of an existing hotlist at this point, to open and load it into the <Hotlists> dialog.)

Choose a filename for your Hotlist, and click OK.  This must be a legal DOS filename (using up to 8 characters, with the extension .hot).

The next dialog asks you to specify a name for this Hotlist.  This can be any name you want (keep in mind that you may want to use this hotlist as a Mosaic menu, so you might want to keep the name short.)  Type a name, and click OK.

The Hotlist will be created, and you will see it appear in the <Hotlists> dialog (as a "flaming" document).

As mentioned earlier, you may want to create folders or subfolders to help organize your information.  To do this, click Add with the Hotlist highlighted (or with a folder highlighted to create a subfolder), and specify Folder in the dialog that appears.  You will be asked to name the folder. Give it a name and click OK; the folder or subfolder will be created.

Now that you have a Hotlist, you can begin to add documents to it.

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Add Documents to a Hotlist


Open Hotlist
New/Open Hotlist

The <New/Open Hotlist> dialog can be used to open an existing Hotlist, or create a new Hotlist.

In this dialog, specify the name of an existing Hotlist, to open and load it into the <Hotlists> dialog.

or

Specify the name of a new Hotlist to have AIR Mosaic create a new Hotlist.  Choose a filename for your Hotlist, and click OK.  This must be a legal DOS filename (using up to 8 characters, with the extension .hot).


Adding the current Mosaic document to a Hotlist:
Adding a Document to a Hotlist

There are two ways to add documents to a Hotlist:

>	Add the document to a Hotlist when you are viewing it.

>	Add the document to a Hotlist manually.

The first option is easiest, since you will not have to know or remember the document's URL (the document's "address") to add it to a Hotlist.  These two options are described below.

Add the current document to a Hotlist:

In Mosaic, display the document that you want to add to a Hotlist.  You could do this by jumping to it from another document, or opening it directly using its URL.

You now have two ways to add the document to a Hotlist:

>	Clicking Add Document to Hotlist in the Navigate menu will add the document to the Hotlist you are currently using.  This will be the last Hotlist you selected.  Open the <Hotlists> dialog if you are not sure which Hotlist is currently selected.  If no Hotlist is selected, this command may not work properly.

>	Using the <Hotlists> dialog, as described below, will allow you to specify exactly where you want to add the document.

Click the Hotlist button, or choose Hotlist from the File menu.  You will see the <Hotlists> dialog.

Select the Hotlist (or subfolder) to which you want to add the current document.

Click Add.  You will be asked whether you want to add a document or folder; select Document.  You will see the <Add Document> dialog.  This should contain the Name and URL of the document you are currently viewing.  If you wish, you can change the name of the document.  Do not change the URL!

Click OK.  The document you specified will be added to the Hotlist you selected.

Adding a document to a Hotlist manually:

You would do this if you want to add a document to a Hotlist, but do not currently have the document open.  To do this, you need to know the URL (address) for each document.  For instance, someone may give you a list of WWW documents containing travel information.  You can create a Travel Hotlist, and add all the documents to it quickly-a one step process.  You would do this as follows.

Click the Hotlist button, or choose Hotlist from the File menu.  You will see the <Hotlists> dialog.

Select the Hotlist to which you want to add a document by highlighting it using your mouse.

Click Add.  You will be asked whether you want to add a document or folder; select Document.  You will see the <Add Document> dialog.  If you currently have a document open, the information about that document will appear in this dialog.  To add a different document to this Hotlist, you must type in the Name and URL of the document.

For the Document name:, type any name you want.  It should be a name that will help you recognize this file.

For the Document URL: field, type the Document's URL.

Click OK.  The document you specified will be added to the Hotlist you selected.


Import NCSA Menu as Hotlist

If you previously used NCSA Mosaic (from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications), you may have built up extensive menus of favorite home pages and resources; AIR Mosaic allows you to convert these menus to AIR Mosaic Hotlists so that you can use them just as you would Hotlists created in AIR Mosaic.

To import an NCSA menu as a Hotlist:

Click Import NCSA Menu as Hotlist in the Options menu.  You will see the <Import NCSA Menu as Hotlist> dialog.

In the dialog's INI file to import from field, you should specify the name and location of the MOSAIC.INI file where your NCSA menu information is stored.  You can click the Browse button to browse the directories on your PC and select the correct file.  Once you've selected the file, you can confirm that it is the correct file you want by clicking the Open button.

You should then specify a Hotlist file for this menu.  Do not choose an existing Hotlist unless you want to overwrite the information in that file.   Again, you can use Browse to find a Hotlist file and a directory for the file.

Last, you should specify which menus from that NCSA MOSAIC.INI file you want to import (all of the menus identified in that file should appear in a list).  Click OK when you're ready to import the file.

The next time you open the <Hotlists> dialog, the menu(s) you imported should be displayed.  You can add them as menu items, if you like, using the Put this Hotlist in the menu bar command.


Opening Documents Directly

There are two ways to open a WWW document directly.  If you know the document's URL (Uniform Resource Locator; a standard "address" for Mosaic documents), you can access the document by typing the document's URL.  If someone tells you the URL of a popular WWW site on the Internet, you can go to it directly using that URL.  You will also need to know a document's URL to set it up in a Hotlist or as a default home page.

You can also create or save an HTML file directly to your PC, and open it in AIR Mosaic.  This is known as a Local File.

These two methods of opening Mosaic documents are listed below.

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Opening a URL

Opening a Local File


Opening a URL

Mosaic locates documents by using URLs, Uniform Resource Locators.  URLs are a standard notation for WWW resources, designed to be able to identify information stored on a variety of machines, in a variety of different ways. A URL can point to resources such as an HTML document (a WWW home page), an ftp server, a gopher server, or a local document.  When you access a document in AIR Mosaic, you will see the URL for that document shown in the Document URL: field  displayed below the AIR Mosaic Toolbar.

URLs are used to  indicate the type of the resource and where it is located, as well as the resource name.

If you know the URL of a resource, you can access it directly, as described below.

Click Open URL in the File menu.

The most common URL you will specify in the <Open URL> dialog is the URL for an HTML home page.  This is always preceded by http:// followed by the address of the HTML document.

i.e.

http://www.bakerstreet.com/221B.html

Type the URL you want to connect to and click OK.  If the URL is valid, AIR Mosaic should begin connecting to it.

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URL Description


URL Description

URLs typically provide information about a resource type, location, and path.

You might find a document called "Internet Web Text" with a URL of

http://www.rpi.edu/Internet/Guides/decemj/text.html

This URL can be deciphered as follows:

http:           //www.rpi.edu       /Internet/Guides/decemj/text.html

or, roughly,

Resource Type     //Resource Location     /Pathname

These three portions are described below.

Resource Type

The Resource Type tells you the type of server on which the resource resides.  The resource type is actually the kind of protocol will be used when retrieving the document.

WWW resource types and formats include:

http://	HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) Server.  This is a site designed principally for hypertext WWW documents.

ftp://	FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Server.

file://	Local HTML File (also sometimes used to denote FTP Servers).

telnet://	Telnet Server.

gopher://	Gopher Server.

wais://	WAIS Server (not directly supported in AIR Mosaic)

news:	USENET news site

The news: URL uses a slightly different format; it takes the format news:newsgroup.name, since you already have a news server defined in Mosaic (using the <Configuration> option).

Resource Location

This is the Internet address of the machine where the resource resides.

In the example above, www.rpi.edu is the World Wide Web server at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a school in Troy, New York.  Note that often you will not be able to figure out exactly where a resource is located.

Pathname {filename}

In most cases, the URL for a document or other resource contains a full pathname for the file.  If you're familiar with DOS or UNIX pathnames,  the path in a URLis very similar.  (Paths in WWW always use the forward slash /).

In the example above, the path is /Internet/Guides/Decemj/.  If you're looking at the resource, you see that it is titled Internet Web Text, by John December.  You might intuit that this is John December's personal directory on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute WWW server.

Some sample URLs are shown below:

http://www.rpi.edu/Internet/Guides/decemj/text.html

ftp://ftp.circe.com

file://localhost/c:\mosdocs\sample.htm

telnet://odysseus.circe.com:70

gopher://spinaltap.micro.umn.edu:70/11/fun/Movies

news:alt.tv.seinfeld

For advanced information on URLs, a URL primer is available from NCSA on the NCSA home page, at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/url-primer.html.


Opening a Local File

You can create an HTML file or save an HTML file directly to your PC, and open it in AIR Mosaic.  This is known as a Local File.  A Local File should have extension .htm.

You can open a Local File using the <Open Local File> dialog.  Specify the name and path for this file, and click OK.  AIR Mosaic will try to open the file you specified.


Using Mosaic for FTP, Gopher, and More...

Although you may navigate principally between HTML documents ("home pages") when using AIR Mosaic, you can also use it to access other Internet resources such as ftp and gopher sites and USENET news.  The functionality of AIR Mosaic as an ftp, gopher, or news browser is somewhat limited, since the World Wide Web protocols used are not very sophisticated.  For full-featured use of ftp, gopher, and news, sophisticated applications like the AIR Series Network File Manager (for ftp), AIR News, and AIR Gopher are recommended.

Accessing ftp and gopher sites:

Accessing ftp and gopher sites is very easy with AIR Mosaic.  Since AIR Mosaic incorporates both ftp and gopher functionality, no additional tools are needed to retrieve files from these types of sites.  Some background on ftp and gopher resources may be helpful.

You might find an ftp or gopher site when you're using AIR Mosaic, or you could connect to one directly if you know its URL (address).

The ftp or gopher site will be displayed in a hierarchical folder format in the AIR Mosaic Console.  Using ftp and gopher is very similar.

On an ftp site, you will only see two types of items, folders (directories) and files.  You can navigate through folders by doubleclicking on them to move deeper into the folders; if you want to move back, click on the up arrow shown at the top of the folder list.

When you doubleclick on the name of a file on an ftp screen, AIR Mosaic will automatically download (copy) the file to your \...\DATA directory, using the displayed filename.

On a gopher site, aside from folders and files, there are several other items displayed on the screen: image files, sound files, search tools and other gopher resources.

Doubleclicking on a gopher resource will either download it to your \...\DATA directory or will open it, depending on whether you have a Viewer for that resource configured on your PC.

Accessing News:

You can use AIR Mosaic as a very basic newsreader for USENET News.  You will not be able to post any news articles using AIR Mosaic.

You have to access a News Server to read News with AIR Mosaic.  A News Server address is provided with AIR Mosaic, so you can actually read news immediately, but you will only be able to see a limited amount of newsgroups when accessing this Server.  You will need to find out the address of a News Server to use; your Internet Service Provider may have one that you can access, or you may already have been using one that you can connect to.  The News Server address can be set up using the Configuration option in the Options menu.

Often you will end up reading a USENET newsgroup in Mosaic because you clicked a hyperlink in a WWW document that connected you to that newsgroup.  Reading news on your own using Mosaic is not as simple.  News can be directly accessed in Mosaic only by directly specifying the name of the newsgroup you want to subscribe to.  If you don't know what newsgroups are available, this can be difficult (a little bit like the "no job without experience," "no experience without a job" paradox).  It is recommended that you use another news browser (like AIR News) to familiarize yourself with the newsgroups on your news server before attempting this.

To connect to a USENET news newsgroup, you would specify the URL in AIR Mosaic dialogs (such as the Open URL dialog) in the following format:

news:newsgroup.name

Once you're connecting to News using Mosaic, you will see news articles listed as bulleted items on the screen.  Articles whose titles are not preceded by "Re:" are original "threads"  they represent the initial article on a particular topic.  Articles whose titles begin with "Re:" are responses to an initial article.

Mosaic will display only the last 20 of the articles in a newsgroup.  To see earlier articles, click on the "Earlier articles..." text.  Mosaic will display the preceding 20 articles.  You can move back to the last 20 messages again by clicking on the "Later articles..." text (you can also use the Forward and Back buttons on the Toolbar to achieve this).

To view an article, simply click on its title.  You will see hyperlink text in the references section, as well as in the beginning of the article itself.  Selecting this hyperlink text allows you to move to related articles in the news thread.  You can then use the Back button on the Toolbar to move back to the original article.


HTTP/0.9

Some older WWW documents may require you to use an earlier version of the Transfer Protocol, HTTP /0.9 to access them.  In most cases, the hyperlinks to those documents will warn you that HTTP /0.9 is required to read them.  AIR Mosaic allows you to use this option in order to read these earlier documents.


Saving Mosaic Documents

You might want to save WWW documents so that you could open them later (using the Open Local File command) or so that you can use the information in the documents (in word processing or other applications).  When you save documents, you will not save the text exactly as you see it on the screen; any graphics on the screen will not be saved, and the document will be saved with accompanying HTML codes.

There are several ways to save documents: you can drag and drop the document to the File Manager or another application that supports drag and drop, you can use Load to Disk Mode command to save the document to disk, or you can save the document source code to disk directly using the Document Source command.  These first two methods of saving documents are described below; the last method is described in the Viewing Document Source section.

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Using Drag and Drop in Mosaic

Load to Disk Mode

Document Source


Using Drag and Drop in Mosaic

You can drag and drop Mosaic documents to the Windows File Manager, or to other applications that support drag and drop, such as Windows Notepad.

When your mouse cursor is over a hyperlink, click and hold down the mouse button until the cursor changes from a pointing finger to a document icon, with the caption WWW.  Continue holding down the cursor, and drag the icon to the application where you want to drop the item. (If the application will not let you drop the item, the cursor will change into a prohibited symbol (a circle with a slash through it).

Note that not all applications will support drag and drop from Mosaic, even if they are OLE-compliant (Windows Object Linking and Embedding).


Load to Disk Mode

You can also save Mosaic documents when you encounter them by using Load to Disk Mode.  Load to Disk Mode saves a document to a file, rather than loading it.  This is very useful if you want to save the contents of a document to use in another application, for instance, or if you find a file or resource that you currently can't use, but want to save.

Usually, you will want to use Load to Disk Mode selectively; you probably do not want to save everything you encounter to a file.  You use [Shift] click to do this. Click on the hyperlink for the document that you want to save, while holding down the [Shift] key.  Instead of the document loading in, as it does normally, a standard Windows <File Save> dialog will appear, and you will be prompted for a name and location for the document.  You can accept or change this name, and you can also change the directory where this document is stored.

If you prefer to have Load to Disk Mode turned on, so that Mosaic tries to save all of the documents that you click on, select Load to Disk Mode in the Options menu (a check mark will indicate that the mode is enabled).  When Load to Disk Mode is enabled, each time you try to access a document you will be prompted with a Windows <File Save> dialog as described above.

Mosaic will continue to try to save documents until you disable Load to Disk Mode by again selecting the Load to Disk Mode option from the menu. Note that whenever you use Load to Disk Mode, the documents that you click on will not be loaded; they will only be saved.  To load in these items, you must turn off Load to Disk Mode (if you turned Load to Disk Mode on using the menu, you must disable it; if you simply Shift-clicked to save the document, you only need to click on the item normally to get it to load).


Printing in Mosaic

You can print the information in a document to your printer using the Print command in the File menu.  If you want to see how the output will look, you can choose Print Preview to see a preview of how the document will print.

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Print Setup


Print Setup

The Print Setup command allows you to specify which printer you want to print to.


Copy

The Copy command allows you to copy text from the Document Title: or Document URL: drop down lists.  It cannot be used to copy from the document you are currently viewing (you can, however, view the document using the Document Source command in the File menu, and use the Copy command in that window).

Once you have copied text, you can paste it in another Windows application using the Paste command or shortcut in that application.

Likewise, you can also paste information into Mosaic dialogs (although there is no Paste command in the Edit menu).  After using the Copy command in Mosaic or another Windows application, you can use Windows shortcut keys, Ctrl-V or Shift-Insert, to paste text into any Mosaic dialog (a likely use would be to paste a URL from a mail message, for instance into the <Open URL> dialog).


Finding Text in a Mosaic Document

You can search a WWW document for particular text using the Find command.  Click the Find option in the Edit menu, and type the text you want to search for in the dialog that appears.  The search will occur from the top of the document to the bottom.  If you want to search for additional occurrences of the text, you should choose Find Next in the <Find> dialog after the first find.  .


AIR Mosaic Menu Commands

File Menu

Edit Menu

Options Menu

Navigate Menu


File Menu

Open URL

Open Local File

Hotlists

Print

Print Preview

Print Setup

Document Source

Exit


Edit Menu

Copy

Find


Options Menu

Load to Disk Mode

Autoload Inline Images

Kiosk Mode

HTTP /0.9

Configuration

Toolbar Style

Import NCSA Menu as Hotlist


Navigate Menu

Back

Forward

Home

Reload

History

Cancel Current Task

Add Document to Hotlist


Configuring AIR Mosaic Options

You can easily configure AIR Mosaic using the <Configuration> dialog.  This dialog allows you to specify options for displaying elements in the AIR Mosaic Console, such as the Toolbar, Status Bar, images, hyperlinks, and sounds; the default servers for AIR Mosaic; AIR Mosaic's fonts and colors, and which external viewers are used to view graphics, and play sounds and movies.

The <Configuration> options are listed below.  Click the option for which you want help.

General Configuration Options

Home Page

Email Address

SMTP Server

News Server

Viewers

Color

Fonts

Proxy Servers


General Options
General Configuration Options

The General Configuration options shown at the top of the <Configuration> dialog are described below.

Show Toolbar

Show Status Bar

Show Document Title

Show URL

Save last window position

Autoload Inline Images

Show hyperlinks

Underline hyperlinks

Animate logo

Use 8-bit sound


Show Toolbar/Status Bar

These options control whether or not the Toolbar and Status Bar are displayed.  You may not wish to hide the Status Bar as it displays the locations of resources you connect to, as well as indicating when a transfer is in progress or a graphic is being loaded.  By default, these options are displayed; check them again to hide them.

You can also hide most of the Console options by using Kiosk Mode.


Show Document Title/URL

These options control whether or not the Document Title: drop down list with the AIR Mosaic radar indicator, and the Document URL: drop down list are displayed.  You can show both options, hide both options, or show only the Document Title Bar.  You cannot display only the Document URL: list.  By default, these options are displayed; check them again to hide them.


Save last window position

You may want to resize the AIR Mosaic Console window during your AIR Mosaic session, in order to see more (or less) of a WWW document.  If you want these size changes to be saved and used during your next AIR Mosaic session, check this option.


Autoload inline images

By default, images (such as logos, fancy titles, small photos) are automatically displayed on your system when you connect to a World Wide Web site.  This is done by automatically downloading the image to AIR Mosaic, where it is kept in your system memory.  This downloading process can be very time-consuming, depending on the speed of your Internet connection.

AIR Mosaic allows you to disable this feature, so that the images are not automatically downloaded/displayed.  Uncheck this option to stop viewing graphics.  In the place of the graphics, you will see graphic placeholders.


Show hyperlinks

This allows you to hide the hyperlink jumps.


Underline hyperlinks

Typically, hyperlinks are displayed in blue and underlined.  You may want to turn off the underlining. This is a personal preference; it will not affect the speed that the document is retrieved in any significant way.


Animate logo

This refers to the radar indicator on the Document Title Bar.  By default, this is turned on, as it offers you some useful information about whether or not a document or image is being retrieved (and gives your mind something to do while you waitalthough you can always work in other Windows applications if a document is loading too slowly).  The time you'll save by turning off the logo animation is not substantial; you will probably only want to turn off that option if your connection is very slow.

This option is primarily provided in case you are using a remote access program such as Symantec's PC-Anywhere to use your PC remotely.  In these cases, the animated logo may cause problems; disable Animate logo by unchecking this option.


Use 8-bit sound

AIR Mosaic features internal sound support for .AU and .AIFF files, using your sound card (if you have one).  AIR Mosaic assumes you have a high quality sound card.  If these file types do not play properly, or you have a lower quality (or 8-bit) sound card, choose this option.


Home Page

AIR Mosaic lets you set up a default Home Page that you can quickly access using the Home button on the Toolbar.  Type the URL for the home page in the URL: field to set up this home page.

You can also set up AIR Mosaic to automatically load this Home Page on startup; if you want to see this home page whenever you start AIR Mosaic, check the Load automatically at startup option.


Email Address/SMTP Server/News Server

These options are all used by AIR Mosaic when you are using some of Mosaic's extended functionality.  Mosaic can be used to read News (as well as view Gopher sites) and send mail messages.

You must fill out some information about your system in order for these to work properly.

To send mail:

You must fill out your e-mail address and SMTP Server address.

Email address	This is the address others use to send you e-mail, i.e. jwatson@moriarty.com.

SMTP Server	This is the mail server you use.  A default mail server on the Internet has been supplied for you.  For optimum use, it is suggested that you use your own SMTP server.  Specify the address for the server.  This would be an address such as mailserv.oz.com.

To read news:

News Server	You must fill out the address of your news server.  This is the machine that you connect to in order to read news.  A News server address is supplied by default.  This news server has a limited amount of newsgroups available.  If you have a news server you prefer to use to read news, type its name here.


Cached Documents

This item represents how many documents are cached, or kept active, in your PC's memory.  If this number is 10, for instance, 10 documents will remain "available" to you; if you go back to them, they will appear immediately, and will not have to be loaded.

If you have a lot of available system memory, you may want to increase this number.  Keep in mind that a high number for cache may affect other applications' performance, although Mosaic performance will probably improve quite a bit.


Documents in Drop Down

This value indicates how many of your last-accessed documents will appear in the Document Title: and Document URL: drop down lists (displayed beneath the Toolbar).  A value of 5 would mean that the last five documents you accessed would display in these lists.


Configure Viewers

The <Configure Viewers> feature lets you specify the external viewers you want to use for different resource types that you might find on the World Wide Web.  For instance, you may find a multimedia movie in a WWW document, and want to set up Mosaic to use an external movie player application so that you can view the movie.  You can also use this dialog to set up applications to support telnet, tn3270, and rlogin.

Click on a topic below for more information.

____

See

Viewing Files in Mosaic

Adding and Configuring Mosaic Viewers


Viewing Files in Mosaic

AIR Mosaic internally provides support for text, in-line graphics, and certain sound files (note: you must have a sound card or Windows sound player for sound).  However, some of the resources you encounter using AIR Mosaic (GIF and JPEG files, MPEG movie files, .WAV sound files) will require you to use external viewers, separate programs that can view graphics, play movies, or otherwise interpret Mosaic resources.

Most commonly, you will need external viewers to:

>	View GIF or JPEG image files

Some GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) format graphic images you find in Mosaic documents can be retrieved; these images are indicated by a hyperlink.  You will also often see hyperlinks to images like "Picture of the Louvre" or "LOUVRE.GIF".  GIF and JPEG are common image file formats used on the World Wide Web.

You can retrieve these images if you have an external image viewer that allows you to view the GIF or JPEG images.  AIR Mosaic comes with an image viewer, ImageView, which will allow you to view GIF and JPEG graphic files automatically.  This Viewer is already set up in AIR Mosaic.

>	Play .WAV sound files

If you have a sound card or Windows sound player application, you can play sounds that you find on the World Wide Web.  AIR Mosaic natively supports .AU and .AIFF sounds that are commonly found on World Wide Web home pages; this means that you do not need an external application to play them.

However, you will also find .WAV and MIDI files on FTP and Gopher sites on the World Wide Web.  You will have to use an external application to play these types of sound.  Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.X include an application called Media Player that can play sounds if the necessary device drivers are installed; AIR Mosaic is set up to automatically use this application to play sounds.

>	View MPEG movie files

Multimedia movie files (MPEG files) are found in many places on the World Wide Web.  Usually they are not identified  with any symbol, but are named with an extension of .mpg ("mountains.mpg"), or otherwise identified as MPEG movie files.

AIR Mosaic does not include an MPEG viewer.  You can use any Windows based MPEG viewer with AIR Mosaic.  When you find an external MPEG viewer, you must set it up in AIR Mosaic using the Configure Viewers feature.

An application called MPEGPLAY can be found on the SPRY ftp server, ftp.spry.com (mpegexe.zip in the /ms-windows/viewers/mpeg/apps directory.)  Note:  this is a freely-distributable application (by Xing™ Technology Corporation) and is not supported by SPRY.    Note:  the SPRY FTP Server's /ms-windows/viewers directory also contains shareware and freeware utilities for viewing postscript, rtf, gif and jpeg files.

____

See

Adding and Configuring Viewers in Mosaic


Adding and Configuring Viewers in Mosaic

AIR Mosaic is set up to automatically use ImageView (included with AIR Mosaic) to view GIF and JPEG files and to use Microsoft's Media Player application (which is included in Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups in your Accessories Program Group) to play .WAV and MIDI sound files.  You can add and configure viewers for other resources that are recognized by Mosaic.

When you click on the Viewers button in the <Configuration> dialog, the <Configure Viewers> dialog will appear. This dialog allows you to change the viewers and tools that are used to access AIR Mosaic resources.

When AIR Mosaic is retrieving a World Wide Web document, it uses MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) information returned by World Wide Web servers to determine the format in which a document is stored and determine how to treat the document.  There are several standard MIME types recognized by Mosaic.

When a document is retrieved from an ftp server, gopher server, or local file system, on the other hand, the file extension (found in the hyperlink to the resource) is used to determine the proper MIME type for documents.

Adding a new viewer

In general, you should use the standard MIME types when you are configuring a new viewer for Mosaic.  AIR Mosaic allows you to create your own MIME types, tell Mosaic what file extensions map to that type, and associate viewers with them, but if the document is being retrieved from an HTTP server, the file extension is ignored... so be careful when selecting MIME types to use the same types as the HTTP server.

For instance, if you have an MPEG movie viewer, you might want to set up that viewer in AIR Mosaic so that Mosaic will automatically load MPEG resources into that viewer when you doubleclick on them.  The standard MIME type used for MPEG viewers is video/mpeg.

You would do this as described below.

Click the Add New Type... button.  A <Document Type> dialog will appear; type the standard MIME type that you want to use (in this case, video/mpeg).  The type you specify will now appear in the Type drop down list.

Now type any file extensions that map to that MIME type in the Extensions field (multiple entries should be separated by a comma; e.g., ".MPG,.MPEG").

Now, enter the pathname to the viewer for this type in the Viewer: field, or click the Browse button to look for it with a standard Windows file search dialog.  (You might, for this example, specify "C:\VIEWERS\MPEG\MPEGPLAY".)

When you click Close to close the Viewer Configuration dialog, the new viewer information will be saved.

Configuring an existing viewer

If the MIME type that you need a viewer for already exists, you can change the extensions for that viewer and the path and filename of the viewer, as described below.

Choose the MIME type for the document type from the drop down list.

Type the full path and filename of the viewer you want to use in the Viewer field, or click Browse to more easily find the viewer on your PC (when you locate the viewer, and click OK, the Viewer field will be filled in automatically).

Add or edit any extensions for the MIME type, separating them with commas (i.e. .AU, .AIFF)

Click Close when you are done configuring viewers.  The changes will take place immediately.

You can also define the applications used by Mosaic for telnet, rlogin, and tn3270.  To do this, type the application you want to use in the appropriate field (click Browse to search your disk for the correct file and directory name).  When you Close the dialog, the changes you made will be saved.


MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)

MIME is a a general purpose encoding method for exchanging multimedia data over the Internet.  Use of MIME allows Mosaic to retrieve and recognize many different types of data.  The most visible part of this MIME usage to you, the user, is the "Content-type".  MIME content types specify the format in which a document is stored.

MIME content types consist of both a type and a subtype; for example "image/gif" is a valid MIME content type.  "image" is the type, and "gif" is the subtype.  Valid types are:

•	text	Specifies textual information (may be formatted text, such as HTML.)

•	image	Specifies still image data.

•	audio	Specifies audio or voice data.

•	video	Specifies video or moving image data, possibly with audio (e.g. AVI files.)

•	application	Specifies application data (i.e., application-specific data.)

"multipart" & "message" are also valid MIME types, but these types are for internal use by the MIME parser and are not used or supported by AIR Mosaic in this release.

The subtypes for any given type may also have some defined values. MIME types in common use today and supported by AIR Mosaic include:

text

plain	Plain ASCII text

html	HTML formatted text

image

gif	CompuServe GIF format

jpeg	JPEG compressed images

tiff	Tagged Image File Format

targa	AT&T TARGA format

x-win-bmp	Windows Bitmap

xbm	X Bitmap

audio

basic	Sun/DEC/NeXT audio (*.AU files)

wav	MS Windows WAVE (RIFF) audio

aiff	Audio Image File Format

video

mpeg	MPEG video

quicktime	Apple QuickTime

msvideo	Microsoft Video (*.AVI files)

application

zip	PKZip compression format

postscript	Adobe PostScript (*.PS) format

You specify these MIME types in the Configure Viewers dialog in Mosaic by specifying first the type, a forward slash and then the sub-type, i.e. application/zip.

Non-standard types which do not fit under these defined subtypes can also be added by pre-pending "X-" to the desired subtype name - e.g., "image/X-my-new-image-format" - but be careful!  If you are retrieving documents from an HTTP server, the server must be returning this type to you, so adding a new type requires configuration on both the client (Mosaic) side and the server. (This is not a concern for items you retrieve from ftp or gopher sites, since AIR Mosaic then uses the extension to recognize the item; therefore you could create a new type without concern.  For example, you could create a type called image/X-TIF, for files with a .TIF or .TIFF extension.)

When retrieving documents from a World Wide Web server (i.e., via HTTP),  AIR Mosaic uses the MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) content type returned by the server to determine in what format a particular file is stored.

More information about MIME can be be found in the Internet Request For Comments document RFC 1341 (Using AIR Mosaic, enter this URL: "ftp://DS.INTERNIC.NET/rfc/rfc1341.txt".).


Hyperlink Color
Color

The Hyperlink color is the color that is used to highlight Mosaic hyperlinks (jumps to other documents or document areas, or jumps to resources).  Text hyperlinks are entirely highlighted, and graphics hyperlinks are surrounded by a highlight.  The standard Hyperlink color is blue.

To change the Hyperlink color, click Color.  The <Color> dialog will appear.

Select the color you would like to use for Hyperlinks, and click OK.  The Hyperlink color will be changed immediately.


Fonts

You can change the fonts that AIR Mosaic uses to display documents.  You can change the font that is used for a particular item, or the font size.  You might want to do this to make documents easier to read, or to fit more information onto your screen.

Different items in documents use different font styles (similar to styles in word processors).  Most regular text is displayed in Normal style, and headers are displayed in a Header style, such as Header 1, Header 2, Header 3, etc.

You can change these font styles clicking the Fonts button.  You will see the <Fonts> dialog.

If you want to change just one style, you can choose the style that you want to change from the drop down menu, and define a Font for that style by clicking the Change Font button.

Specify the font type and style you want, and click OK.  The style will be changed until you change it again.

If you are not sure what style it is you want to change, you will have to do some experimenting.  AIR Mosaic cannot tell you what styles are being used in a particular WWW document.

If you want to change all the styles in a document, you can choose Enlarge All or Reduce All to enlarge or reduce the styles.  You can choose this option as many times as you like.

Click OK when you are finished changing styles.


Proxy Servers

Proxy Servers are machines, usually doubling as Internet gateways, that allow you to send and receive information even though your network is protected with an Internet firewall.  Requests for information are sent from your PC to the Proxy Server, and the requested information is sent back to the Proxy Server, which then sends it to your PC.  If your network is protected by an Internet firewall, you will not be able to use AIR Mosaic to access URLs outside your network unless your network uses Proxy Servers or the appropriate ports are enabled on your firewall.

AIR Mosaic offers support for HTTP, ftp, WAIS, and Gopher Proxy Servers; currently only Proxy Servers based on the CERN specification are supported.

To set up AIR Mosaic to use Proxy Servers, click the Proxy Servers button in the Configuration dialog.  You will see the <Proxy Servers> dialog.  Specify the URLs (with ports, where applicable) of Proxy Servers that you want to use.  AIR Mosaic will then transfer information through those servers.

When retrieving HTML documents, AIR Mosaic will go through an HTTP Proxy Server; when retrieving files via ftp, AIR Mosaic will go through an ftp Proxy Server, etc.  These "servers" are usually all on the same machine; therefore, all of the entries may be the same.

For example, for your HTTP Proxy Server, you might specify http://proxy.circe.com:8001

where proxy.circe.com is the name of your proxy server, and 8001 is the port used for the proxy service.

Using the Exclude Domain option

When you provide Proxy Server address information, AIR Mosaic will always try to access information through those Proxy Servers.  However, there may be times you do not want AIR Mosaic to use Proxy Servers; the Exclude Domain option in the <Proxy Servers> dialog allows you to do this.

For instance, if you are accessing information from your own network (such as ftp'ing files from another machine within your network), you will not want to go through the Proxy Server to retrieve the information.  Also, if you have another domain within your organization that is also behind your Internet firewall, you may want to communicate directly with machines in that domain, rather than going through the proxy server.

When you specify a domain in the Exclude Domain field, AIR Mosaic will automatically try to connect to any URLs in that domain directly, not going through the Proxy Server.

You can specify multiple domains in this field, separating them by commas.


Viewing Mosaic Document Source Code

A Document Source command is provided in the File menu to enable you to view, and save HTML document source code.  Click Document Source to view the current documents source code.

You can now choose Save from the File menu to save the source code to a file.  Remember that all the HTML codes will also be saved.  You will be prompted for a name for this file.

You can also choose Copy from the Edit menu to copy some or all of the HTML text to the Windows Clipboard, so that it can be used in other applications.  (Use the Select All command to select the entire document.)


Mosaic Command Line Options

AIR Mosaic supports three command line options:  opening a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or local HTML file, starting Mosaic in Kiosk mode, and specifying the INI file for Mosaic to use for configuration.

You can, if you want, change the Properties setting for the AIR Mosaic icon to have the command line options take place every time you click on the icon.  (This is not recommended when using the options to open a URL or local HTML file; see the note below).

Command Line Options

Opening a URL or HTML file upon startup:

AIRMOS {URL}

(example:  AIRMOS.EXE http://www.wired.com)

or

AIRMOS {local HTML file pathname}

(example:  AIRMOS.EXE c:\wwwdemo\mydemo.htm)

This option will automatically open AIR Mosaic and connect to the URL or local HTML file that you specify.

If you want to connect to the same URL or HTML every time you start AIR Mosaic, it is  much easier to specify a default home page in Mosaic than to use the command line option.  See Configuring AIR Mosaic Options  for more information on specifying a default home page.

Running AIR Mosaic in Kiosk mode:

AIRMOS -K

This will start AIR Mosaic in Kiosk mode, hiding the Menu Bar, Toolbar, Document Title Bar, and Status Bar, and displaying only the World Wide Web document you are currently viewing.  See Using Kiosk Mode for more information on using Kiosk Mode.

Specifying the AIRMOS.INI file to use:

AIRMOS -I {full path to INI file}

Example:  AIRMOS.INI -I C:\MOSAIC\AIRMOS.INI

This allows you to specify the location of the AIRMOS.INI file you want to use.  By default, Mosaic uses the AIRMOS.INI file found in your Windows directory.  Although it is easy to make changes to the AIR Mosaic configuration, there may be some reason you want to have multiple configurations of Mosaic available; you you can use this option to do so.  To create another configuration of AIR Mosaic, configure AIR Mosaic the way you want it, and then copy the AIRMOS.INI file to a directory other than your Windows directory.  Any further configuration you make will affect the AIRMOS.INI file in the Windows directory; you can then switch to the other configuration by using the command line option, above.


Special Mouseclick Features

AIR Mosaic supports the following modifiers when accessing hyperlinks using the mouse.

Shift-Click

If you hold down the [Shift] key while clicking on a hyperlink, AIR Mosaic will automatically try to save the indicated resource to disk (this is equivalent to having Load to Disk checked on before accessing the resource).

Ctrl-Click

If you hold down the [Ctrl] key while clicking on a hyperlink, AIR Mosaic will retrieve header information for the indicated resource; i.e. the resource type, size, full pathname, etc.  This is a good way to decide whether you will want to load in a resource (and whether you have the appropriate viewers for it), before actually loading it.

Right Click

If Autoload Image is off, clicking the right mouse button when the cursor is over an unloaded image will display the "hidden" image.

Ctrl-Right Click

If you hold down the [Ctrl] button while clicking the right mouse button when the cursor is over an unloaded image, the header information for the indicated resource will be displayed; i.e. the image type, size, full pathname. As with Ctrl-Click, above, this is a good way to decide whether you want to load in an image before actually loading it.


Exiting Mosaic

You can exit AIR Mosaic by choosing Exit from the File menu.  You can also double-click on the Windows System Menu to exit AIR Mosaic.

If you are currently retrieving a new Mosaic document, it is recommended that you wait until that document is retrieved, or stop retrieving the document by clicking the Stop button, before exiting Mosaic.