4.3.2: MSDOS browsers

NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so.

DosLynx

DosLynx is an excellent text-based browser for use on DOS systems. You must have a level 1 packet driver, or an emulation thereof, or you will only be able to browse local files; essentially, if your PC has an Ethernet connection, or you have SLIP, you should be able to use it. DosLynx can view GIF images, but not when they are inline images (as of this writing). See the README.HTM file at the DosLynx site for details. You can obtain DosLynx by anonymous FTP from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in the directory pub/WWW/DosLynx; the URL is ftp://ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/WWW/DosLynx/.

4.3.3: Macintosh browsers

NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so.

Mosaic for Macintosh

From NCSA. Full featured. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mac/Mosaic.

Samba

From CERN. Basic. Available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /ftp/pub/www/bin as the file mac.

MacWeb

From EINet. Has features that Mosaic lacks; lacks some features that Mosaic has. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.einet.net in the directory einet/mac/macweb.

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4.3.4: Amiga browsers

AMosaic

Browser for AmigaOS, based on NCSA's Mosaic. Supports older Amigas as well as the newer machines in the latest versions, I am told; available for anonymous ftp from max.physics.sunysb.edu in the directory /pub/amosaic, or from aminet sites in /pub/aminet/comm/net. see the site for details. See the URL http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/AMosaic/home.html.

4.3.5: NeXTStep browsers

Note: NeXT systems can also run X-based browsers using one of the widely used X server products for the NeXT. The browsers listed here, by contrast, are native NeXTStep applications.

OmniWeb

A World Wide Web browser for NeXTStep. The URL for more information is http://www.omnigroup.com/; you can ftp the package from ftp.omnigroup.com in the /pub/software/ directory.

WorldWideWeb, CERN's NeXT Browser-Editor

A browser/editor for NeXTStep. Currently out of date; editor not operational. Allows wysiwyg hypertext editing. Requires NeXTStep 3.0. Available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /pub/www/src.

4.3.6: X/DecWindows (graphical UNIX, VMS) browsers

NCSA Mosaic for X

Unix browser using X11/Motif. Multimedia magic. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Recommended if you can run it. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic.

NCSA Mosaic for VMS

Browser using X11/DecWindows/Motif. For the VMS operating system. Multimedia magic. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Recommended if you can run it. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic.

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

Line Mode Browser

This program gives W3 readership to anyone with a dumb terminal. A general purpose information retrieval tool. Available by anonymous ftp from info.cern.ch in the directory /pub/www/src.

The "Lynx" full screen browser

This is a hypertext browser for vt100s using full screen, arrow keys, highlighting, etc. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu.

Tom Fine's perlWWW

A tty-based browser written in perl. Available by anonymous FTP from archive.cis.ohio-state.edu in the directory pub/w3browser as the file w3browser-0.1.shar.

For VMS

Dudu Rashty's full screen client based on VMS's SMG screen management routines. Available by anonymous FTP from vms.huji.ac.il in the directory www/www_client.

Emacs w3-mode

W3 browse mode for emacs. Uses multiple fonts when used with Lemacs or Epoch. See the documentation. Available by anonymous FTP from moose.cs.indiana.edu in the directory pub/elisp/w3 as the files w3.tar.Z and extras.tar.Z.

4.3.8: Batch-Mode "Browsers"

Batch mode browser

A batch-mode "browser", url_get, which is available through the URL http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu/test/zippy/url_get.html. It can be retrieved via anonymous FTP to ftp.cc.utexas.edu, as the file /pub/zippy/url_get.tar.Z. This package is intended for use in cron jobs and other settings in which fetching a page in a command-line fashion is useful.

4.4: How can I access the web through a firewall?

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).

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4.5: What is on the web?

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4.5.1: How do I find out what's new on the web?

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4.5.2: Where is the subject catalog of the web?

There is also a newer cataloging system called ALIWEB that requires very little effort to maintain and is growing rapidly.

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4.5.3: How can I search through ALL web sites?

Here are a few such automatic indexes you can search:

• WebCrawler (URL is http://www.biotech.washington.edu/WebQuery.html) builds an impressively complete index; on the other hand, since it indexes the content of documents, it may find many links that aren't exactly what you had in mind.
• World Wide Web Worm (URL is http://www.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWW.html) builds its index based on page titles and URL contents only. This is somewhat less inclusive, but pages it finds are more likely to be an exact match with your needs.

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4.6: How can I save an inline image to disk?

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4.7: How can I get sound from the PC speaker with WinMosaic?

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.

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4.8: I have a Windows PC or Macintosh. Why can't I access WAIS URLs?

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4.9: I'm running XMosaic. Why can't I get external viewers working...

  idaknow: telnet www.acl.lanl.gov 80  // Connect to the httpd server
  Trying 128.165.148.3 ...
  Connected to www.acl.lanl.gov.
  Escape character is '^]'.
  HEAD /Home.html HTTP/1.0             // replace Home.html with your document
                                       // you supply the blank line
  HTTP/1.0 200 OK                      // the rest of this comes from the server  Date: Wednesday, 25-May-94 19:18:11 GMT
  Server: NCSA/1.1
  MIME-version: 1.0
  Content-type: text/html              // Here's the MIME Content-type
  Last-modified: Monday, 16-May-94 16:21:58 GMT
  Content-length: 1727

  
  idaknow: 

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.

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4.10: Hey, I know, I'll write a WWW-exploring robot! Why not?

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.

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4.11: How do I send newsgroup posts in HTML to my web client?

#!/bin/sh
echo \ > .article.html
cat >> .article.html
echo \ >> .article.html
lynx .article.html < /dev/tty
rm .article.html

W     |readwebpost %C

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

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5.1: Introduction: 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.

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5.2: Obtaining Servers

See http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Overview.html for more information on writing servers and gateways in general.

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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.

CERN httpd

CERN's server is available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch (URL is ftp://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

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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.

5.2.4: MSDOS Servers

inorganic5.chem.ufl.edu
biochemistry.cwru.edu

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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.html.

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.

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5.2.6: Amiga Servers

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5.3: Producing HTML documents

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5.3.1: Writing HTML documents yourself

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.txt). (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.

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5.3.2: HTML editors

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.)

Known mirrors:

• ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/contrib/SoftQuad/sqhotmetal-1.0.tar.gz
• ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/SGML/HoTMetaL
• ftp://sgml1.ex.ac.uk/SoftQuad
• ftp://doc.ic.ac.uk/pub/packages/WWW/ncsa/contrib/SoftQuad
• ftp://askhp.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/infosystems/mosaic/contrib/SoftQuad
• ftp://ftp.cs.concordia.ca/pub/www

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; it is available by FTP at the URL ftp://ctipsych.york.ac.uk/CTI_FTP/pub/BBEdit/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").

Another option, if you have an SGML editor, is to use it with the HTML DTD .

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5.3.3: Converting other formats to HTML

Rich Brandwein and Mike Sendall's List at CERN. The 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.

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5.4: How do I publicize my work?

• 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).

5.5: Can I buy space on an existing server?

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5.6.1: How do I set up a clickable image map?

You can read about image maps and the NCSA server at the URL http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/setup/admin/Imagemap.html.

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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.

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5.6.3: Where can I learn how to create fill-out forms?

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5.6.3.1: How can I create hidden fields in forms (keeping state)?

<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=state VALUE="hidden info to be returned with form">

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5.6.4: How do I comment an HTML document?

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5.6.5: How can I create decent-looking tables and stop using <PRE>... </PRE>?

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.

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5.6.6: What is HTML Level 3 and where can I learn more about it?

However, most clients support only a handful of HTML Level 3 features (such as forms in Mosaic) at this time.

To learn more about HTML Level 3, you can examine a draft specification for it (at the URL ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-raggett-www-html-00.txt) or a Postscript version of the same draft (at the URL ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-raggett-www-html-00.ps). You can also 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.)

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5.6.7: How can I make transparent GIFs?

There is a document explaining transparent GIFs available at the URL http://melmac.harris-atd.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.

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5.6.8: How come mailto: URLs don't work?

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5.6.9: How can I restrict and control access to my server?

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5.6.10: Which format is better for WWW image purposes, JPEG or GIF?

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5.6.11: How can I mirror part of another server?

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6: What newsgroups discuss the Web?

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.

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 will be removed within three months of this writing (June 7th, 1994).

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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.

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8: Credits

• Thomas Boutell boutell@netcom.com
• Nathan Torkington Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz
• Marc Andreessen marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu
• Tony Johnson

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