Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.infosystems.www.providers,comp.infosystems.www.users Path: network.ucsd.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!library.ucla.edu!csulb.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!boutell From: boutell@netcom.com (Thomas Boutell) Subject: World Wide Web FAQ (NEW): Frequently Asked Questions Message-ID: Organization: Nerdsholm Date: Tue, 7 Jun 1994 23:25:38 GMT Lines: 1082 Xref: network.ucsd.edu comp.infosystems.www.misc:26 comp.infosystems.www.providers:41 comp.infosystems.www.users:46 (Many new additions, including transparent GIFs. I am in the process of reconfiguring the FAQ autoposting stuff and validating the new newsgroups line with the news.answers people. -T) WORLD WIDE WEB FAQ 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: How can I access the web? o 3.3.1: Browsers Accessible by Telnet o 3.3.2: Obtaining browsers # 3.3.2.1: Microsoft Windows browsers # 3.3.2.2: MSDOS browsers # 3.3.2.3: Macintosh browsers # 3.3.2.4: Amiga browsers # 3.3.2.5: NeXTStep browsers # 3.3.2.6: X/DecWindows (graphical UNIX, VMS) browsers # 3.3.2.7: Text-based Unix and VMS browsers # 3.3.2.8: Batch-mode "browsers" + 3.4: How can I provide information to the web? o 3.4.1: Obtaining Servers # 3.4.1.1: Unix Servers # 3.4.1.2: Macintosh Servers # 3.4.1.3: Windows and Windows NT Servers # 3.4.1.4: VMS Servers o 3.4.2: Producing HTML documents # 3.4.2.1: Writing HTML directly # 3.4.2.2: HTML editors # 3.4.2.3: Converting other formats to HTML o 3.4.3: How do I publicize my work? + 3.5: How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS? + 3.6: What is on the web? + 3.7: I want to know more. o 3.7.1: What newsgroups discuss the web? * 4: Advanced Questions + 4.1: How do I set up a clickable image map? + 4.2: How do I make a "link" that doesn't load a new page? + 4.3: Where can I learn how to create fill-out forms? + 4.4: How can I save an inline image to disk? + 4.5: How can I get sound from the PC speaker with WinMosaic? + 4.6: How do I comment an HTML document? + 4.7: How can I create decent-looking tables and stop using 
...
? + 4.8: What is HTML+ and where can I learn more about it? + 4.9: How can I make transparent GIFs? + 4.10: I have a Windows PC (or a Macintosh). Why can't I open WAIS URLs? + 4.11: I'm running XMosaic. Why can't I get external viewers working? + 4.12: How come mailto: URLs don't work? * 5: Credits 1: RECENT CHANGES TO THE FAQ * 6/7/1994: Information on new newsgroups added * 6/7/1994: SoftQuad HotMetaL references added * 6/7/1994: WAIS-on-PCs question added * 6/7/1994: External viewers & mime types question added * 6/7/1994: mailto: URLs question added * 6/3/1994: Transparent GIF information added * 6/3/1994: htmltext WYSIWYG HTML editor added * 6/3/1994: Windows NT version of SerWeb added * 6/3/1994: WEB4HAM Windows server added (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 "Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet". The latter is available electronically by anonymous FTP from ftp.eff.org in the directory pub/Net_info/Big_Dummy. This informational document is posted to news.answers, comp.infosystems.www.users, comp.infosystems.www.providers, 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 version is always available on the web as http://siva.cshl.org/~boutell/www_faq.html. (see the section titled "What is a URL?" to understand what this means.) 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. 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. 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: How can I access the web? You have two options -- either use a browser that can be telnetted to, or use a browser on your machine. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.3.1: 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. info.cern.ch No password is required. This is in Switzerland, so continental US users might be better off using a closer browser. ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu A full screen browser "Lynx" which requires a vt100 terminal. Log in as www. NO LONGER AVAILABLE. Lynx is still 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. vms.huji.ac.il (IP address 128.139.4.3). 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. Working now. fserv.kfki.hu Hungary. Has slow link, use from nearby. Login is as www. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.3.2: 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) 3.3.2.1: Microsoft Windows browsers NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so. 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/Mosaic. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.3.2.2: MSDOS browsers NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so. DosLynx DosLynx is an excellent text-based browser for use on DOS systems. You must have a level 1 packet driver, or an emulation thereof, or you will only be able to browse local files; essentially, if your PC has an Ethernet connection, or you have SLIP, you should be able to use it. DosLynx can view GIF images, but not when they are inline images (as of this writing). See the README.HTM file at the DosLynx site for details. You can obtain DosLynx by anonymous FTP from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in the directory pub/WWW/DosLynx; the URL is ftp://ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/WWW/DosLynx/. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.3.2.3: Macintosh browsers NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do so. Mosaic for Macintosh From NCSA. Full featured. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mac/Mosaic. Samba From CERN. Basic. Available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /ftp/pub/www/bin as the file mac. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.3.2.4: Amiga browsers AMosaic Browser for AmigaOS, based on NCSA's Mosaic. Supports older Amigas as well as the newer machines in the latest versions, I am told; available for anonymous ftp from max.physics.sunysb.edu in the directory /pub/amosaic, or from aminet sites in /pub/aminet/comm/net. see the site for details. See the URL http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/AMosaic/home.html. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.3.2.5: NeXTStep browsers Note: NeXT systems can also run X-based browsers using one of the widely used X server products for the NeXT. The browsers listed here, by contrast, are native NeXTStep applications. OmniWeb A World Wide Web browser for NeXTStep. The URL for more information is http://www.omnigroup.com/; you can ftp the package from ftp.omnigroup.com in the /pub/software/ directory. WorldWideWeb, CERN's NeXT Browser-Editor A browser/editor for NeXTStep. Currently out of date; editor not operational. Allows wysiwyg hypertext editing. Requires NeXTStep 3.0. Available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /pub/www/src. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.3.2.6: X/DecWindows (graphical UNIX, VMS) browsers NCSA Mosaic for X Unix browser using X11/Motif. Multimedia magic. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Recommended if you can run it. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic for VMS Browser using X11/DecWindows/Motif. For the VMS operating system. Multimedia magic. Full http 1.0 support including PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Recommended if you can run it. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic. tkWWW Browser/Editor for X11 Unix Browser/Editor for X11. (Beta test version.) Available for anonymous ftp from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu in the directory tkwww[extension] (followed by an extension possibly dependent on the current version). Please ftp to the site and look for the latest version (or use the link above). As of this writing tkWWW is at verison 0.11. 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+ 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. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.3.2.7: 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 W3 browse mode for emacs. Uses multiple fonts when used with Lemacs or Epoch. See the documentation. Available by anonymous FTP from moose.cs.indiana.edu in the directory pub/elisp/w3 as the files w3.tar.Z and extras.tar.Z. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.3.2.8: Batch-Mode "Browsers" Batch mode browser A batch-mode "browser", url_get, which is available through the URL http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu/test/zippy/url_get.html. It can be retrieved via anonymous FTP to ftp.cc.utexas.edu, as the file /pub/zippy/url_get.tar.Z. This package is intended for use in cron jobs and other settings in which fetching a page in a command-line fashion is useful. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.4: 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) 3.4.1: OBTAINING SERVERS Servers are available for Unix, Macintosh, MS Windows, 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) 3.4.1.1: 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/pub/web/. CERN httpd CERN's server is available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch (URL is ftp://info.cern.ch/) 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. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.4.1.2: 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) 3.4.1.3: MS Windows and Windows NT Servers HTTPS (Windows NT) HTTPS is a server for Windows NT systems, both Intel and Alpha -- based. It is available via anonymous FTP from emwac.ed.ac.uk in the directory pub/https (URL is ftp://emwac.ed.ac.uk/pub/https). (Be sure to download the version appropriate to your processor.) You can read a detailed announcement at the FTP site, or by using the URL ftp://emwac.ed.ac.uk/pub/https/https.txt. NCSA httpd for Windows The NCSA httpd for Windows has most of the features of the Unix version, including scripts (which generate pages on the fly based on user input). It is available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the Web/ncsa_httpd/contrib directory as the file whtp11a6.zip, or at the URL ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/ncsa_httpd/contrib/whtp11a6.zip. SerWeb A simple, effective server for Windows writtten by Gustavo Estrella. Available by anonymous ftp from winftp.cica.indiana.edu (or one of its mirror sites, such as nic.switch.ch), as the file serweb03.zip, in the directory /pub/pc/win3/winsock. There is also a Windows NT version of SerWeb, available by anonymous FTP from emwac.ed.ac.uk as /pub/serweb/serweb_i.zip. WEB4HAM Another Windows-based server, available by anonymous FTP from ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de as /pub/net/winsock/web4ham.zip. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.4.1.4: 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.ht ml. 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. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.4.2: 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. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.4.2.1: Writing HTML documents yourself You can write an HTML document with any text editor. Try the "source" button of of your browser 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. There is also a good set of HTML documentation available at the URL http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/htmldoc.html. There is also an HTML primer by Nathan Torkington at the URL http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-html.html. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.4.2.2: 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/elisp/html-mode.el). For Microsoft Windows users, there is an editor called HTML Assistant with features to assist in the creation of HTML documents. It can be had by anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.dal.ca in the directory /htmlasst/. Read the README.1ST file in this directory for information on which files to download. A WYSIWYG editor for the Web, *SoftQuad HoTMetaL*, is available for downloading at NCSA and other Mosaic server sites. The URL is ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/contrib/SoftQuad/sqhotmetal-1.0.tar.gz . You need a Sun SPARC (MS-Windows coming soon) and 6MB of disk. 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. An editor for all X users: A HREF="#browserstkwww">TkWWW (listed above under X browsers) supports WYSIWYG HTML editing; and since it's a browser, you can try out links immediately after creating them. Also for X users, there is a package called htmltext which supports WYSIWYG HTML editing. More information is available at the URL http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/homes/njw/htmltext/htmltext.html. For Macintosh users, the BBEdit HTML extensions allow the BBEdit and BBEdit Lite text editors for the Macintosh to conveniently edit HTML documents. (URL is http://www.uji.es/bbedit-html-extensions.html.) You can also obtain the extensions package by anonymous ftp from sumex-aim.stanford.edu as info-mac/bbedit-html-ext-b3.hqx. There is an alternative BBEdit extension package available as well; it is available by FTP at the URL ftp://ctipsych.york.ac.uk/CTI_FTP/pub/BBEdit/BBEdit_HTML_Tools.sea.hqx . NCSA's List of Filters and Editors, for which the URL is http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/faq-software.html#ed itors, mentions several editors, including two for MS Windows. Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters; certain BROKEN browsers (apparently including Lynx for VMS) will require that you open it directly, entering the URL in quotation marks. Another option, if you have an SGML editor, is to use it with the HTML DTD . (Up to Table of Contents) 3.4.2.3: 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. The URL is http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/Filters.html. (Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters; certain BROKEN browsers (apparently including Lynx for VMS) will require that you open it directly, entering the URL in quotation marks.) There is also a Word for Windows template for writing HTML documents, available at the URL http://www.gatech.edu/word_html/release.htm. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.4.3: HOW DO I PUBLICIZE MY WORK? There are several things you can do to publicize your new HTML server or other offering: * 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. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.5: 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. Gopher and World Wide Web usage are now running neck and neck, 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.) This is changing as WWW reaches critical mass (usage of the server at CERN doubles every 4 months -- twice the rate of Internet expansion). (Up to Table of Contents) 3.6: 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 One of the few limitations of the current networked information systems is that there is no simple way to find out what has changed, what is new, or even what is out there. As a result, a definitive list of the web's contents is impossible at this moment. There are, however, several resources which provide a great deal of information on new and established servers by topic. These are just two: * The WWW Virtual Library at the URL http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html, a good place to find resources on a particular subject * What's New With NCSA Mosaic at the URL http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html, which carries announcements of new servers on the web (Up to Table of Contents) 3.7: I want to know more To find out more, use the web. This FAQ hopefully provides enough information for you to locate and install a browser on your system. If you have system specific questions regarding FTP, networking and the like, please consult newsgroups relevant to your particular hardware and operating system! Later you may return to this FAQ for answers to some of the advanced questions covered in the second section. The advanced section contains the most-asked technical questions in the group. Once you're up and running, you may wish to consult the World Wide Web Primer by Nathan Torkington. It is available at the URL http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-primer.html. (Up to Table of Contents) 3.7.1: WHAT NEWSGROUPS DISCUSS THE WEB? You can also find discussion of World Wide Web topics in three newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.users A forum for the discussion of WWW client software and its use in contacting various Internet information sources. New user questions, client setup questions, client bug reports, resource-discovery questions on how to locate information on the web that can't be found by the means detailed in the FAQ and comparison between various client packages are among the acceptable topics for this group. comp.infosystems.www.providers A forum for the discussion of WWW server software and the use of said software to present information to users. General server design, setup questions, server bug reports, security issues, HTML page design and other concerns of information providers are among the likely topics for this group. comp.infosystems.www.misc A forum for general discussion of WWW (World Wide Web)- related topics that are NOT covered by the other newsgroups in the hierarchy. This will likely include discussions of the Web's future, politicking regarding changes in the structure and protocols of the web that affect both clients and servers, et cetera. comp.infosystems.www (DEFUNCT) The old catch-all newsgroup, which may still exist on your system but will be removed within three months of this writing (June 7th, 1994). (Up to Table of Contents) 4: ADVANCED QUESTIONS 4.1: 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. (Up to Table of Contents) 4.2: 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. (Up to Table of Contents) 4.3: Where can I learn how to create fill-out forms? You can read about the Common Gateway Interface at the URL http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu:80/cgi/. In addition to documenting the standard interface for which scripts can now be written for both NCSA and CERN-derived servers, these pages also cover HTML forms and how to handle the results on the server side. (Up to Table of Contents) 4.4: 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) 4.5: 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) 4.6: 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. 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. (Up to Table of Contents) 4.7: How can I create decent-looking tables and stop using 
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? Tables are a standard feature in HTML+, a forthcoming superset of HTML. Unfortunately, they are at present implemented only by the Viola and Emacs-W3 browsers, to my knowledge. However, there is a way to use HTML+ 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+ and outputs html using the 
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construct to represent tables, allowing you to write HTML+ now, knowing that it will look better when clients are ready for it. (Up to Table of Contents) 4.8: What is HTML+ and where can I learn more about it? HTML+ is a superset of HTML designed to address some of the limitations of HTML. HTML+ supports true tables, right-justified text, centered text, line breaks that do not double space, and many other desired features. However, most clients support only a handful of HTML+ features (such as forms in Mosaic) at this time. To learn more about HTML+, you can examine the ascii text of a draft specification for it at the URL ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-raggett-www-html-00.txt or a Postscript version of the same at the URL ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-raggett-www-html-00.ps. (Up to Table of Contents) 4.9: How can I make transparent GIFs? Transparent GIFs are useful because they appear to blend in smoothly with the user's display, even if the user has set a background color that differs from that the developer expected. There is a document explaining transparent GIFs available at the URL http://melmac.harris-atd.com/transparent_images.html. You can fetch the program giftrans by anonymous ftp from ftp.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de at the path /pub/net/www/tools/giftrans.c. (Up to Table of Contents) 4.10: 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) 4.11: 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 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 test/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. (Up to Table of Contents) 4.12: How come mailto: URLs don't work? The mailto: URL is an innovation found in Lynx and a few other browsers. It is not yet found in Mosaic, the most popular browser. Hopefully it will be present in future versions. In the meantime, you can set up forms which send mail to you; there is documentation on this at the URL http://siva.cshl.org/email/index.html. (Up to Table of Contents) 5: CREDITS * Thomas Boutell boutell@netcom.com * Nathan Torkington Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz * Marc Andreessen marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu * Tony Johnson (Up to Table of Contents) -- boutell@netcom.com, purveyor of fine HTML pages to the biology trade. FAQ-keeper for comp.infosystems.www.misc,.providers and .users. Drop by and learn about the Web. Thomas Boutell .