World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions
This document resides on the World Wide Web on Sunsite (URL is
http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html ).
If you are unfamiliar with the term "URL", read on and learn!
Last update: 1/23/95
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
4.3.1: MS Windows, IBM OS/2 and MS Windows NT browsers
4.3.2: MSDOS browsers
4.3.3: Macintosh browsers
4.3.4: Amiga browsers
4.3.5: NeXTStep browsers
4.3.6: X/DecWindows (graphical UNIX, VMS) browsers
4.3.7: Text-based Unix and VMS browsers
4.3.8: VM/CMS browsers
4.3.9: Batch-mode "browsers"
4.4: How can I access the web through a firewall?
4.5: What is on the web?
4.5.1: How do I find out what's new on the web?
4.5.2: Where is the subject catalog of the web?
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
5.2.1: Unix Servers
5.2.2: Macintosh Servers
5.2.3: MS Windows, IBM OS/2 and MS Windows NT Servers
5.2.4: MSDOS and Novell Netware Servers
5.2.5: VMS Servers
5.2.6: Amiga Servers
5.2.7: VM/CMS Servers
5.2.8: Yeah, but which is best?
5.3: Producing HTML documents
5.3.1: Writing HTML directly
5.3.2: HTML editors
5.3.3: Converting other formats to HTML
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
5.7.1: How do I set up a clickable image map?
5.7.2: How do I make a "link" that doesn't load a new page?
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?
5.7.4: How do I comment an HTML document?
5.7.5: How can I create decent-looking tables and stop using
...
?
5.7.6: What is HTML Level 3 and where can I learn more about it?
5.7.7: How can I make interlaced and transparent GIFs? And what
are they?
5.7.8: How come mailto: URLs don't work?
5.7.9: How can I restrict and control access to my server?
5.7.10: Which format is better for WWW images, JPEG or GIF?
5.7.11: How can I mirror part of another server?
5.7.12: How can I keep robots off my server?
5.7.13: How can I keep statistics about my web site?
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
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.html ). (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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.)
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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 .
(Up to Table of Contents)
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 Netscape 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 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/ .
(Up to Table of Contents)
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/.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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 Netscape 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. 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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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).
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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 Netscape 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 for an indefinite period of time by individuals. use by individuals. Version 0.9
(available to the 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/ .
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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/.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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).
(Up to Table of Contents)
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
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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 ).
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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).
(Up to Table of Contents)
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 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
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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 \
> .article.html
cat >> .article.html
echo \
>> .article.html
lynx .article.html < /dev/tty
rm .article.html
Then add the following line to your .rnmac file (create it if you don't already have one):
W |readwebpost %C
Now, when you press "W" while reading a post in rn, a message will be sent to Lynx, and
the links enclosed in it will be live.
Larry W. Virden provides the following version which invokes Mosaic instead, and is
also capable of communicating with an already-running copy of Mosaic instead of
launching another. (You can use the same rn macro as above, invoking "goto-xm"
instead of "readwebpost".) Read the comments for details on the assumptions made by
the script.
#! /bin/sh
# goto-xm, by Joseph T. Buck
# Modified heavily by Larry W. Virden
# Script for use with newsreaders such as trn. Piping the article
# through this command causes xmosaic to pop up, pointing to the
# article. If an existing xmosaic (version 1.1 or later) exists,
# the USR1 method will be used to cause it to point to the correct
# article, otherwise a new one will be started.
# assumptions: ps command works as is on SunOS 4.1.x, may need changes
# on other platforms.
URL=`/bin/grep '^Message-ID:' | /bin/sed -e 's/.*.*//'`
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"'" }' > $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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
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.
(Up to Table of Contents)
5.1: How can I provide information to the web?
Information providers run programs that the browsers can obtain hypertext from. These
programs can either be WWW servers that understand the HyperText Transfer
Protocol HTTP (best if you are creating your information database from scratch),
"gateway" programs that convert an existing information format to hypertext, or a
non-HTTP server that WWW browsers can access -- anonymous FTP or gopher, for
example.
To learn more about World Wide Web servers, you can consult a www server primer by
Nathan Torkington, available at the URL
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-servers.html .
If you only want to provide information to local users, placing your information in local
files is also an option. This means, however, that there can be no off-machine access.
(Up to Table of Contents)
5.2: Obtaining Servers
Servers are available for Unix, Macintosh, MS Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, and VMS
systems. If you know of a server for another operating system, please contact me.
See http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Overview.html for more information on
writing servers and gateways in general.
(Up to Table of Contents)
5.2.1: Unix Servers
NCSA httpd
NCSA has released a server, known as the NCSA httpd; it is available at the URL
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/ncsa_httpd .
EIT httpd
EIT has created the Webmaster's Starter Kit, which installs their WWW server
on your system via the web through a painless forms interface. Recommended for
those unfamiliar with server installation. You can learn more about the starter kit
and the EIT httpd at the starter kit site (URL is http://wsk.eit.com/wsk/doc/ ).
CERN httpd
CERN's server is available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch (URL is
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Status.html ) and
many other places. Use your local copy of archie to search for "www" in order to
find a nearby site.
GN Gopher/HTTP server
The GN server is unique in that it can serve both WWW and Gopher clients (in
their native modes). This is a good server for those migrating from Gopher to
WWW, although it does not have the server-side-script capabilities of the
NCSA and CERN servers. See the URL http://hopf.math.nwu.edu/.
Perl server
There is also a server written in the Perl scripting language, called Plexus, for
which documentation is available at the URL
http://bsdi.com/server/doc/plexus.html .
WN Server
The WN Server, available at the URL http://hopf.math.nwu.edu/docs/manual.html ,
is designed with an emphasis on security and flexibility, and takes a different
approach from the NCSA and CERN servers. It provides text searching facilities
as a standard feature.
(Up to Table of Contents)
5.2.2: Macintosh Servers
There is a server for the Macintosh, MacHTTP, available at the URL
http://www.uth.tmc.edu/mac_info/machttp_info.html .
(Up to Table of Contents)
5.2.3: MS Windows, IBM OS/2 and MS 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.
A professional version is also available (URL is
http://emwac.ed.ac.uk/html/internet_toolchest/https/prof.htm ).
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 the ftp site ftp.alisa.com in the directory
pub/win-httpd, and documentation can be found at the URL
http://www.alisa.com/win-httpd/index.html .
SerWeb
A simple, effective server for Windows writtten by Gustavo Estrella. Available by
anonymous ftp from winftp.cica.indiana.edu (or one of its mirror sites, such as
nic.switch.ch), as the file serweb03.zip, in the directory /pub/pc/win3/winsock.
There is also a Windows NT version of SerWeb, available by anonymous FTP
from emwac.ed.ac.uk as /pub/serweb/serweb_i.zip.
WEB4HAM
Another Windows-based server, available by anonymous FTP from
ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de as /pub/net/winsock/web4ham.zip.
OS2HTTPD
An OS/2 server, written by Frankie Fan. See the home page (URL is
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/kf/kfan/overview.html ) for details, or fetch the package by
anonymous FTP from ftp.netcom.com in the directory pub/kf/kfan.
(Up to Table of Contents)
5.2.4: MSDOS and Novell Netware Servers
KA9Q
KA9Q NOS (nos11c.exe) is a internet server package for DOS that includes
HTTP and Gopher servers. It can be obtained via anonymous FTP from one of
the following sites:
inorganic5.chem.ufl.edu
biochemistry.cwru.edu
GLACI-HTTPD
GLACI-HTTPD is a Netware Loadable Module which allows a Novell NetWare
server to become a World Wide Web server (URL is
http://www.glaci.com/info/glaci-httpd.html ).
(Up to Table of Contents)
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
NCSA's Unix server has been ported to the Amiga, and is bundled with the AMosaic
browser. See the URL http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/AMosaic/home.html for details.
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5.2.7: VM/CMS Servers
A VM/CMS web server is available; see the URL
http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~troth/rickvmsw/rickvmsw.html for more information. If you don't yet
have a web browser to try this URL with, check out the VM/CMS Browsers section.
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5.2.8: Yeah, but which is best?
To find out which server is best for your needs, you will want to consult Paul Hoffman's
Server Comparison Chart (URL is http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/chart.html ). That
document is also available by anonymous FTP from ftp.netcom.com in the directory
pub/bo/boutell/faq.
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5.3: Producing HTML documents
HTML is the simple markup system used to create hypertext documents. There are
three ways to produce HTML documents: writing them yourself, which is not a very
difficult skill to acquire, using an HTML editor, which assists in doing the above, and
converting documents in other formats to HTML. The following three sections cover
these possibilities in sequence.
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5.3.1: Writing HTML documents yourself
You can write an HTML document with any text editor. Try the "source" button of your
browser (or "save as" HTML) to look at the HTML for a page you find particularly
interesting. The odds are that it will be a great deal simpler than you would expect. If
you're used to marking up text in any way (even red-pencilling it), HTML should be
rather intuitive.
A beginner's guide to HTML is available at the URL
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html . You can also find a
plain text version (at the URL ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ncsapubs/WWW/HTMLPrimer.txt)
and a compressed Postscript version (at the URL
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ncsapubs/WWW/HTMLPrimer.ps.Z). (Since the latter two are FTP
URLs, you can fetch them by hand using FTP if you do not yet have a web browser.)
There is also 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
Of course, most folks would still prefer to use a friendlier, graphical editor. Some editors
are WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), or close to it; others simply assist
you in writing HTML by plugging in the desired markup tags for you from a menu.
Fans of the EMACS editor can use EMACS and html-helper-mode , an EMACS "mode"
for HTML editing (URL is http://www.reed.edu/~nelson/tools/).
There is also another Emacs HTML mode, html-mode.el (URL is
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/html/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.
ANT_HTML.DOT is a Word for Windows 6.0 template designed to convert Word
documents into HTML documents in a WYSIWYG environment. It includes a demo
version of the ANT_PLUS utility, which converts HTML files to WYSIWYG. ANT_PLUS
also converts HTML files to ASCII, RTF, or any other format possible in Word 6.0.
Contact jswift@freenet.fsu.edu if you need more information.
A WYSIWYG editor for the Web, SoftQuad HoTMetaL, is available for downloading at
NCSA and numerous other sites. Many mirror sites exist; if you can't get through to one,
try another, don't give up! That's what mirror sites are for. (Also be sure to use the copy
closest to you geographically if possible.) Hotmetal is available for both Sun Sparc
systems and Windows systems; note that Windows users need at least 6 megabytes of
free memory. (A 2-megabyte swap file should just barely do the trick on a 4MB
machine.)
Known mirrors:
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/html/hotmetal/
ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/SGML/HoTMetaL
ftp://sgml1.ex.ac.uk/SoftQuad
ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/WWW/ncsa/html/hotmetal/
ftp://askhp.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/infosystems/mosaic/contrib/SoftQuad
ftp://ftp.cs.concordia.ca/pub/www
You need a Sun SPARC or Microsoft Windows system and 6MB of disk (6MB of RAM
minimum for MS Windows; swap files count). Other Unix systems may be supported by
the time you read this; have a look on one of the sites above.
Because it is context-sensitive, HoTMetaL guides users in creating new HTML
documents and in cleaning up old ones. A Publish command changes appropriate SRC
and HREF attributes from local paths to http locations. For more information, FTP the
README file from the same directory, or send email to hotmetal@sq.com. A HoTMetaL
Pro commercially supported version is available for purchase from SoftQuad and its
resellers.
Also see Gabriel White's reviews of MS Windows HTML editors (URL is
http://werple.mira.net.au/%7Egabriel/web/html/editors/ ). Another option, if you have an
SGML editor, is to use it with the HTML DTD (URL is
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/DTDHeading.html ).
An editor for all X users: TkWWW (listed above under X browsers) supports
WYSIWYG HTML editing; and since it's a browser, you can try out links immediately
after creating them.
Another editor for X users: Phoenix (URL is
http://www.bsd.uchicago.edu/ftp/pub/phoenix/README.html ) is a fully WYSIWYG HTML
editor which insulates the user from direct control of the HTML tags. Available by
anonymous FTP from www.bsd.uchicago.edu in the pub/phoenix subdirectory.
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 a near-WYSIWYG package called HTML Editor (URL is
http://dragon.acadiau.ca:1667/~giles/HTML_Editor).
ANT_HTML is a Word for the Macintosh template designed to convert Word
documents into HTML documents in a WYSIWYG environment. It includes a demo
version of the ANT_PLUS utility, which converts HTML files to WYSIWYG. ANT_PLUS
also converts HTML files to ASCII, RTF, or any other format possible in Word. At the
time of this writing it was scheduled to have been released on the Macintosh (it has long
been available for Windows). Contact jswift@freenet.fsu.edu for more information. Also for
Macintosh users, the BBEdit HTML extensions allow the BBEdit and BBEdit Lite text
editors for the Macintosh to conveniently edit HTML documents. (URL is
http://www.uji.es/bbedit-html-extensions.html .) You can also obtain the extensions
package by anonymous ftp from sumex-aim.stanford.edu as
info-mac/bbedit-html-ext-b3.hqx.
There is an alternative BBEdit extension package available as well (URL is
http://www.york.ac.uk/~ld11/BBEditTools.html ). it is available by FTP
from ftp.york.ac.uk in the directory
/pub/users/ld11/BBEdit_HTML_Tools.sea.hqx.
NCSA's List of Filters and Editors, for which the URL is
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/faq-software.html#editors,
mentions several editors, including two for MS Windows. In some cases, the "editor"
amounts to a set of macros for an existing word processor, which can provide a
near-WYSIWYG environment.
Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters; certain operating systems
won't allow mixed case on the command line, or will only allow it if it is quoted (VMS), so if
you are launching Lynx or another client and specifying a URL at the command line, try
quoting the URL in double-quotes ("URL").
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5.3.3: Converting other formats to HTML
There is a collection of filters for converting your existing documents (in TeX and other
non-HTML formats) into HTML automatically, including filters that can allow more or less
WYSIWYG editing using various word processors:
Rich Brandwein and Mike Sendall's List at CERN (URL is
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/Filters.html ).
(Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters; certain operating
systems such as VMS require you to quote mixed-case URLs when launching a
borwser from the command line. This is NOT a bug in the browser.)
There is also a Word for Windows template for writing HTML documents, available at the
URL http://www.gatech.edu/word_html/release.htm .
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5.3.4: Checking your HTML for errors
Tools to validate your HTML documents (check them for errors) are available. There is
a form at the URL http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly/html-test/service/validation-form.html
which will check HTML documents for errors according to the latest specification; note
that you are encouraged to set up the program on your own system if you make heavy
use of the form. There is also a tool which will check the links in your documents for links
to nonexistent resources, such as pages that have moved (URL is
http://wsk.eit.com/wsk/dist/doc/admin/webtest/verify_links.html ).
Also try weblint (URL is http://www.khoros.unm.edu/staff/neilb/weblint.html ), a Perl script
that checks your HTML for errors; you can even try it out over the web through an
HTML form. The script is available by anonymous FTP from ftp.khoros.unm.edu in the
directory pub/perl/www.
Another such tool is htmlchek (URL is: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/htmlchek.html ),
which checks HTML documents for errors, creates a cross-reference, automatically
expands entities (such as European characters) to their proper HTML form, and
performs other useful services. htmlchek is available by anonymous FTP from
ftp.cs.buffalo.edu in the directory pub/htmlchek.
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5.4: How do I publicize my work?
There are several things you can do to publicize your new HTML server or other
offering:
Post to comp.infosystems.www.announce. PLEASE READ THE CHARTER
POSTING FIRST. In general, always read a newsgroup first to familiarize yourself
before posting to it.
Submit it to the NCSA What's New Page at the URL
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html (see the
page for details on how to submit your listing!).
Post it to the newsgroup comp.infosystems.announce. Please read the group first
to get a feel for the contents. You should not post to
comp.infosystems.www.users,.misc,.providers, etc., but if you feel compelled to do
so, please choose .misc as announcements are of interest to both providers and
users (and those who wear both hats).
Submit it to the maintainers of various catalogs, such as the WWW Virtual
Library (at the URL
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html ) and the
ALIWEB index (at the URL http://web.nexor.co.uk/aliweb/doc/aliweb.html ).
Read Gareth Rees' guide to publishing on the World Wide Web. (URL is
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/gdr11/publish.html ).
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5.5: Can I buy space on an existing server?
Yes, you can. A list of sites offering WWW space for lease is available (at the URL
http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/www/leasing.shtml ).
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5.6: How fast does my net connection need to be?
The following response to this very-frequently-asked-question was provided by Mike
Meyer (mwm@contessa.phone.net).
The answer is "It depends." What it depends on is what kind of things you want to
provide on your server. Here are some rules of thumb to use when deciding what
kind of connection you need for your server.
The first rule of thumb is:
Don't worry about simultaneous access.
Unless you have a very large site, simultaneous access is not a problem. If you
have a very large site, you need as much bandwidth as you can afford. There is a
bit more about this below.
The second rule of thumb is:
It should take at most 5 seconds to send a page.
The five second rule dates from command line days, when that was about how
long people would wait before getting impatient with the system. It seems like a
reasonable number to use now.
Since external images/audio/etc. are somewhat exceptional, allow more time for
them. If you think they should have the same restrictions as above, buy the
bandwidth your site will need to do so. However, the rule of thumb for external
images/audio/etc is:
It should take at most 30 seconds to send an external file.
Given these rules, it's pretty straightforward to work out how large an HTML page
and external files can be. At least, it's easy after you simplify things by ignoring IP
overhead on the line, compression on modem lines, and anything that's less than
10% of the total (or even a little bit more than 10%).
The one simplification not to ignore is the multiple packet round-trips it takes to
get data flowing through an HTTP channel. For modem lines, this is nearly a
second for each HTTP connection, which is significant. For leased lines, it's more
like .1 or .2 seconds, which is not significant.
On a 14.4 line assumed to be sending 1.4K bytes of data/second, with a 1 second
startup, you get 4 * 1.4 or 5.6K of HTML. If you want to include a single inline
image, that's 2 seconds of startup, so you're down to 3 * 1.4 or 4.2K of HTML +
image. This means smallish HTML pages, and simple inline images. For external
files, you get 29 * 1.4 or 40K, which is still a small image. If you have a 28.8 line,
you get to double those figures; for a 9600 line, figure 2/3rds of that size.
On a 56K leased line assumed to be sending 5K/second, you get 25K of HTML,
or mixed HTML/data. For external images, it's 150K. That should cover any
reasonable HTML document, and small to medium external files. An MPEG movie
might be a bit much.
With a T1 line assumed to be sending 150K/second, you get 750K of HTML, or
4.5 megabytes in an external file. Barring very large animations, this should be
sufficient for anything you want to serve. More would be faster, but it also gets
drastically more expensive.
Given the above guidelines, let's look at simultaneous access again. Under the
worst case conditions, you're using all of your line for HTML pages, each of which
takes 5 seconds to send, so your server is sending 12 pages a minute, or 720
pages an hour, or 17,000 pages a day (pages, not accesses; each inline image in
a page generates an access, unless the client cached it). This makes you one of
the busier sites on the web. While you'll have contention problems before you get
to this point, anything but a modem connection will be sending most pages in a
small fraction of five seconds, which should leave plenty of bandwidth with no
contention. If you have this kind of access rates on a modem line, you should
seriously consider upgrading your connection.
The bottom line on simultaneous access is that the WWW server is more likely to
have contention with other uses of the line than with itself. Since I don't know what
else you use your line for, I can't factor it in. You'll have to consider that issue
yourself.
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5.7.1: How do I set up a clickable image map?
There are really two issues here: how to indicate in HTML that you want an image to be
clickable, and how to configure your server to do something with the clicks returned by
Mosaic, Chimera, and other clients capable of delivering them.
You can read about image maps and the NCSA server at the URL
http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/setup/admin/Imagemap.html .
Using imagemaps requires that you create a map file; you can do this by hand or with a
WYSIWYG tool.
VERY IMPORTANT: Creating imagemaps requires a real web server (not an FTP
server) and a cooperative web server administrator. It is not usually as simple as
wrapping a link around an IMG SRC tag and adding the ISMAP directive; the server
must also be told about the map file, and the way to accomplish this varies from server
to server. So read your server documentation, and don't waste time making maps before
making sure you have the necessary tools to deliver them.
Mapedit
Mapedit (URL is:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/mapedit/mapedit.html ) is a
WYSIWYG imagemap editing tool for Microsoft Windows and the X Window
System.
MapMaker
For users of John Bradley's xv image display software for the X Window System,
Mapmaker can turn the miniature images created by xv's Visual Schnauzer into
an imagemap. This is useful if you would like to make an entire directory of images
available (but note that you should also make textual links to allow those with
text- based browsers to download the images for external viewing). (URL is:
http://icg.stwing.upenn.edu:80/~mengwong/mapmaker.html )
WebMap
On the Macintosh, you may want to use WebMap (URL is
ftp://ftp.uwtc.washington.edu/pub/Mac/Network/WWW ). . It produces both NCSA
and CERN-compatible maps, which can also be used with MacImagemap and a
Macintosh-based server (MacImagemap is found in the same directory).
Alternatively, you may want to use MacMapMaker, also available from
ftp://ftp.uwtc.washington.edu/pub/Mac/Network/WWW (the same directory).
Tkmapedit
For Unix systems and other systems on which the Tk/Tcl language toolkit has
been installed, Tkmapedit provides a WYSIWYG imagemap editor which is
capable of directly testing links if the tkWWW web browser is available. Available
by anonymous FTP from the TCL archive on ftp.aud.alcatel.com.
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5.7.2: 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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5.7.3: Where can I learn how to create fill-out forms?
Writing an HTML form is easy, but the form doesn't accomplish anything until you write a
CGI program to interpret the results on the server side! For more information, see
section 5.7.14.
See the section on email forms for a simple solution to the most commonly desired form.
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5.7.3.1: How can I create hidden fields in forms (keeping state)?
Use INPUT TYPE=hidden. An example:
By now, most browsers can handle the hidden type, but understand that some browsers
will fail to hide the field (and probably confuse the user). Note that "hidden" doesn't mean
"secret"; the user can always click on "view source".
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5.7.3.2: How can users send me email through their browsers?
There are two ways:
Using a mailto: URL
You can simply create a link which looks like this:
Send Me Mail
This works great for browsers that support the mailto: URL. Perhaps 80% of web
users will be able to use such a link. But not all browsers support it.
Installing an email form
If you have access to the server's configuration files, or if your server
administrator permits users to create their own CGI scripts, you can create a
form which sends mail to you from any browser that supports forms. I've written a
simple email forms package (URL is: http://siva.cshl.org/email/index.html ), which
does it in ANSI C. There is also a package written in Perl, known as the WWW
Mailto Gateway (URL is http://www.mps.ohio-state.edu/mailto/mailto_info.html ).
GetComments (URL is:
http://everest.cs.ucdavis.edu/~hoagland/getcomments.html) is a more general
package, also written in Perl, which can handle many different types of comment
forms.
If you want to learn how these forms actually work, see section 5.7.14.
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5.7.4: How do I comment an HTML document?
Use the tag. Note that comments do not nest, and the sequence "--" may not
appear inside a comment except as part of the closing --> tag. (It's officially allowed, but
some browsers won't handle it properly.)
You should not try to use this to "comment out" HTML that would otherwise be shown to
the user, since some browsers (notably Mosaic) will still pay attention to tags inside the
comment and close it prematurely.
Thanks to Joe English for clearing up this issue.
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5.7.5: How can I create decent-looking tables and stop using
...
?
Tables are a standard feature in HTML Level 3, a new version of HTML. Unfortunately,
they are at present implemented only by the latest NCSA Mosaic versions and the Viola
and Emacs-W3 browsers, to my knowledge. In addition, most implementations are
incomplete. In some implementations, at the time of this writing, text in tables cannot be
selected and/or cannot be a link.
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