Windows httpd Demonstration
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Demonstration Checklist
This demonstration page exercises
many of the capabilities of your server
and browser. Here's a checklist you can use to verify your
setup:
- You have enabled "Display Inline Images" in the Options menu
- Your browser is configured to accept and view GIF and basic sound
- You have a GIF viewer and sound player installed and tested with Mosaic
- The httpd server is running
- You have "enough" DOS environment space
- You have a copy of
VBRUN300.DLL in your Windows "system" directory
- You are reading this document from the server (not as a local file)
Introduction
Your new server has the capabilities you need to produce powerful yet easy
to use presentations and services. In order to make it as easy as possible
for you to get online as a Web information provider,
your package contains the basic server,
plus a few pre-configured add-on utilities. The server can support
the following features:
This is the most basic, yet most often used, function that your server provides.
When the user clicks on a hot-spot, Mosaic sends a request to the server
and the server returns the requested document.
Here is a plain text document
Here is a hypertext document
Here is a GIF image
Here is an audio clip
You can use an image
as a hot-spot as well.
NCSA Mosaic has a feature that permits a hypertext document to trigger
display of a "query field". When the user enters something into the query field
and presses ENTER, the browser sends a special request to the server. You can set
up your server to offer query documents and process queries by using the
back-end scripting facilities. In this way, you can offer services that provide
searching databases, etc.
If this doesn't work, read the
template home page again! You probably didn't set up enough DOS environment space. Now click
here to display the sample query document. This demo uses the DOS CGI interface.
I recommend strongly that you use the Windows CGI interface and Visual Basic
for your back-end work!
NCSA Mosaic has the ability to display "form" information encoded into
a hypertext document. The user can fill in fields, select from lists, set and
clear options with checkboxes and option buttons, and more.
If this doesn't work, read the
template home page again! You probably didn't set up enough DOS environment space. This demo uses the DOS CGI interface.
I recommend strongly that you use the Windows CGI interface and Visual Basic
for your back-end work!
Here is a simple form. Fill in the field and select an option, then click
the "Search" button. You will see a plain text "stub" response showing
what would ordinarily be submitted to the database search engine:
The same basic mechanism used to send the query specifications in the
previous example may be used to submit data to some sort of back-end.
This example uses a form to provide an order-entry service. This
example uses the Windows virtual document programming (VDP) interface,
and the VDP generates the form, reads the responsdes, etc. If you are
interested in writing your own forms, this is an excellent example. This demo uses the Windows CGI interface.
Godzilla's Pizza Delivery
This feature of Windows httpd permits the server to display a directory tree
accessible to the server
and let users browse through the (sub)directories, and retrieve files within
the tree. In addition, as server administrator, you can create text descriptions
for files to assist your users in locating information in files.
If security is not an issue, you could set up your server to "serve up its
C drive", in which case Web users could retrieve any file on the server's
main disk.
For this demo, I have created a small
directory tree
with some useless documents in it. Have a look and you'll get the idea. Clicking
on the Parent Directory entry at the top of the demo tree will
take you back to this demo document. Can you figure out how that happens?
Your server has the ability to provide fine-grain control of access to documents
and scripts. Access can be controlled by user, by group, by client host domain
name, or any combination of these. In addition, access can be controlled at the
server level, or at the individual directory level, or a combination of both.
Browsers remember the last
successful username
and password you enter. If you type in the correct username and password, you
will be permitted to access the document, and you won't be able to try an incorrect
combination until you exit and restart your browser. I suggest you start with the wrong
username and/or password. Then when you try again, you'll get a "failure"
alert. Choose the try again button and you can type in another (correct)
username and password.
This document
can be accessed only by user fido with password
bones.
The server has been pre-configured with the ability to process clicks within
an inline image and perform actions based on the location of the click.
This is called "image map" support. With it,
for example, you can create a graphical map of
a complex set of Web pages and let your users navigate visually. Obviously,
many other clever things can be done with image maps.
Here is an inline GIF image. Click in it and see what happens.
P.S. The image mapper is a Windows program and uses the Windows CGI
interface. See the demo below.
Windows CGI
In order for this demonstration to run, you must have the Visual Basic 3.0
runtime image VBRUN300.DLL installed on your system.
The back-end is a test program that produces various reports as to the CGI
environment it gets from the server. The reports are in HTML format. The sources
to this test program are in the /cgi-src directory, plus a "usage" page in
the server document root. The usage page is returned if no test selector
is specified (as "extra path" info).
The URL to get the usage page is:
/cgi-win/cgitest.exe
Try it now. It should be self-explanatory. For more information, see the
Windows CGI documentation.
Robert B. Denny <rdenny@netcom.com>
