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WORLD WIDE WEB FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS This is part 1 of a 2-part posting. Part 2 begins with section 5 (providing information to the web). It should be the next posting in this thread. This document resides on the World Wide Web on Sunsite (URL is http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html ). If you are unfamiliar with the term "URL", read on and learn! Last update: 1/26/95 Contents * 1: Recent changes to the FAQ * 2: Information about this document * 3: Elementary Questions + 3.1: What are WWW, hypertext and hypermedia? + 3.2: What is a URL? + 3.3: What are SGML and HTML? + 3.4: How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS? + 3.5: Are there books about the web? * 4: Accessing the Web (User Questions) + 4.1: Introduction: How can I access the web? (Even by email!) + 4.2: Browsers Accessible by Telnet + 4.3: Obtaining browsers o 4.3.1: MS Windows, IBM OS/2 and MS Windows NT browsers o 4.3.2: MSDOS browsers o 4.3.3: Macintosh browsers o 4.3.4: Amiga browsers o 4.3.5: NeXTStep browsers o 4.3.6: X/DecWindows (graphical UNIX, VMS) browsers o 4.3.7: Text-based Unix and VMS browsers o 4.3.8: VM/CMS browsers o 4.3.9: Batch-mode "browsers" + 4.4: How can I access the web through a firewall? + 4.5: What is on the web? o 4.5.1: How do I find out what's new on the web? o 4.5.2: Where is the subject catalog of the web? o 4.5.3: How can I search through ALL web sites? + 4.6: How can I save an inline image to disk? + 4.7: How can I get sound from the PC speaker with WinMosaic? + 4.8: I have a Windows PC (or a Macintosh). Why can't I open WAIS URLs? + 4.9: I'm running XMosaic. Why can't I get external viewers working? + 4.10: Hey, I know, I'll write a WWW-exploring robot! Why not? + 4.11: How do I send newsgroup posts in HTML to my web client? + 4.12: I can't get SLIP. I want Mosaic. Is there a way? (YES!) * 5: Providing Information to the Web (Provider Questions) + 5.1: How can I provide information to the web? + 5.2: Obtaining Servers o 5.2.1: Unix Servers o 5.2.2: Macintosh Servers o 5.2.3: MS Windows, IBM OS/2 and MS Windows NT Servers o 5.2.4: MSDOS and Novell Netware Servers o 5.2.5: VMS Servers o 5.2.6: Amiga Servers o 5.2.7: VM/CMS Servers o 5.2.8: Yeah, but which is best? + 5.3: Producing HTML documents o 5.3.1: Writing HTML directly o 5.3.2: HTML editors o 5.3.3: Converting other formats to HTML o 5.3.4: Checking your HTML for errors + 5.4: How do I publicize my work? + 5.5: Can I buy space on an existing server? + 5.6: How fast does my net connection have to be? + 5.7: Advanced Provider Questions o 5.7.1: How do I set up a clickable image map? o 5.7.2: How do I make a "link" that doesn't load a new page? o 5.7.3: Where can I learn how to create fill-out forms? # 5.7.3.1: How can I create hidden fields in forms (keeping state)? # 5.7.3.2: How can users email me through their browsers? o 5.7.4: How do I comment an HTML document? o 5.7.5: How can I create decent-looking tables and stop using <PRE>...</PRE>? o 5.7.6: What is HTML Level 3 and where can I learn more about it? o 5.7.7: How can I make interlaced and transparent GIFs? And what are they? o 5.7.8: How come mailto: URLs don't work? o 5.7.9: How can I restrict and control access to my server? o 5.7.10: Which format is better for WWW images, JPEG or GIF? o 5.7.11: How can I mirror part of another server? o 5.7.12: How can I keep robots off my server? o 5.7.13: How can I keep statistics about my web site? o 5.7.14: How can I generate web pages on the fly from a program? # 5.7.14.1: How can I generate GIF images on the fly from my CGI programs? * 6: Where can I discuss the Web? + 6.1: USENET Newsgroups + 6.2: Mailing Lists * 7: I want to know more. * 8: Credits 1: RECENT ADDITIONS AND CHANGES TO THE FAQ * Added htmlchek to validation section * Added information on interlaced GIFs * Added information on the WN Server * Added information on CGI script authoring * Added information on the gd GIF-generating library * Updated email links section * More books! * Slipknot section updated * GLACI-HTTPD, a WWW server for Novell Netware * WWW mailing lists section * Updated URL for Gabriel White's HTML editor reviews * IBM OS/2 WebExplorer * MapMaker: From xv's Visual Schnauzer to an imagemap * Added comp.infosystems.www.announce * Added the Arena browser 2: INFORMATION ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT This is an introduction to the World Wide Web project, describing the concepts, software and access methods. It is aimed at people who know a little about navigating the Internet, but want to know more about WWW specifically. If you don't think you are up to this level, try an introductory Internet book such as Ed Krol's "The Whole Internet" or "EFF's Guide to the Internet". The latter is available electronically by anonymous FTP from ftp.eff.org in the directory pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide. This informational document is posted to news.answers, comp.infosystems.www.users, comp.infosystems.www.providers, comp.infosystems.www.announce, comp.infosystems.www.misc, comp.infosystems.gopher, comp.infosystems.wais and alt.hypertext every four days (please allow a day or two for it to propagate to your site). The latest and best version is always available on the web as http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html , and is mirrored in Japan (URL is http://www.glocom.ac.jp/mirror/sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.htm l ). (see section 3.2, "What is a URL?" to understand what this term means.) If you run a mirror site which automatically mirrors this document, please submit the URL for inclusion in the list of mirrors. Thanks to both Sunsite and Glocom. This document is also available by anonymous FTP from ftp.netcom.com in the directory pub/bo/boutell/faq. In addition, the most recently posted version of this document is kept on the news.answers archive on rtfm.mit.edu in /pub/usenet/news.answers/www/faq. For information on FTP, send e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with: send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources in the body (not subject line) of your message, instead of asking me. If you want the HTML version but are located behind a firewall, you can acquire it from CERN's WWW email server. Send mail to listproc@www0.cern.ch with the following single line in the body (leave the subject blank): source http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html Thomas Boutell maintains this document. Feedback about it is to be sent via e-mail to boutell@netcom.com. In all cases, regard this document as out of date. Definitive information should be on the web, and static versions such as this should be considered unreliable at best. The most up-to-date version of the FAQ is the version maintained on the web. Please excuse any formatting inconsistencies in the posted version of this document, as it is automatically generated from the on-line version. 3: ELEMENTARY QUESTIONS 3.1: What are WWW, hypertext and hypermedia? WWW stands for "World Wide Web". The WWW project, started by CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics), seeks to build a distributed hypermedia system. The advantage of hypertext is that in a hypertext document, if you want more information about a particular subject mentioned, you can usually "just click on it" to read further detail. In fact, documents can be and often are linked to other documents by completely different authors -- much like footnoting, but you can get the referenced document instantly! To access the web, you run a browser program. The browser reads documents, and can fetch documents from other sources. Information providers set up hypermedia servers which browsers can get documents from. The browsers can, in addition, access files by FTP, NNTP (the Internet news protocol), gopher and an ever-increasing range of other methods. On top of these, if the server has search capabilities, the browsers will permit searches of documents and databases. The documents that the browsers display are hypertext documents. Hypertext is text with pointers to other text. The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way -- select the pointer, and you are presented with the text that is pointed to. Hypermedia is a superset of hypertext -- it is any medium with pointers to other media. This means that browsers might not display a text file, but might display images or sound or animations. 3.2: What is a URL? URL stands for "Uniform Resource Locator". It is a draft standard for specifying an object on the Internet, such as a file or newsgroup. URLs look like this: (file: and ftp: URLs are synonymous.) * file://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip * ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors * http://info.cern.ch:80/default.html * news:alt.hypertext * telnet://dra.com The first part of the URL, before the colon, specifies the access method. The part of the URL after the colon is interpreted specific to the access method. In general, two slashes after the colon indicate a machine name (machine:port is also valid). When you are told to "check out this URL", what to do next depends on your browser; please check the help for your particular browser. For the line-mode browser at CERN, which you will quite possibly use first via telnet, the command to try a URL is "GO URL" (substitute the actual URL of course). In Lynx you just select the "GO" link on the first page you see; in graphical browsers, there's usually an "Open URL" option in the menus. 3.3: What are SGML and HTML? Documents on the World Wide Web are written in a simple "markup language" called HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. See section 5.3 for more information about creating HTML documents for use on the web. SGML is a much broader language which is used to define particular markup languages for particular purposes. HTML is just a specific application of SGML. You can learn more about SGML, and the rationale behind HTML, by reading A Gentle Introduction to SGML (URL is http://etext.virginia.edu/bin/tei-tocs?div=DIV1%26id=SG ), a document provided by the Text Encoding Initiative. (Note: Some browsers apparently crash on this URL. There's nothing wrong with the document; try another browser if you have problems.) 3.4: How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS? While all three of these information presentation systems are client-server based, they differ in terms of their model of data. In gopher, data is either a menu, a document, an index or a telnet connection. In WAIS, everything is an index and everything that is returned from the index is a document. In WWW, everything is a (possibly) hypertext document which may be searchable. In practice, this means that WWW can represent the gopher (a menu is a list of links, a gopher document is a hypertext document without links, searches are the same, telnet sessions are the same) and WAIS (a WAIS index is a searchable page, returning a document with no links) data models as well as providing extra functionality. World Wide Web usage grew far beyond Gopher usage in the last few months, according to the statistics-keepers of the Internet backbone. (Of course, World Wide Web browsers can also access Gopher servers, which inflates the numbers for the latter.) WWW has long since reached critical mass, with new commercial and noncommercial sites appearing daily. 3.5: Are there books about the web? Yes, quite a few. A brief list follows. New entries are solicited. Please include ISBN numbers and/or ordering information. The Mosaic Handbook (Mac, Windows and X editions) From O'Reilly. A short, sweet guide to the World Wide Web from a Mosaic user's perspective. Mac and Windows versions Include Enhanced NCSA Mosaic on floppy disk; the X Window System version includes NCSA Mosaic on CD-ROM. Telnet or gopher to gopher.ora.com (log in as gopher) or find details on the web (URL is http://gnn.com/ora/ ). Wherever fine X Window System books and Nutshell Guides are sold. The World Wide Web Unleashed From Sams Publishing. By John December and Neil Randall. Additional chapters contributed by others; I wrote the chapter on HTML editors and filters. Covers both user and provider issues in detail. Supporting pages available on the web (URL is http://www.rpi.edu/~decemj/works/wwwu.html ). 1057 pages. ISBN: 0-672-30617-4. Call 1-800-428-5331 or +1-317-581-3500 for ordering information. Spinning the Web: How to Provide Information on the Internet From Van Nostrand Reinhold. By Andrew Ford. Oriented toward those with an interest in putting their data on the web. ISBN: 1-850-32141-8 (New York), 0-442-01962-9 (London). Available in December 1994. Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week From Sams Publishing. By Laura Lemay. Also oriented toward those who plan to publish materials on the web. ISBN: 0-672-30667-0. 400 pages. Includes information on setting up servers and handling forms results as well as HTML writing and editing. (URL is: http://slack.lne.com/lemay/theBook/index.html ) Available December 22nd, 1994. Call 1-800-428-5331 or +1-317-581-3500 for ordering information. The HTML Manual of Style From Ziff-Davis Press. By Larry Aronson. Chapters: introduction to the WWW, the HTML language, writing HTML documents, and HTML examples. 120 pages. Available in December 1994. The Internet via Mosaic and World-Wide Web From Ziff-Davis Press. By Steve Browne. Details on obtaining Mosaic and Trumpet Winsock, getting it all set up, and what to do with it once it works. A chapter of interesting sites on the Web as well. ISBN: 1-56276-259-1. MOSAIC Quick Tour From Ventana Press. By Gareth Branwyn. A good guide to installing and using NCSA Mosaic under Windows. Includes basic HTML and trouble-shooting chapters. "More hand-holding than the FAQ and gives lots of details." - Mari J. Stoddard Managing Internet Information Services From O'Reilly and Associates. By Cricket Liu, Jerry Peek, Russ Jones, Bryan Buus & Adrian Nye. A good choice for those who will be installing and maintaining WWW servers; also includes documentation on HTML, imagemaps and the like. Also covers other types of Internet services. Hands-On Mosaic: A Guide for Window Users From Prentice Hall. By Dr. David Sachs & Henry Stair. ISBN: 0-13-172321-9. HTML Authoring for Fun & Profit From Prentice Hall. By Mary Morris. Jan 1995. ISBN: 0-13-359290-1. NCSA Mosaic Handbook From Prentice Hall. By Amy K. Kreiling & Frank Baker. Jan 1995. ISBN: 0-13-196692-8. Plug-n-Play Mosaic for Windows From Sams. By Angela Gunn. ISBN 0-672-30627-1. 300 pages. Disks include a special version of Enhanced NCSA Mosaic for Windows with built-in TCP/IP Winsock and dialer, and an automated configuration program (hence "plug-n-play"). The book is an introduction to Mosaic and the Web with some coverage of creating a home page and HTML and, of course, the obligatory directory of Web sites. Using Mosaic From Que. Ed. by Que Development Group. ISBN: 0-7897-0021-2. Covers NCSA Mosaic for Windows and the Macintosh. Using the World Wide Web From Que. Ed. by Que Development Group. ISBN: 0-7897-0016-6. Mosaic User's Guide From MIS Press. By Bryan Pfaffenberger. ISBN: 1-55828-409-5. Using Mosaic for Windows From Electric Avenue Press. By Stephen Gauer. ISBN: 0-969-8853-0-X. 4.1: Introduction: how can I access the web? You have three options: use a browser on your own machine (the best option), use a browser that can be telnetted to (not as good), or access the web by email (the least attractive, but for some it's the only way). It is always best to run a browser on your own machine, unless you absolutely cannot do so; but feel free to telnet to a browser for your first look at the web, or use email if the telnet command does not work on your system (try it first!). Note that "your machine" can be defined as a system you dial into from home, such as netcom or another account provider. Running a text-based browser on such a system is still preferable to telnetting to a faraway site. The following sections cover telnetting to a browser and obtaining your own browser; if neither of these are possible for you (because you have only an email-and-news connection to the Internet), here is how to access a web page by email: Send email to server@mail.w3.org (preferred) or to listserv@info.cern.ch (older address if the first fails) containing the following single line. (What you put on the subject line doesn't matter; blank is OK. This line should go in the text of the message.) You will receive as a reply a simple page intended to help you learn more about the Web. send http://www.earn.net/gnrt/www.html 4.2: Browsers accessible by telnet An up-to-date list of these is available on the Web as http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/FAQ/Bootstrap.html and should be regarded as an authoritative list. telnet.w3.org A telnettable browser provided by the W3 coalition. www.cc.ukans.edu Offers Lynx, a full screen browser which requires a vt100 terminal. Log in as www. Does not allow users to "go" to arbitrary URLs, so GET YOUR OWN COPY of Lynx and install it on your system if your administrator has not done so already. The best plain-text browser, so move mountains if necessary to get your own copy of Lynx! www.njit.edu (or telnet 128.235.163.2) Log in as www. A full-screen browser in New Jersey Institute of Technology. USA. www.huji.ac.il A dual-language Hebrew/English database, with links to the rest of the world. The line mode browser, plus extra features. Log in as www. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. sun.uakom.cs Slovakia. Has a slow link, only use from nearby. info.funet.fi (or telnet 128.214.6.102). Log in as www. Offers several browsers, including Lynx (goto option is disabled there also). fserv.kfki.hu Hungary. Has slow link, use from nearby. Login is as www. 4.3: Obtaining browsers The preferred method of access of the Web is to run a browser yourself. Browsers are available for many platforms, both in source and executable forms. Here is a list generated from the authoritative list, http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html . 4.3.1: MICROSOFT WINDOWS BROWSERS NOTE: Most of these browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. The sole exception is SlipKnot, which has limited features but operates well without a proper Internet connection. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines. You can do this one of two ways: using a proper SLIP account, which requires the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution, or using The Internet Adapter (section 4.12), a product which simulates SLIP through your dialup Unix shell account. If you only have non-Unix based dialup shell access, or have no PC at home, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the VMS (or Unix, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so. Cello Browser from Cornell LII. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.law.cornell.edu in the directory /pub/LII/cello. Mosaic for Windows From NCSA. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory PC/Windows/Mosaic. WinWeb From EINet. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.einet.net in the directory /einet/pc/winweb as the file winweb.zip. Netscape From Mosaic Communications Corp (URL is: http://home.mcom.com/info/index.html ). Downloads and displays images incrementally while you read pages, which also display incrementally, making it the best browser at the time of this writing for those who connect to the web via modems. Also supports many extensions to HTML, although not all conform to the proposed standard. Netscape is a commercial product but can be evaluated free of charge for an unlimited period of time by individuals. Netscape supports some of the official extended HTML tags as well as its own variations. The 16-bit version works under both OS/2 and Windows. Available by anonymous FTP from the following sites (use the mirror closest to you; see the URL above for the latest list): + ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape/ + ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/info-service/www/mcc/ + ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/net/infosys/Netscape/ + ftp://ftp.icsi.net/pub/packages/netscape/ + ftp://www.sandia.gov/Netscape/ + ftp://lark.cc.ukans.edu/Netscape/ + ftp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/netscape/ + ftp://ftp.meer.net/pub/Netscape/ + ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/Netscape/ Spry Mosaic From Spry. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.spry.com in the directory AirMosaicDemo as the file AMOSDEMO.EXE. Spry Mosaic is a commercial product but a demonstration version is available and can be registered inexpensively. Works under Windows and OS/2. Supports the mailto: URL, transparent GIFs, ALT tags, hierarchical hotlists, etc. Booklink From Booklink. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.booklink.com in the directory lite; this is a demonstration version of the full browser, which costs $99. Booklink can open many simultaneous connections in different windows and display images and pages progressively; at the time of this writing it is the only browser to equal Netscape in this area. The "lite" version can only open two simultaneous connections, however. SlipKnot SlipKnot is the only graphical WWW browser that operates entirely without SLIP, PPP, an Ethernet connection, or special server-side software (but consider TIA, section 4.12 for another workaround). SlipKnot supports multiple fonts, inline images, and review of documents you have already received while new documents arrive, and it operates entirely through your regular Unix shell account. SlipKnot does not require that you install any new software on your Unix shell account. (However, it is lacking certain important features as a result, such as forms and validation; this will keep you from accessing some web pages. SlipKnot does support the <ISINDEX> tag, which many sites support as a simpler alternative to forms.) You can obtain SlipKnot by anonymous FTP from ftp.netcom.com in the directory pub/pbrooks/slipknot or from oak.oakland.edu in the directory SimTel/win3/internet. For more information, see the SlipKnot information page (URL is http://www.interport.net/slipknot/slipknot.html ) or send a blank email message to slipknot@micromind.com. IBM OS/2 WebExplorer A native IBM OS/2 web browser. WebExplorer is a multithreaded application and replaces the usual "back" and "forward" buttons with a visual map of your exploration of the web. IBM WebExplorer can be acquired by anonymous FTP from ftp01.ny.us.ibm.net in the directory pub/WebExplorer/ . 4.3.2: MSDOS BROWSERS NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines. You can do this one of two ways: using a proper SLIP account, which requires the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution, or using The Internet Adapter (section 4.12), a product which simulates SLIP through your dialup Unix shell account. If you only have non-Unix based dialup shell access, or have no PC at home, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the VMS (or Unix, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so. DosLynx DosLynx is an excellent text-based browser for use on DOS systems. You must have a level 1 packet driver, or an emulation thereof, or you will only be able to browse local files; essentially, if your PC has an Ethernet connection, or you have SLIP, you should be able to use it. DosLynx can view GIF images, but not when they are inline images (as of this writing). See the README.HTM file at the DosLynx site for details. You can obtain DosLynx by anonymous FTP from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in the directory pub/WWW/DosLynx; the URL is ftp://ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/WWW/DosLynx/. 4.3.3: MACINTOSH BROWSERS NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines. You can do this one of two ways: using a proper SLIP account, which requires the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution, or using The Internet Adapter (section 4.12), a product which simulates SLIP through your dialup Unix shell account. If you only have non-Unix based dialup shell access, or have no PC at home, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the VMS (or Unix, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so. Mosaic for Macintosh From NCSA. Full featured. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mac/Mosaic. Netscape From Mosaic Communications Corp (URL is: http://home.mcom.com/info/index.html ). Downloads and displays images incrementally while you read pages, which also display incrementally, making it the best browser at the time of this writing for those who connect to the web via modems. Also supports many extensions to HTML, although not all conform to the proposed standard. Netscape is a commercial product but is free for personal use by individuals. Version 0.9 (available to the public as of this writing) does not support printing, but this is promised in the forthcoming version 1.0. Contrary to popular myth, version 1.0 will be free for personal use, just like version 0.9. Available by anonymous FTP from the following sites (use the mirror closest to you; see the URL above for the latest list): + ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape/ + ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/info-service/www/mcc/ + ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/net/infosys/Mosaic_Comm/Netscape/ + ftp://ftp.icsi.net/pub/packages/netscape/ + ftp://www.sandia.gov/Netscape/ + ftp://lark.cc.ukans.edu/Netscape/ + ftp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/netscape/ + ftp://ftp.meer.net/pub/Netscape/ + ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/Netscape/ Samba From CERN. Basic. Available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /ftp/pub/www/bin as the file mac. MacWeb From EINet. Has features that Mosaic lacks; lacks some features that Mosaic has. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.einet.net in the directory einet/mac/macweb. 4.3.4: AMIGA BROWSERS AMosaic Browser for AmigaOS, based on NCSA's Mosaic. Supports older Amigas as well as the newer machines in the latest versions; available for anonymous ftp from max.physics.sunysb.edu in the directory /pub/amosaic, or from aminet sites in /pub/aminet/comm/net. see the site for details. See the URL http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/AMosaic/home.html . Emacs-W3 The Emacs-W3 browser works under Gnu Emacs on the Amiga (see section 4.3.7). 4.3.5: NEXTSTEP BROWSERS Note: NeXTStep 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. SpiderWoman A brand-new (as of 12/94), multithreaded, graphical browser for NeXTStep. Available by anonymous FTP from sente.epfl.ch in the directory pub/software. OmniWeb A World Wide Web browser for NeXTStep. The URL for more information is http://www.omnigroup.com/; you can ftp the package from ftp.omnigroup.com in the /pub/software/ directory. WorldWideWeb, CERN's NeXT Browser-Editor A browser/editor for NeXTStep. Currently out of date; editor not operational. Allows wysiwyg hypertext editing. Requires NeXTStep 3.0. Available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /pub/www/src. 4.3.6: X/DECWINDOWS (GRAPHICAL UNIX, VMS) BROWSERS NCSA Mosaic for X Unix browser using X11/Motif. The original multimedia browser. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Recent beta versions have limited support for tables. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic for VMS Browser using X11/DecWindows/Motif. For the VMS operating system. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Probably the best browser available for VMS. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic. Netscape From Mosaic Communications Corp (URL is: http://home.mcom.com/info/index.html ). Downloads and displays images incrementally while you read pages, which also display incrementally, making it the best browser at the time of this writing for those who connect to the web via modems. Also supports many extensions to HTML, although not all conform to the proposed standard. Netscape is a commercial product but is free for personal use by individuals. Version 0.9 (available to the public as of this writing) does not support printing, but this is promised in the forthcoming version 1.0. Contrary to popular myth, version 1.0 will be free for personal use, just like version 0.9. Available by anonymous FTP from the following sites (use the mirror closest to you; see the URL above for the latest list): + ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape/ + ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/info-service/www/mcc/ + ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/net/infosys/Mosaic_Comm/Netscape/ + ftp://ftp.icsi.net/pub/packages/netscape/ + ftp://www.sandia.gov/Netscape/ + ftp://lark.cc.ukans.edu/Netscape/ + ftp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/netscape/ + ftp://ftp.meer.net/pub/Netscape/ + ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/Netscape/ Quadralay GWHIS Viewer (Commercial Mosaic) Quadralay offers a commercial-grade (not free!) version of Mosaic for Unix systems, with Windows and Macintosh versions expected in the future. (URL is: http://www.quadralay.com/products/products.html#gwhis ) tkWWW Browser/Editor for X11 Unix Browser/Editor for X11. (Beta test version.) Available for anonymous ftp from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu in the directory tkwww[extension] (followed by an extension possibly dependent on the current version). Please ftp to the site and look for the latest version (or use the link above). Supports WSYIWYG HTML editing. MidasWWW Browser A Unix/X browser from Tony Johnson. (Beta, works well.) Viola for X (Beta) Viola has two versions for Unix/X: one using Motif, one using Xlib (no Motif). Handles HTML Level 3 forms and tables. Has extensions for multiple columning, collapsible/expandable list, client-side document include. Available by anonymous FTP from ora.com in /pub/www/viola. More information available at the URL http://xcf.berkeley.edu/ht/projects/viola/README. Chimera Unix/X Browser using Athena (doesn't require Motif). Supports forms, inline images, etc.; closest to Mosaic in feel of the non-Motif X11 browsers. Available for anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.unlv.edu in the directory /pub/chimera. Emacs w3 mode The Emacs w3 mode supports multiple fonts, color, inline images, movies, and the whole nine yards when run under a graphical version of emacs; see section 4.3.7. Arena Arena's primary purpose is to be a testbed for HTML Level 3 documents. As a result, Arena supports many of the new and interesting features of HTML Level 3. As of this writing it is still in prerelease and expectations should be set accordingly! Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.w3.org in the directory pub/www/arena/ . 4.3.7: Text-mode Unix and VMS browsers These are text-based browsers for Unix (and in some cases also VMS) systems. In many cases your system administrator will have already installed one or more of these packages; check before compiling your own copy. Line Mode Browser This program gives W3 readership to anyone with a dumb terminal. A general purpose information retrieval tool. Available by anonymous ftp from info.cern.ch in the directory /pub/www/src. The "Lynx" full screen browser This is a hypertext browser for vt100s using full screen, arrow keys, highlighting, etc. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu. Tom Fine's perlWWW A tty-based browser written in perl. Available by anonymous FTP from archive.cis.ohio-state.edu in the directory pub/w3browser as the file w3browser-0.1.shar. For VMS Dudu Rashty's full screen client based on VMS's SMG screen management routines. Available by anonymous FTP from vms.huji.ac.il in the directory www/www_client. Emacs w3-mode A WWW browser for emacs. Runs under Xwindows, NeXTstep, VMS, OS/2, Windows NT, Windows 3.1, AmigaDOS, or just about any Unix system. Also has fonts, color, inline images, and mouse support if using Lemacs, Epoch, or Emacs 19. Also works in local mode under DOS and on the Macintosh. Available by anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.indiana.edu in the directory pub/elisp/w3. 4.3.8: VM/CMS BROWSERS Albert A WWW browser for the VM/CMS operating system. Available by anonymous FTP from gopher.ufl.edu in the directory pub/vm/www/. 4.3.9: BATCH-MODE "BROWSERS" Batch mode browser A batch-mode "browser", url_get, which is available through the URL http://www.utexas.edu/~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? A "proxy server" is a specialized HTTP server which (typically) runs on a firewall machine, providing access to the outside world for people inside the firewall. The CERN httpd can be configured to run as a proxy. Furthermore, it is able to perform caching of documents, resulting in faster response times. If you cannot arrange to run a proxy server (definitely the recommended approach), read on: For information on using NCSA Mosaic from behind a firewall, please read the following. In general, browsers can be made useful behind firewalls through the use of a package called "SOCKS"; the source must be modified slightly and rebuilt to accommodate this. Whenever possible, work with your network administrators to solve the problem, not against them. An excerpt from the NCSA Mosaic FAQ: NCSA Mosaic requires a direct internet connection to work, but some folks have put together a package that works behind firewalls. This is completely unsupported by NCSA, but here is the latest announcement: November 15, 1993: C&C Software Technology Center (CSTC) of NEC Systems Lab has made available a version of SOCKS, a package for running Internet clients from behind firewalls without breaching security requirements, that includes a suitably modified version of Mosaic for X 2.0. Beware: such a version is not supported by NCSA; we can't help with questions or problems arising from the modifications made by others. But, we encourage you to check it out if it's interesting to you. Questions and problem notifications can be sent to Ying-Da Lee (ylee@syl.dl.nec.com). 4.5: What is on the web? Currently accessible through the web: * anything served through gopher * anything served through WAIS * anything on an FTP site * anything on Usenet * anything accessible through telnet * anything in hytelnet * anything in hyper-g * anything in techinfo * anything in texinfo * anything in the form of man pages * sundry hypertext documents 4.5.1: HOW DO I FIND OUT WHAT'S NEW ON THE WEB? comp.infosystems.www.announce The newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.announce carries announcements of new resources on the World Wide Web. Since newsgroups are distributed, it can be accessed reliably even when the net is very busy. What's New With NCSA Mosaic The unofficial newspaper of the World Wide Web is What's New With NCSA Mosaic (URL is http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html ) , which carries announcements of new servers on the web and also of new web-related tools. This should be in your hot list if you're not using Mosaic (which can access it directly through the help menu). comp.internet.net-happinings You can also check out the newsgroup comp.internet.net-happenings, which carries WWW announcements and many other Internet-related announcements. 4.5.2: WHERE IS THE SUBJECT CATALOG OF THE WEB? There are several. There is no mechanism inherent in the web which forces the creation of a single catalog (although there is work underway on automatic mechanisms to catalog web sites). The best-known catalog, and the first, is The WWW Virtual Library (URL is http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html ), maintained by CERN. The Virtual Library is a good place to find resources on a particular subject, and has separate maintainers for many subject areas. There is also a newer cataloging system called ALIWEB that requires very little effort to maintain and is growing rapidly (URL is http://web.nexor.co.uk/aliweb/doc/aliweb.html ). 4.5.3: HOW CAN I SEARCH THROUGH ALL WEB SITES? Several people have written robots which create indexes of web sites -- including sites which have not arranged to be mentioned in the newspapers and catalogs above. (Before writing your own robot, please read the section on robots.) Here are a few such automatic indexes you can search: * WebCrawler (URL is http://webcrawler.cs.washington.edu/WebCrawler/WebQuery.html ) builds an impressively complete index; on the other hand, since it indexes the content of documents, it may find many links that aren't exactly what you had in mind. However, it does a good job of sorting the documents it finds according to how closely they match your search. * World Wide Web Worm (URL is http://www.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWW.html ) builds its index based on page titles and URL contents only. This is somewhat less inclusive, but pages it finds are more likely to be an exact match with your needs. * Lycos (URL is http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/lycos-home.html ) is another web-indexing robot, which includes the ability to submit the URLs of your own documents by hand, ensuring that they are available for searching. You can read about other robots in the robots section. 4.6: How can I save an inline image to disk? Here are two ways: 1. Turn on "load to local disk" in your browser, if it has such an option; then reload images. You'll be prompted for filenames instead of seeing them on the screen. Be sure to shut it off when you're done with it. 2. Choose "view source" and browse through the HTML source; find the URL for the inline image of interest to you; copy and paste it into the "Open URL" window. This should load it into your image viewer instead, where you can save it and otherwise muck about with it. 4.7: How can I get sound from the PC speaker with WinMosaic? This piece of wisdom donated by Hunter Monroe: This section explains how to install sound on a PC which already has a working version of Mosaic for Microsoft Windows. Be warned in advance that the results may be poor. To get Mosaic to produce sound out of the PC speaker, first, you need a driver for the speaker. You can get the Microsoft speaker driver from the URL ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/SPEAK.EXE or by doing an Archie search to find it somewhere else. SPEAK.EXE is a self-extracting file. Copy the speak.exe file to a new directory, and then type "SPEAK" at the DOS prompt. Do not put the file SPEAKER.DRV in a separate directory from OEMSETUP.INF. Now, you need to install the driver. In Windows, from the Program Manager choose successively Main/Control Panel/Drivers/Add/Unlisted or updated drivers/(enter path of SPEAK.EXE)/PC Speaker. At this point some strange sounds come out as the driver is initialized. Change the settings to improve the sound quality on the various sounds: tada, chimes, etc. Click OK when you are finished and choose the Restart windows option. Having installed the speaker driver, you will now get sounds whenever you start Windows, make a mistake, or exit Windows. If you do not want this, from the Main/Control Panel/Sounds menu, make sure there is no X next to "Enable System Sounds." Now, you need a sound viewer program that Mosaic can call to display sounds. NCSA unfortunately recommend WHAM, which does not work well with a PC speaker. Get the program WPLANY instead. You can find a copy nearby with an Archie search on the string "wplny"; the current version is WPLNY09B.ZIP. For details on archie and other basic issues related to FTP, please read the Usenet newsgroup news.announce.newusers. Move the zip file to a new directory, and use an unzip program like pkunzip to unzip it, producing the files WPLANY.EXE and WPLANY.DOC. Then edit the MOSAIC.INI file to remove the "REM" before the line "TYPE9=audio/basic". Then, you need lines in the section below that read something like: audio/basic="c:\wplany\wplany.exe %ls" audio/wav="c:\wplany\wplany.exe %ls" where you have filled in the correct path for wplany.exe. The MOSAIC.INI file delivered with Mosaic may have NOTEPAD.EXE on the audio/basic line, but this will not work. Now, restart Mosaic, and you should now be able to produce sounds. To check this, with Mosaic choose File/Local File/\WINDOWS\*.WAV and then try to play TADA.WAV. Then, you might try the Mosaic Demo document for some .AU sounds, but you are lucky if your speaker produces something you can understand. 4.8: I have a Windows PC or Macintosh. Why can't I access WAIS URLs? This answer provided by Michael Grady (m-grady@uiuc.edu): The version of Mosaic for X has "wais client" code built-in to it. This was relatively easy for the developers to do, because there was already a set of library routines for talking to WAIS available for Unix as "public domain" (freeWAIS). I don't think there is such a library of routines for PC/Windows or Mac, which would make it much more difficult for the Mosaic versions for Windows and the Mac to add "wais client" capability. Therefore, at least for now, neither the Windows or Mac versions of Mosaic support direct query of a WAIS server (i.e. can act as wais clients themselves). 4.9: I'm running XMosaic. Why can't I get external viewers working... ... No matter what no matter what I do to my .mailcap and .mime.types files? Answer provided by Ronald E. Daniel (rdaniel@acl.lanl.gov): Mosaic only looks at the .mime.types file if it has no idea what the document's type is. This is actually a very rare situation. Essentially all servers now use the HTTP/1.0 protocol, which means that they tell Mosaic (or other browsers) what the document's MIME Content-type is. The servers use a file very much like Mosaic's .mime.types file to infer the Content-type from the filename's extension. It is pretty simple to find out if this really is the problem. Use telnet to talk to the server and find out if it is assigning a MIME type to the document in question. Here's an example, looking at the home page for my server. (idaknow: is my shell prompt) idaknow: telnet www.acl.lanl.gov 80 // Connect to the httpd server Trying 128.165.148.3 ... Connected to www.acl.lanl.gov. Escape character is '^]'. HEAD /Home.html HTTP/1.0 // replace Home.html with your documen t // you supply the blank line HTTP/1.0 200 OK // the rest of this comes from the serve r Date: Wednesday, 25-May-94 19:18:11 GMT Server: NCSA/1.1 MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/html // Here's the MIME Content-type Last-modified: Monday, 16-May-94 16:21:58 GMT Content-length: 1727 Connection closed by foreign host. idaknow: In the example above, /Home.html will get http://www.acl.lanl.gov/Home.html . Normally servers will be configured to supply a Content-type of text/plain if they don't know what else to do. If this is the problem you are having, take a look at the TypesConfig documentation for NCSA's httpd. You can have the server look at the filename extension, supply the correct Content-type, then use your local .mailcap file to tell Mosaic what viewer to use to look at the document. Russ Segal adds: The answer from Ronald Daniel is essentially correct, but it needs a small addendum. When starting Moasic, you can specify a "fileProxy" which will fetch files for you: "*fileProxy: http://socks/" If you do this, file: URLs are no longer strictly local accesses. So even if the URL is not fttp:, the proxy server must be upgraded as Mr. Daniel suggests. 4.10: Hey, I know, I'll write a WWW-exploring robot! Why not? Programs that automatically traverse the web can be quite useful, but have the potential to make a serious mess of things. Robots have been written which do a "breadth-first" search of the web, exploring many sites in a gradual fashion instead of aggressively "rooting out" the pages of one site at a time. Some of these robots now produce excellent indexes of information available on the web. But others have written simple depth-first searches which, at the worst, can bring servers to their knees in minutes by recursively downloading information from CGI script-based pages that contain an infinite number of possible links. (Often robots can't realize this!) Imagine what happens when a robot decides to "index" the CONTENTS of several hundred mpeg movies. Shudder. The moral: a robot that does what you want may already exist; if it doesn't, please study the document World Wide Web Robots, Wanderers and Spiders (URL is: http://web.nexor.co.uk/mak/doc/robots/robots.html ) and learn about the emerging standards for exclusion of robots from areas in which they are not wanted. You can also read about existing robots there. 4.11: How do I send newsgroup posts in HTML to my web client? How to do this depends greatly on your system; if you have a Mac or Windows system, the answer is completely different. But, as food for thought, here is a simple shell script I use on my Unix account to send posts from rn and related newsreaders to Lynx. Put this text in the file "readwebpost" and use the "chmod" command to make it executable, then put it somewhere in your path (such as your personal bin directory): #!/bin/sh echo \<PRE\> > .article.html cat >> .article.html echo \</PRE\> >> .article.html lynx .article.html < /dev/tty rm .article.html Then add the following line to your .rnmac file (create it if you don't already have one): W |readwebpost %C Now, when you press "W" while reading a post in rn, a message will be sent to Lynx, and the links enclosed in it will be live. Larry W. Virden provides the following version which invokes Mosaic instead, and is also capable of communicating with an already-running copy of Mosaic instead of launching another. (You can use the same rn macro as above, invoking "goto-xm" instead of "readwebpost".) Read the comments for details on the assumptions made by the script. #! /bin/sh # goto-xm, by Joseph T. Buck <jbuck@eecs.berkeley.edu> # Modified heavily by Larry W. Virden <lvirden@cas.org> # Script for use with newsreaders such as trn. Piping the article # through this command causes xmosaic to pop up, pointing to the # article. If an existing xmosaic (version 1.1 or later) exists, # the USR1 method will be used to cause it to point to the correct # article, otherwise a new one will be started. # assumptions: ps command works as is on SunOS 4.1.x, may need changes # on other platforms. URL=`/bin/grep '^Message-ID:' | /bin/sed -e 's/.*</news:/' -e 's/>.*//'` if [ "X$URL" = "X" ]; then echo "USAGE: $0 [goto] [once] < USENET_msg" >&2 exit 1 fi pid=`ps -xc | egrep '[Mm]osaic' | awk 'NR == 1 {print $1}'` p=`which Mosaic` gfile=/tmp/Mosaic.$pid $p "$URL" & if [ "$#" -gt 0 ] ; then if [ "$1" = "goto" -o "$1" = "same" ] ; then shift echo "goto" > $gfile else echo "newwin" > $gfile fi else echo "newwin" > $gfile fi /bin/awk 'END { printf "'"$URL"'" }' </dev/null >> $gfile trap "echo signal encountered" 30 kill -USR1 $pid exit 0 See also MosaicMail (URL is http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/mhonarc.doc.html ), a Perl script which pipes email and/or news to your current Mosaic session. 4.12: I can't get SLIP. I want Mosaic. Is there a way? YES! If you have a plain old Unix shell account on a Unix system, such as a SunOS or Ultrix system, you can do one of two things: you can run SlipKnot, a special browser which operates using programs that may already be installed on your shell account (see section 4.3.1), or you can run The Internet Adapter (TIA), a program which provides a pseudo-SLIP connection. The remainder of this section focuses on TIA. TIA is not free software, but there is a free two-week trial period and it is very cheap to register. "So what do I run on my machine at home?" Exactly the same software you would use for real SLIP; as far as your PC is concerned, it is a SLIP connection. If you're unfamiliar with SLIP please check out a newsgroup relevant to your particular type of PC (Windows, Mac, etc). (This isn't restricted to common systems; because all the emulation happens on your Unix shell account, your client machine can run anything that supports SLIP.) "Details, please! I'm confused." Check out the TIA home page (URL is http://marketplace.com/tia/tiahome.html ), or send email to info@marketplace.com and request details about TIA. If you have a Macintosh, check out the Macintosh TIA Users' FAQ (URL is: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/bi/billa/tia/faq.html ) for additional help.