WORLD WIDE WEB FAQ _World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions (With Answers, of Course!)_ Copyright 1994, 1995, 1996, Thomas Boutell and Boutell.Com, Inc. This document is available from many sites, and in several languages. _Please use the site closest to you in the language of your choice._ This FAQ consists of many files. By popular request, it is now available as an MSDOS .ZIP file, as a Unix compressed .tar file, and as a single, large text file. If you have trouble browsing HTML files offline under Windows, please see the relevant FAQ entry. Of course, to get the latest and greatest information, it is best to browse it right here on the web! Contents * About this document * Recent changes to the FAQ * Introduction to the World Wide Web * Obtaining and using web browsers * Establishing and using web servers * Authoring web pages, images and scripts * Other resources about the Web * Credits Introduction to the World Wide Web Contents: * What is the Web? * What is a URL? * What are SGML and HTML? * How does the Web compare to Gopher and WAIS? * What is the W3 consortium? * How can I access the Web? * What is available through the web? * How do I find out what's new on the Web? * Where is the subject catalog of the Web? * How can I search through ALL web sites? * Can I catch a virus from a web page? * How can I find out when a web page has changed? * How do I publish on the Web? * Who uses the Web? * What is VRML? * What is Java? Obtaining and using web browsers Contents: * Browsers accessible by telnet * Obtaining Amiga browsers * Obtaining Macintosh browsers * Obtaining MS-DOS (non-Windows) browsers * Obtaining NeXT browsers * Obtaining Unix and VMS browsers * Obtaining VM/CMS browsers * Obtaining Microsoft Windows and OS/2 browsers * Obtaining X Window System / DecWindows browsers * Obtaining Acorn RISCOS browsers * Obtaining batch-mode "browsers" * I can't get SLIP or PPP. I want web access. Is there a way? * Can I browse HTML files locally when I'm offline? * How can I access the Web through a firewall? * I'm running XMosaic. Why don't my external viewers work? * I have a Windows PC or a Mac. Why can't I access WAIS URLs? * How do I convert HTML to (plain ASCII, PostScript, other printable formats)? * How can I save an inline image to disk? * How can I send newsgroup posts in HTML to my web browser? * How can I get sound from the PC speaker with WinMosaic? Establishing and using web servers Contents: * Amiga servers * Macintosh servers * MS-DOS and Novell Netware servers * Unix servers * VM/CMS servers * VMS servers * IBM OS/2 Servers * Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 95 Servers * Microsoft Windows 3.1 Servers * Can I serve two domains from one server? * Comparison: which server is best? * How fast does my connection have to be? * How can I make my web site searchable? * Do I have to approve every imagemap my users create? * Can I safely allow my users to run their own CGI scripts? * Can I lease space on an existing server? * How can I keep robots off my server? * How do I publicize my server? * How can I secure access to my server? * Can I prevent others from studying my HTML? * How can I keep statistics on my server? * How can I serve [Word documents, Excel spreadsheets...] through my server? Authoring web pages, images and scripts Contents: * Overview: how to create web documents * Writing HTML documents yourself * HTML editors * Converting other formats to HTML * Checking web pages for errors * How can I "include" one HTML document in another? * How can I include a "back" button in my web page? * How can I create a background and choose my own text colors? * Generating web pages from a program (CGI) * How can I keep "state" information between CGI calls? * How can I identify the user accessing my CGI script? * My CGI script doesn't work! What's wrong? * How can I keep my document from being cached? * How can users send me comments and/or email? * How can I create fill-out forms? * Are HTML 3.0 tables ready? Are there other options? * How can I use inline images without alienating my users? * How can I distribute audio through the web? * How can I generate inline images on the fly? * What is HTML 3.0? * How do I comment an HTML document? * How do I create clickable image maps? * How can I create transparent and interlaced GIFs? What are they? * Why do my transparent GIFs look (grainy, chunky, not so transparent)... * Which is better for the web, JPEG or GIF? * What is a progressive JPEG? How can I produce progressive JPEGs? * Can I lease space on an existing server? * Can I make a link that doesn't load a new page? * How can I redirect the browser to a new URL? * How can the user download binaries from my server? * How can I mirror part of another server? * Does mailto: work in all browsers? * How can I serve [Word documents, Excel spreadsheets...] through my server? * How do I publicize my work? * Hey, why can't I write a web-exploring robot? * Where can I get an access counter for my page? Other resources about the Web Contents: * Books about the Web * Mailing lists about the Web * Newsgroups about the Web * IRC channels about the Web (real-time chat) Credits ABOUT THE WORLD WIDE WEB FAQ The World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) is intended to answer the most common questions about the web. The FAQ is maintained by by Thomas Boutell . Copyright 1994, 1995, 1996 by Thomas Boutell and Boutell.Com, Inc. The complete FAQ is available from several sites. If you can, you will want to access it through the web. Use the site closest to you in the language you prefer (non-English sites are marked); * Boutell.Com, Inc., eastern United States (North America): * Seton Hall University, eastern United States (North America): * Oxford University, UK (Europe): * Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland (Europe, in Polish): * Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland (Europe, in English): * New Software Technologies Service, Austria (Europe): * Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Italy (Europe): * Glocom, Japan (Asia): * The University of Melbourne (Australia/Pacific): * Telstra Corporation, Australia (Australia/Pacific): * Internex Online, Toronto, Canada (North America): * Communications Vir, Montreal, Canada (North America): * Community Access Canada, University of New Brunswick, Canada (North America): * Island Internet, British Columbia, Canada (North America): * Acer Inc., Taipei, Taiwan (Asia, in Chinese): * Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan (Asia): * Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics, Darmstadt, Germany: * Mikomtek, CSIR (South Africa): * Michael Babcock at www.feldspar.com (Ontario, Canada): _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ RECENT CHANGES TO THE FAQ I have completed a book entitled "CGI Programming in C and Perl," to be published by Addison-Wesley in April 1996. This has caused longer-than-normal delays between FAQ updates. I hope you will find that the book was worth the trouble! 1/19/95: * THE FAQ HAS MOVED. The official URL of the FAQ is now . A forwarding link will be maintained from Sunsite for as long as possible. * New Windows 95 and NT web servers * Updated Unix web servers * More information about the REMOTE_USER variable * Information about the #www IRC channel * More information about HTTP cookies * New HTML editors, including NaviPress * Updated information about imagemap editors * Updated the forms section * Added WebTrends to the stats tools section * How to redirect a web browser * New Internet audio information * CGI programming information for Pascal and Delphi programmers * Adding a back button to your web page * Downloading binaries to the user * More information about mirroring other servers * Lots of new information about creating backgrounds and setting text colors * Information about Web site indexing and searching tools * The MMM browser for Unix/X * The ANT Internet Suite browser for the Acorn * Numerous updated links * Many assorted updates _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ CREDITS Copyright 1994, 1995, 1996 by Thomas Boutell and Boutell.Com, Inc. Maintainer (11/93 to present): Thomas Boutell, __ Former Maintainer (until 11/93): Nathan Torkington, __ _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ WHAT ARE WWW, HYPERTEXT AND HYPERMEDIA? WWW stands for "World Wide Web." The WWW project, started by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics), seeks to build a "distributed hypermedia system." In practice, the web is a vast collection of interconnected documents, spanning the world. Tim Berners-Lee continues his pioneering work with the W3 Consortium at MIT. 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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://www.w3.org: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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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. 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 ), a document provided by the Text Encoding Initiative. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ WHAT IS THE W3 CONSORTIUM? The W3 consortium is an industry consortium headed by the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The W3 consortium seeks to promote standards and encourage interoperability between WWW products. See for more information. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ INTRODUCTION: HOW CAN I ACCESS THE WEB? You have two basic options: use a browser on your own machine (the best option) or use a browser that can be telnetted to (not nearly as good, but possible). Web access by email is available, but very marginal. Note, however, that the traditional online services such as AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve now offer web access of one degree or another as a standard feature. Real web access is finally easy to come by for all PC users, at least in North America. 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. Access to the web _by email_ is possible once again, but obtaining a better grade of Internet access that allows you to run a web browser is strongly encouraged. To use the service, send mail to webmail@curia.ucc.ie with "go http://www.boutell.com/faq/" in the body of your mail (don't type the quotation marks). You will receive the top page of the web version of this FAQ, which you can use as a starting point for your explorations. There is one low-tech solution: web by FAX! Consider the following information, submitted by Bill Stearns: If you have access to a fax machine, do the following: 1) Call 805-730-7777 from your fax machine. 2) Select number 2 (I have the document ID already) 3) Type in the document ID; for the above page, it's 17571, then press # (the pound symbol) 4) Press pound at the next prompt if you're calling from your fax machine, or enter the phone number of your fax machine and then press pound. 5) Wait for that page to come over, and then repeat the process with the 5 or 6 digit number in brackets next to the link you'd like to follow. A few other useful pages: 17581 800 number (toll-free) service providers 17582 The list of area codes - a good place to start as well if you're in the U.S. By the way, this free service is provided by Universal Access (http://www.ua.com/, document number 16968) and is not limited to just this directory. If you know the name of the machine hosting the web page you want to view, you can probably reach it through this service. You simply type in the name of the machine (www.teleport.com, for example) at menu option 3. When you've received the home page for the site, keep following the trail to the page you'd like. It takes a while and some long distance calls, but the service is otherwise free. My sincere thanks both to Universal Access and the Celestin company for providing these services. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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.htm l ), 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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://www.w3.org/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. Yahoo (URL is ) is probably the most complete hierarchical, topical index of web sites, and also features a sophisticated search facility. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 entry in the authoring section regarding robots.) Here are a few such automatic indexes you can search: Yahoo (URL is ) is probably the most complete hierarchical, topical index of web sites, and also features a sophisticated search facility. 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. WebCrawler (URL is ) 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. InfoSeek is a commercial search service which also offers a free web search facility . You can specify phrases to locate, among other query operations, and InfoSeek's commercial service can search more than just web pages (newsgroups, for instance). InfoSeek's commercial service charges 10 cents per query and offers a free trial to new users. (Increasing load on the free search servers makes this sound better every day.) OpenText (URL is ) also offers a robust web searching facility. You can read about other search robots and the principles behind them in the robots section. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ CAN I CATCH A VIRUS BY LOOKING AT A WEB PAGE? _No._ Your computer can, of course, catch a virus if you download an executable program from an untrustworthy site and then, of your own free will, double-click on it in your file manager (or Mac desktop, or...). This is the same risk you run when downloading programs from bulletin board systems or via anonymous FTP. Viewing images, filling out forms and so on is harmless. So, most likely, is downloading a program from a respectable source with a reputation to protect. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HOW CAN I FIND OUT IF A WEB PAGE HAS BEEN UPDATED? Most of the time, web servers deliver information only when you ask for it. Usually this is a good thing, but in some cases you may want to be notified when a web page has changed. When you want notification that a page has changed, consider using URL-minder (URL is ), a web-browsing robot which will automatically notify you by email when a page of interest to you has been updated. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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, see the server section. You can also 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ WHO USES THE WEB? Good question! The web is certainly biased toward the thirtyish, anglo-saxon, male and technology-friendly crowd at this point, but there's more to the story; the demographics of the web are changing rapidly as the user base grows. The GVU WWW User Survey (URL is ) attempts to answer the question in detail. You can access the results of past surveys and contribute information of your own. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ WHAT IS VRML? VRML, the Virtual Reality Modeling Language, is an attempt to extend the web into the domain of three-dimensional graphics. VRML "worlds" can depict realistic or otherworldly places, which can contain objects that link to other documents or VRML worlds on the web. For more information about VRML, including where to find browsers and other VRML tools for your system, consult the VRML Home Page at Wired (URL is ) for general technical information about the effort, and the WebSpace home page at SGI (URL is ) for the first VRML viewer to become available. You may also wish to check out the home page of VRWeb , another VRML browser available for Microsoft Windows and the X Window System. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ WHAT IS JAVA? Java is a language developed by Sun Microsystems which allows World Wide Web pages to contain code that is executed on the browser. Because Java is based on a single "virtual machine" that all implementations of java emulate, it is possible for Java programs to run on any system which has a version of Java. It is also possible for the "virtual machine" emulator to make sure that Java programs downloaded through the web do not attempt to do unauthorized things. Actually, Java can be used in the absence of the web, but the application that has sparked so much interest in Java is HotJava, a web browser written in the Java language. You can learn more about Java and HotJava from Sun's HotJava home page (URL is ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ BROWSERS ACCESSIBLE BY TELNET An up-to-date list of these is available on the Web as http://www.w3.org/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. Lynx is 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. info.funet.fi (or telnet 128.214.6.102). Log in as www. Offers several browsers, including Lynx. fserv.kfki.hu Hungary. Has slow link, use from nearby. Login is as www. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 . See also the FAQ available at . Amiga Lynx An Amiga version of the Lynx text-based browser. Supports forms, while AMosaic does not. See . Emacs w3-mode A WWW browser for emacs. Runs under Gnu Emacs on the Amiga. Has fonts, color, inline images, and mouse support if using Lemacs, Epoch, or Emacs 19. Available by anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.indiana.edu in the directory pub/elisp/w3. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 (see Frank Hecker's guide to SLIP and PPP access; URL is ; ), or using The Internet Adapter or SLiRP, products which simulate 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. NCSA 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 ). Downloads and displays images incrementally while you read pages, which also display incrementally. Also supports tables in a standard manner, in addition to many extensions to HTML, not all of which conform to the proposed standard. Netscape is a commercial product but can be evaluated free of charge for 90 days by individuals. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.netscape.com in the netscape subdirectory. See Netscape's web site for information about mirror sites. 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. Enhanced Mosaic Enhanced Mosaic, from Spyglass, Incorporated, is the commercial version of NCSA Mosaic. Spyglass does not offer the browser directly to the public; instead, they license it to various OEMs. You can learn more about their licensing arrangements and the existing licensees from the Spyglass home page (URL is ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 or SLiRP, products which simulate 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/. Minuet An all-in-one Internet access package for MSDOS. Includes both text-mode and graphics-mode display. Available by anonymous FTP from minuet.micro.umn.edu in the directory pub/minuet/latest/minuarc.exe. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 multithreaded, graphical browser for NeXTStep. Available by anonymous FTP from sente.epfl.ch in the directory pub/software (URL is ). Netsurfer Another true NeXTStep browser. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.thoughtport.com in the directory /pub/next/netsurfer (URL is ). 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 ftp.w3.org in the directory /pub/www/src. 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 www.w3.org 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ VM/CMS BROWSERS Albert A WWW browser for the VM/CMS operating system. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.nerdc.ufl.edu in the directory pub/vm/www/. Charlotte A full-screen VM/CMS browser written in REXX, Pipelines and REXX Sockets which runs without changes on any version of CMS from 5 to 11. (URL is ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ MICROSOFT WINDOWS BROWSERS NOTE: Most of these browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP networking on your PC. The exceptions are SlipKnot and I-COMM, which have slightly more limited features but operate 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 (see Frank Hecker's guide to SLIP and PPP access; URL is ), or by using The Internet Adapter or SLiRP, products which simulate SLIP through your dialup Unix shell account. Another product, TwinSock at , provides equivalent functionality under Windows using its own proxy protocol. 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 Windows From NCSA. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory PC/Windows/Mosaic, or learn more about it on the web: The latest versions of WinMosaic support innovative features such as "AutoSurf", which can automatically retrieve documents related to the current document to save download time. Netscape From Netscape Communications Corp (URL is: ). Netscape pioneered the incremental display of images during the download of HTML pages, and the latest beta versions support Sun's Java, a cross-platform extension language that allows the web to be extended in new ways. Netscape also has strong table support, in addition to many extensions to HTML, not all of which conform to the proposed standard. Netscape is a commercial product but can be evaluated free of charge for 90 days by individuals. The 16-bit version works under both OS/2 and Windows. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.netscape.com in the netscape subdirectory. See Netscape's web site for information about mirror sites. Quarterdeck Mosaic From Quarterdeck. Supports incremental image loading, forms, new HTML extensions and other modern web browser features. Includes Internet connectivity software and advanced history-keeping features, as well as private annotations of web pages. A 30-day evaluation copy is available on the web . Compuserve Mosaic From Compuserve (Spry is now part of Compuserve). Works under Windows and OS/2. Supports the mailto: URL, transparent GIFs, ALT tags, hierarchical hotlists, progressive image rendering, and so forth. Internet Explorer , from Microsoft. Supports incremental image loading, forms, HTTP keep-alive, tables (in the latest betas as of this writing), and many Netscape extensions and unique Microsoft extensions to HTML. Internetworks From Internetworks, formerly (?) 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 a graphical WWW browser that operates entirely without SLIP, PPP, an Ethernet connection, or special server-side software (but read the SLIP emulator section for another workaround). SlipKnot features the ability to automatically retrieve all documents linked to by the current document while the current document is being read. SlipKnot supports multiple fonts, inline images, forms, and review of documents you have already received while new documents arrive. SlipKnot can also download "nearby" documents in advance to save download time. Like I-COMM, SlipKnot operates entirely through a Unix shell account, not over TCP/IP. SlipKnot does _not_ require that you install any new software on your Unix shell account. You can obtain SlipKnot by anonymous FTP 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. I-COMM I-COMM, like SlipKnot, operates without a true TCP/IP connection. It requires a Unix shell account, like SlipKnot, or a VMS shell account, a feature unique to I-COMM. I-COMM also features Zmodem file transfers in both directions and complete support for forms. I-COMM is available for evaluation as shareware (URL is ). IBM OS/2 WebExplorer A native IBM OS/2 web browser. WebExplorer is a multithreaded application and, in addition to the usual "back" and "forward" buttons, features a visual map of your exploration of the web. The software supports progressive image rendering. IBM WebExplorer can be acquired by anonymous FTP from ftp01.ny.us.ibm.net in the directory pub/WebExplorer/ . WebSurfer Included with the Chameleon TCP/IP software package from Netmanage, Inc. Reputedly functional and straightforward. 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 . Enhanced Mosaic Enhanced Mosaic, from Spyglass, Incorporated, is the commercial version of NCSA Mosaic. Spyglass does not offer the browser directly to the public; instead, they license it to various OEMs. You can learn more about their licensing arrangements and the existing licensees from the Spyglass home page (URL is ). UdiWWW UdiWWW, unlike all other Windows browsers as of this writing, supports all of the proposed HTML 3.0 standard (except for and ) and also supports Netscape's various nonstandard extensions. UdiWWW is still being tested, but you can obtain it for yourself and see (URL is ). Emissary Emissary, from Wollongong, is both a web browser and a concerted effort to integrate the Internet into the Windows environment (see ). For instance, FTP sites appear much like drives in the file manager, mail can be sent via drag and drop, and WYSIWYG HTML editing is included. Emissary supports several Netscape extensions, but lacks support for tables. NetShark , From InterCon Systems Corporation . Supports incremental displaying of pages and inline images. Supports extensions to HTML, including background images. NetShark also includes a MIME compatible mail client. The Lite version is available free of charge by anonymous ftp from netshark.inter.net in the /pub/netshark/ directory. Cello Browser from Cornell LII. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.law.cornell.edu in the directory /pub/LII/cello. WinWeb From EINet. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.einet.net in the directory /einet/pc/winweb as the file winweb.zip. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ X/DECWINDOWS (GRAPHICAL UNIX, VMS) BROWSERS Netscape From Netscape Communications Corp (URL is: ). Downloads and displays images incrementally while you read pages, which also display incrementally. Also supports tables in a standard manner, in addition to many extensions to HTML, not all of which conform to the proposed standard. Netscape also supports Java in the latest versions. Netscape is a commercial product but can be evaluated free of charge for a limited period of time by individuals. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.netscape.com in the netscape subdirectory. See Netscape's web site for information about mirror sites. MMM The MMM browser is a Unix/X browser written in the Caml Special Light programming language with a Tcl/Tk user interface. MMM supports HTML level 2 and also supports plug-in "applets" written in Caml Special Light. 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.digital.com in the directory pub/DEC/Mosaic. 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 A Unix Browser/Editor for X11 (URL is ). 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 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. 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/ . Enhanced Mosaic Enhanced Mosaic, from Spyglass, Incorporated, is the commercial version of NCSA Mosaic. Spyglass does not offer the browser directly to the public; instead, they license it to various OEMs. You can learn more about their licensing arrangements and the existing licensees from the Spyglass home page (URL is ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ WHAT BROWSERS ARE AVAILABLE FOR THE ACORN RISCOS SYSTEM? ANT Suite Browser ANT Limited offers a complete Internet Suite for the RISC OS computers which includes a WWW browser and the rest of the usual Internet-related packages. See for more information. arcweb ArcWeb is a World-Wide Web browser for Acorn RISC OS computers, with RISC OS 3.1 or later. webster Another browser, about which I have no further information. The latter two browsers can be obtained by anonymous FTP from micros.hensa.ac.uk in the directory micros/arch/riscos. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ BATCH-MODE "BROWSERS" The following browsers retrieve the contents of the URL specified on the command line and are intended primarily for use in scripts. Note that most of the text-based Unix browsers can also do this. Batch mode browser A batch-mode "browser", url_get, which is available through the URL http://uts.cc.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. Batch mode browser in tclX A batch mode "browser" (URL retriever) written in extended Tcl (tclX) is available as well (URL is ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ I CAN'T GET SLIP OR PPP. I WANT WEB ACCESS. 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, there are two ways around the problem: GUI Browsers that Talk to Unix Microsoft Windows users can run SlipKnot or ICOMM, special browsers which operate using programs that may already be installed on your shell account (covered in detail in the MS Windows browsers section). SLIP/PPP Emulators Anyone with dialup access to a Unix shell account can use The Internet Adapter (TIA) or SLiRP, two programs which provide a pseudo-SLIP connection. SLiRP is free. TIA is not free, but there is a free two-week trial period and it is inexpensive. You can learn more about TIA at . More information on SLiRP is available at . If you have a Macintosh, check out the Macintosh TIA Users' FAQ, , for additional help. "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 machine (Windows, Mac, or even Unix-based). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ CAN I BROWSE HTML FILES LOCALLY WHEN I'M OFFLINE? If you do not use Microsoft Windows, the answer is usually "no problem!" Just use the "Open File" or equivalent option on the file menu of your web browser, instead of "Open Location" or "Open URL". _Note:_ for the most part, this is not a problem for Windows 95 and Windows NT users. This section applies primarily to Windows 3.1 users. If you use Microsoft Windows, and particularly if you use Netscape, you may have difficulty viewing local files when not connected to the net. Some web browsers will refuse to run unless there is functioning Internet software running on the system. Netscape offers a solution to this problem in the release notes to version 1.1 of their product. Essentially, you can install an "empty" Internet interface (winsock.dll) that keeps Netscape happy. An easy way to do this for users of some Internet connectivity software is to launch your Internet software but refrain from dialing out. The details vary from one package of Internet software to another. It is helpful to change Autoload Home Page=yes to Autoload Home Page=no in your netscape.ini file in the [Main] section. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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_). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ I'M RUNNING XMOSAIC. WHY CAN'T I GET EXTERNAL VIEWERS WORKING? Answer provided by Ronald E. Daniel (rdaniel@acl.lanl.gov): Mosaic only looks at the .mime.types file if it has no idea what the document's type is. This is actually a very rare situation. Essentially all servers now use the HTTP/1.0 protocol, which means that they tell Mosaic (or other browsers) what the document's MIME Content-type is. The servers use a file very much like Mosaic's .mime.types file to infer the Content-type from the filename's extension. It is pretty simple to find out if this really is the problem. Use telnet to talk to the server and find out if it is assigning a MIME type to the document in question. Here's an example, looking at the home page for my server. (idaknow: is my shell prompt) idaknow: telnet www.acl.lanl.gov 80 // Connect to the httpd server Trying 128.165.148.3 ... Connected to www.acl.lanl.gov. Escape character is '^]'. HEAD /Home.html HTTP/1.0 // replace Home.html with your documen t // you supply the blank line HTTP/1.0 200 OK // the rest of this comes from the serve r Date: Wednesday, 25-May-94 19:18:11 GMT Server: NCSA/1.1 MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/html // Here's the MIME Content-type Last-modified: Monday, 16-May-94 16:21:58 GMT Content-length: 1727 Connection closed by foreign host. idaknow: In the example above, /Home.html will get http://www.acl.lanl.gov/Home.html . Normally servers will be configured to supply a Content-type of text/plain if they don't know what else to do. If this is the problem you are having, take a look at the TypesConfig documentation for NCSA's httpd. You can have the server look at the filename extension, supply the correct Content-type, then use your local .mailcap file to tell Mosaic what viewer to use to look at the document. Russ Segal adds: The answer from Ronald Daniel is essentially correct, but it needs a small addendum. When starting Moasic, you can specify a "fileProxy" which will fetch files for you: "*fileProxy: http://socks/" If you do this, file: URLs are no longer strictly local accesses. So even if the URL is not http:, the proxy server must be upgraded as Mr. Daniel suggests. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HOW DO I CONVERT HTML TO (PLAIN ASCII, POSTSCRIPT, OTHER PRINTABLE FORMATS)? There are several ways. Most web browsers have a "save as ascii" option; the quality of the result varies. Lynx, in particular, being a text-based browser, does a credible job if you select the print option and choose "print to local file" instead of an actual printer. Graphical browsers often have a "save as postscript" option; again, quality varies. A product designed expressly for this purpose is HTMLCon (URL is ), a DOS command line application. If your browser cannot save as postscript or another format which preserves in-line graphics, one option is to use Mozilla Print Gidget . You enter the URL for the page you want to convert and save the document that comes back. Another interesting product is FaxBack , which allows you to retrieve of any web page from a fax machine. Thanks to Neal McBurnett for his assistance with this section. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HOW CAN I SAVE AN INLINE IMAGE TO DISK? Here are three ways: 1. If you are using Netscape, just hold down the right mouse button (hold down the single mouse button for more than a second if using the Mac version) over the image. A menu will appear that includes the option of saving the image. 2. 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. 3. 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ AMIGA SERVERS AWS AWS is the first server written specifically for the Amiga. Documentation is available from , and the distribution can be downloaded by anonymous FTP from . NCSA NCSA's Unix server has been ported to the Amiga, and is bundled with the AMosaic browser; however, a web page about the port is no longer available. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ MACINTOSH SERVERS WebSTAR WebSTAR is an "industrial-strength" commercial World Wide Web server from StarNine, Inc. (URL is ). MacHTTP MacHTTP is a freely available web server for the Macintosh. There is also a Frequently Asked Questions posting dedicated to MacHTTP: Mac Common Lisp Server A server written in Mac Common Lisp (URL is ) is now available. The Mac Common Lisp server supports extension of the server with object-oriented Lisp code and is freely available, including source. http4mac http4mac is a simple, free web server for the Macintosh. FTPd FTPd is a very inexpensive package for the Macintosh that is capable of serving three protocols: FTP, HTTP, and gopher. InterServer Publisher , is a commercial web, FTP, and gopher server for the Macintosh. It emphasizes ease of configuration but also supports configuration through AppleScript. The server also offers a server-side HTML extension which supports hit counters, image maps, and directory listings as standard features. A 30-day demo is available by anonymous ftp from ftp.intercon.com in the /intercon/sales/Mac/Demo_Software/ directory. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 ). WonLoo Telenologies NLM WonLoo Telenologies also offers a Netware Loadable Module which permits a Novell Netware server to act as a web server. The Major BBS Galacticomm's Major BBS software now has an Internet Connectivity Option that adds web server capabilities (URL is ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ UNIX SERVERS NCSA httpd NCSA is the source of one of the oldest Unix web servers, and still one of the best, known as the NCSA httpd; it is available at the URL ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/httpd. Versions 1.5 and later support HTTP Keep-Alive, which improves efficiency when the server is communicating with a compatible web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer. More information is available at NCSA . Apache httpd Apache is a powerful, reliable drop-in replacement for the NCSA httpd. Note that a version which supports SSL for secure transactions is also available. w3 httpd The w3 consortium httpd, originally developed at CERN, is available for anonymous FTP from ftp.w3.org (URL is http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Status.html ) and many other places. The w3 server is currently the only free server able to act as a caching proxy. Netscape's Netsite Servers Netscape Communications Corporation offers two server products, high-end Netscape Commerce Server (capable of secure transactions) and the less expensive Netscape Communications Server. Both products feature a more efficient replacement for CGI (common gateway interface) programming and are designed to be more efficient than traditional free-of-charge servers such as the NCSA and CERN http demons. Compuserve Internet Office Web Server Compuserve's Internet division (formerly Spry) offers the Internet Office Web Server, available for both Unix and Windows NT. The standard edition can be tried out for free. The professional edition includes editing tools and supports S-HTTP security and SQL database connectivity. 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, and includes some of the more powerful web server features as well (such as CGI scripts). 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. 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/ ). Phttpd The Phttpd Server, available by anonymous FTP from ftp.lysator.liu.se in the directory pub/phttpd, is a multithreaded server for Sun's Solaris 2.X operating system which takes advantage of memory mapping and dynamic linking to achieve excellent performance. Open Market Web Servers Open Market offers two commercial products, WebServer and the Secure WebServer. The latter supports the Secure HTTP and SSL standards for secure transactions. Both are multithreaded for efficiency and emphasize strong logging features and access control (URL is ). Spinner Spinner is a free web server for Unix platforms which supports extensive server-side parsing of documents, completely avoids forking for non-CGI accesses, and supports multiple roots for multiple host names (URL is ). Navisoft Server The Navisoft Server is available for Windows NT, as well as many Unix platforms, and interfaces directly to a back-end database for powerful search capabilities. Boa Boa is a single-process server. While it does not have every advanced feature, it is interesting because it internally multiplexes all of the ongoing http connections and forks only to handle CGI programs. This should translate into remarkable speed when serving normal documents. See for more information. thttpd thttpd, the "tiny/turbo/throttling HTTP server", is much like Boa in that it takes a single-process approach. thttpd handles only the GET and HEAD methods and emphasizes simplicity and very low resource consumption. It isn't suitable for everything, but it serves simple documents very quickly! It also has a feature which is currently unique: thttpd can limit the pace of accesses to particular URLs. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ VM/CMS SERVERS A VM/CMS web server is available from Beyond Software Incorporated. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 . _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ IBM OS/2 WEB SERVERS While OS/2 can take advantage of most Windows software, native OS/2 web servers perform better in the OS/2 environment. In addition to consulting the list of servers below, be sure to check out Don Meyer's excellent HTTPD for OS/2 page , which provided much of the information for the latest update of this section. goserve for OS/2 goserve (URL is ) is a one-piece World Wide Web and Gopher for OS/2. Designed for ease of installation. OS2HTTPD An OS/2 server based on NCSA's Unix HTTPD, ported 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. IBM Internet Connection Server for OS/2 The IBM Internet Connection Server is a commercial product, and requires the High Performance File System (HPFS). OS2WWW OS2WWW is a shareware server for OS/2. OS2WWW, like OS2HTTPD, is a port of the NCSA Unix HTTPD. However, OS2WWW has been rewritten to take advantage of OS/2 "threads" instead of creating a new process for every new connection, and performance should be better than that of OS2WWW. Apache for OS/2 A port of the popular freeware Apache server for Unix, Apache for OS/2 offers many of the same features. W3 HTTPD with Proxy Support An OS/2 port of the W3 Consortium HTTPD server (originally developed by CERN) is now available for OS/2. This is currently the only OS/2 server capable to serve as a proxy. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ MS WINDOWS NT AND WINDOWS 95 SERVERS Note: ALL the servers on this list are 32-bit servers and are incompatible with or not recommended for use with 16-bit Windows 3.1. Servers compatible with Microsoft Windows 3.1 and earlier are covered in a separate list. Many 32-bit servers in this list are compatible with Windows 95 as well as Windows NT. WebQuest 95 and NT The WebQuest servers, from Questar, offer extended server side include capabilities, easy graphical installation and a bundled HTML editor. SuperWeb Server The SuperWeb server, from Frontier Technologies, is a straightforward NT web server which includes HTML and imagemap editing software. SuperWeb features remote administration capabilities. 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 ). Purveyor From Process Software Corporation. For Windows NT. Based on the EMWAC source code, with enhancements (URL is ). SerWeb for Windows NT A simple, effective server for Windows NT, written by Gustavo Available by anonymous FTP from emwac.ed.ac.uk as /pub/serweb/serweb_i.zip. Netscape's Netsite Servers Netscape Communications Corporation offers two server products, high-end Netscape Commerce Server (capable of secure transactions) and the less expensive Netscape Communications Server. Both products feature a more efficient replacement for CGI (common gateway interface) programming and are designed to be more efficient than traditional free-of-charge servers such as the NCSA and CERN http demons. Both are intended for Windows NT. Alibaba Alibaba is Computer Software Manufaktur's NT-based web server, which takes advantage of multithreading for best performance: WebSite WebSite (URL is ) is a Windows NT-based web server available from O'Reilly. WebSite offers a graphical, user-friendly front end to the server for easy file manipulation, and includes software to track down broken links. WebSite also runs under Windows 95. Compuserve Internet Office Web Server Compuserve's Internet division (formerly Spry) offers the Internet Office Web Server, available for both Unix and Windows NT. The standard edition can be tried out for free. The professional edition includes editing tools and supports S-HTTP security and SQL database connectivity. FolkWeb WWW Server FolkWeb is a Windows NT and 95 web server which takes advantage of threads and offers friendly GUI-based configuration. Commerce Builder Commerce Builder is a commercial Windows 95 and NT server. Navisoft Server The Navisoft Server is available for Windows NT, as well as many Unix platforms, and interfaces directly to a back-end database for powerful search capabilities. PowerWeb Server The PowerWeb Server, available for Windows NT and Windows 95, emphasizes performance issues. The server offers built-in imagemap support and high-performance file access as well as fast DLL-based CGI suport to avoid the overhead of "forking" processes. SIAC HTTPD The SIAC web server for NT (currently free software) offers basic server functionality in addition to a certain amount of in-page programmability. <&RL:http://wwwserver.itl.saic.com/> Web Commander The Web Commander web server for NT and Windows 95 is a commercial product which emphasizes ease of use, remote monitoring, and built-in access statistics. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ MS WINDOWS 3.1 COMPATIBLE SERVERS Note: IBM OS/2 servers are now covered under a separate heading. Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 95-specific servers are also covered under a separate heading. The servers in this list should work under the above operating systems, but there are better 32-bit products available; see the separate listings. ZBServer zbserver is a shareware server for Windows which supports both http and gopher access (URL is ). Purveyor From Process Software Corporation. For Windows NT. Based on the EMWAC source code, with enhancements (URL is ). Windows httpd WinHTTPD (URL is ) has most of the features of the original NCSA Unix server, including CGI programs (which generate pages on the fly based on user input). CGI programs implemented in Visual BASIC; they can also be implemented in Perl or any other language available for MSDOS. WinHTTPD originated the WinCGI standard now supported by many Windows servers. CGI DOS programs can be conveniently debugged using the CGI-DOS Perl library (URL is ). 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. Chameleon Web Personal Server Included with the Chameleon TCP/IP software from Netmanage, Inc. Comments, anyone? WEB4HAM Another Windows-based server, available by anonymous FTP from ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de as /pub/net/winsock/web4ham.zip. Alibaba Alibaba is Computer Software Manufaktur's NT-based web server, which takes advantage of multithreading for best performance: WebServer The WebServer product from Quarterdeck is a straightforward Windows 3.1 web server designed to be easy to configure. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HOW CAN TWO DIFFERENT HOME PAGES SHARE ONE PHYSICAL MACHINE? Dan Pritchett maintains a document detailing the process of running two or more servers on the same machine without end users being able to tell the difference (URL is ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ YEAH, BUT WHICH SERVER 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 ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HOW CAN I MAKE MY WEB SITE SEARCHABLE BY THE USER? Both free and commercial tools are available for this task. A brief list of such tools follows. Thanks to John K. Hinsdale for contributing the original list. Free Web Site Search Engines freeWAIS-sf The well-known freeWAIS-sf engine offers an HTTP front end, sf-gate, with which users can explore indexed documents on your site. glimpse From the University of Arizona, the glimpse engine can be used to easily search large numbers of HTML documents. Harvest Harvest, from the University of Colorado, is a powerful but somewhat complex information search and replication system. Used properly, Harvest can be a powerful tool to distribute your documents. Commercial Search Engines Excerpt From Alma Mater Software. An off-the-shelf indexer for SunOS machines. Includes web-based forms. Excite From ArchiText, Excite is expressly designed to add straightforward searching capabilities to existing web sites. Topic From Verity, Inc. Topic indexes documents in a high-level fashion by "concept." WAIS From America Online, WAIS is a modern commercial verison of the original WAIS system, one of the first indexing systems of this type. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ DO I HAVE TO APPROVE EVERY IMAGEMAP MY USERS CREATE? Not if you update to the latest and greatest imagemap software. The problem is that the NCSA web server imagemap program used to require a central configuration file. This restriction has been lifted in version 1.4 of the NCSA web server (read more at ). The CERN imagemap program never did have this restriction (consider ). Also consider Jutta Degener's "umap" ( ), a flexible alternative to the standard imagemap utilities. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ CAN I SAFELY ALLOW MY USERS TO RUN THEIR OWN CGI SCRIPTS? CGI scripts are a very powerful facility, with some risks attached to them. In a Unix system, if CGI scripts run with the same user ID as the web server itself, poorly or maliciously written scripts can damage files or open security holes. There are two important steps that should be taken to correct this: 1. _NEVER_ run your web server as root; make sure it is configured to change to another user ID at startup time. (This is standard practice in all web server distributions, but administrators have been known to change it back to running as root anyway. Don't.) 2. Consider using a wrapper such as , user.c , or CGIwrap to ensure that each CGI script runs with the permissions and user ID of the user responsible for it. If proper precautions are taken, user CGI scripts can be reasonably safe. As always, dumb mistakes that open security holes for outsiders are more likely to be the cause of problems than actual malice on the part of your own users. Also be sure to check out Paul Phillips' excellent collection of CGI security-related pages . _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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/HyperNews/get/www/leasing.html ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HOW CAN I KEEP ROBOTS OFF MY SERVER? Programs that automatically traverse the web can be quite useful, but have the potential to make a serious mess of things. Every so often someone will write a "depth-first" searching robot that brings servers to their knees. See the section on writing robots for details. Fortunately, most robots on the web follow a simple protocol by which you can keep them off your server if you wish, or keep them out of portions of your server which are robot traps (ie, they contain an infinite number of possible links). Read the document World Wide Web Robots, Wanderers and Spiders (URL is ) 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, including useful cataloging robots you probably do _not_ want to keep off your server. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 Yahoo (URL is ), an impressive index of the web which expands its knowledge automatically but permits the direct submission of URLs as well. * Submit it to a large number of different catalogs using Submit It , a service which allows you to register with many indexes by filling out a single form. * 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!). * Register your URL in the Lycos Database (URL is ). * Submit your URL to the maintainers of various catalogs, such as the WWW Virtual Library (at the URL http://www.w3.org/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 ). * Consult Pete Page's How to Announce your New Web Site (URL is ). _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HOW CAN I RESTRICT AND CONTROL ACCESS TO MY SERVER? All major servers have features that allow you to limit access to particular sites, and many clients have authentication features that allow you to identify specific users. An overview of this topic available from the w3 Organization web server (URL is ). There is also a tutorial on security and user authentication with the NCSA server and Mosaic available, written by Marc Andreessen (URL is ). See your server documentation for further information. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ CAN I HIDE THE HTML OF MY PAGE SO NO ONE CAN STUDY IT? No. For better or worse, the answer is no. When the document is displayed, the HTML source is there, too; most browsers even have functions like "View Source" and "Save As HTML." HTML is not particularly complicated; it is essentially a simple markup language, and it is unlikely that any HTML "trick" will remain secret for long. Because HTML is simple, this would probably be the case even if the source were not visible. Good HTML _style_, on the other hand, is a subtle thing and requires a high degree of consistency and editorial sense (not always displayed in this document, I'll admit). It is unlikely that anyone will succeed in stealing your "style" using the "View Source" button, although they may pick up a few tricks. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HOW CAN I KEEP STATISTICS ABOUT MY WEB SERVER? There are several tools which can generate statistics about your web server. WebTrends WebTrends is a server log analysis package for the Microsoft Windows platform. Although it runs under Windows, WebTrends can analyze logs generated by any web server that outputs one of the well-known log formats. Combined Log Handling System The Combined Log Handling System is a log analyzer written in Perl which is able to read the logs of many different server packages, including ftp, gopher, several web server flavors, archie, and others. The system converts log entries to a single format and providing summary data (URL is ). MK-Stats MK-Stats produces impressive server statistics reports in HTML, including high-gloss inline image graphs. MK-Stats analyzes all server logs, including the referer log (the log of pages from which your site was accessed) and the error log. Written in Perl. Shareware. getstats getstats is a versatile log analyzer, written in C, which provides reports for various time periods with a high degree of flexibility. Add-on packages have been written to generate reports in HTML and also to generate graphs. You can access the getstats home page for more information (URL is http://www.eit.com/software/getstats/getstats.html ), or obtain the package by anonymous FTP from ftp.eit.com in the directory /pub/web.software/getstats. WebStat WebStat is a package written in the language Python which supplies statistics on usage by domain, country, etc., with daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports available. You will need Python in order to use it. See the WebStat home page (URL is http://www.pegasus.esprit.ec.org/people/sijben/statistics/adve rtisment.html ) for details, or obtain Python from ftp.cwi.nl in the directory /pub/python and WebStat from ftp.pegasus.esprit.ec.org in the directory /pub/misc. Wusage Wusage, which I wrote, is a C program which generates simple weekly reports in HTML, with inline image graphs displaying server growth and the distribution of accesses by continent. You can also exclude irrelevant accesses (inline images, local machines, etc.) from the results. Read the Wusage home page (URL is http://siva.cshl.org/wusage.html ) for more information, or obtain Wusage by anonymous FTP from isis.cshl.org in the directory pub/wusage. WOA WOA is a server access counter program which counts document accesses and also provides information about the sites which accessed each document. WOA generates HTML output and is written in Tcl and C. wwwstat wwwstat is a full-featured log analyzer written in the language Perl. (See the newsgroup comp.lang.perl.misc for more information about the language.) See the wwwstat home page (URL is http://www.ics.uci.edu/WebSoft/wwwstat/) for more information, or obtain the package by anonymous FTP from liege.ics.uci.edu in the directory /pub/arcadia/wwwstat. See also gwstat (URL is http://dis.cs.umass.edu/stats/gwstat.html ), a package which produces GIF graphs from the output of wwwstat. bert Bert is an acronym for Browser-log Extraction and Reporting Tool. It takes the agent_log and gives information about which browsers people have been using to access your site with. You can access the bert home page for more information (URL is ). Quickstats Quickstats is a straightforward log analysis package, oriented toward simple queries such as the popularity of a particular page. Quickstats can also ignore specific sites, among other options. Check out the QuickStats home page: ErrorChk Unlike most log statistics programs, ErrorChk analyzes and reports on the contents of the error log created by the NCSA server. This is useful as a means of diagnosing server problems. (URL is ) Snowhare's Log Analysis Tools Snowhare (Benjamin Franz) has made a suite of log analysis tools written in Perl available at which include graphical reports. analog Analog is a server log analysis package which emphasizes simplicity of installation, speed and attractive results. See for more information. _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HOW CAN I SERVE [WORD DOCUMENTS, EXCEL SPREADSHEETS, DOUGHNUTS]? In order to deliver documents of new and different types from your server, you need to configure the correct "MIME type" for each type of document, and use the proper extension when naming the file on the server. If the document type is highly unusual, you will also need to see to it that users know what MIME type to configure their browsers for, and what application to launch for that MIME type. More information on this subject is available in Ken Jenks' file format recommendations for web servers, . _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ PRODUCING HTML DOCUMENTS HTML is the simple markup system used to create hypertext documents. HTML is not intended to be a comprehensive page-layout system. Instead, HTML aims to let you describe the _structure_ of your document by indicating headings, emphasis, links to other documents and so forth. The more you work with HTML rather than against it, the happier you'll be. You can include images and other multimedia objects in your documents, but it should be remembered that not all web users have graphical clients, and many web users voluntarily turn graphics _off_ to save downloading time! If you try to spite such users, you will only lose readers (and customers). You can in fact specify a great deal about the appearance of your document in the latest web browsers. There is no harm in taking advantage of these features, but as a rule of thumb, always make sure your document looks good in a text-based browser such as Lynx as well as in the graphical browser of your dreams. This is more than a simple matter of taste. Keep in mind that not all users can see! 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: * Writing HTML yourself * HTML editing tools * Conversion tools _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ 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 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 . _________________________________________________________________ _World Wide Web FAQ_ HTML EDITORS 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. The latter are surprisingly useful, and the former surprisingly limited. As a rule of thumb, if you are keenly interested in using the very latest new HTML feature, you will probably be disappointed with WYSIWYG editors. Some WYSIWYG editors do support entry of unfamiliar tags, however. A few can even display them in the color or style of your choice. This document covers editors for the following systems: * HTML editors for the Mac * HTML editors for Microsoft Windows * HTML editors for Unix (non-graphical) * HTML editors for the X Window System * Miscellaneous editors HTML Editors for the Mac Web Warrior Web Warrior is a free HTML editor which features user-definable tags, command key equivalents, HTML correctness checking, and "semi-WYSIWYG" editing. HTML-HyperEditor HTML-HyperEditor allows for European non-English characters, imports existing HTML files, and has built-in FTP compatibility for easy installation of your finished HTML. HTML-HyperEditor also provides a facility to convert tab-delimited text files to HTML tables (most spreadsheets can "save as" ASCII, and this program can be used to convert the result to a table). HTML Editor A near-WYSIWYG package URL is ). A stand-alone program. ANT_HTML ANT_HTML is a Microsoft Word for the Macintosh template designed to convert Word documents into HTML documents in a WYSIWYG environment. It includes a utility to convert existing HTML files for editing within the system. ANT_PLUS also converts HTML files to ASCII, RTF, or any other format possible in Word. ANT_HTML works in all versions of Word, including international versions. ANT_HTML supports customization; when new tags appear, the user can add them even though they did not exist when ANT_HTML was installed. Also available for Windows. See for more information. GT_HTML GT_HTML is also a Microsoft Word for the Macintosh template to create HTML documents under Word. Limited support for tables is included. BBEdit HTML extensions This package of extensions allows the BBEdit and BBEdit Lite text editors for the Macintosh to conveniently edit HTML documents. (URL is .) You can also obtain the extensions package by anonymous ftp from sumex-aim.stanford.edu as info-mac/bbedit-html-ext-b3.hqx. Also see below. BBEditTools There is an alternative BBEdit extension package available as well (URL is ) . it is available by FTP from ftp.york.ac.uk in the directory /pub/users/ld11/BBEdit_HTML_Tools.sea.hqx. SoftQuad HoTMetaL SoftQuad's HoTMetaL is a WYSIWYG HTML editor designed from the ground up to edit HTML. Unlike HTML modes for existing word processors, every aspect of HoTMetaL reflects this purpose. html-helper-mode for EMACS Users of the EMACS editor will want to consider html-helper-mode, an EMACS "mode" for HTML editing (see ). NaviPress NaviPress is a combination WYSIWYG HTML editor/Web browser with remote save functionality, an unusual convenience. Version 1.1 supports much of HTML 3.0, and it includes site and link management features. HTML Editors for Microsoft Windows ANT_HTML ANT_HTML is a Microsoft Word template designed to convert Word documents into HTML documents in a WYSIWYG environment. It includes a utility to convert existing HTML files for editing within the system. ANT_PLUS also converts HTML files to ASCII, RTF, or any other format possible in Word. ANT_HTML works in all versions of Word, including international and 32-bit versions. ANT_HTML supports customization; when new tags appear, the user can add them even though they did not exist when ANT_HTML was installed. Also available for the Macintosh. See for more information. GT_HTML GT_HTML is also a Microsoft Word for Windows template to create HTML documents under Word. Limited support for tables is included. TC-Director TC-Director is a standalone HTML editor for Windows. TC-Director supports all standard HTML 2.0 tags and allows insertion of new tags as well. "Creation wizards" are provided to assist in the correct entry of the more complex tags. Internet Assistant Microsoft has released Internet Assistant, a Word for Windows template which can edit HTML in a WYSIWYG manner, including the capability to load existing HTML documents. It also includes simple browsing capabilities, intended to assist in editing. NaviPress NaviPress is a combination WYSIWYG HTML editor/Web browser with remote save functionality, an unusual convenience. Version 1.1 supports much of HTML 3.0, and it includes site and link management features. Quarterdeck WebAuthor Yet another commercial Word for Windows HTML editing template is available from Quarterdeck (URL is ) and is rumored to be superior to Internet Assistant. HTML Assistant A non-WYSIWYG editor called HTML Assistant is available, with features to assist in the rapid creation of HTML documents. A good choice for experienced HTML authors wishing to save keyboarding time. Available 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. See also: HTMLed HTMLed is a well-reviewed non-WYSIWYG HTML editor. The Pro version features context-sensitive highlighting of HTML tags, a near-WYSIWYG feature. The Pro version can also directly import RTF documents for easy conversion of existing documents. Live Markup ( ) is a WYSIWYG HTML editor for Windows which insulates the user completely from HTML. Excel 5.0 to HTML Table Creator Most HTML editing facilities leave out table-editing capabilities. Fill that gap with Jordan Evans' Excel 5.0 to HTML Table Converter (URL is ). WEB Wizard For beginners in search of a quick and easy way to build a home page, consider WEB Wizard (URL is ), a simple package which prepares a home page after a question-and-answer session with the user. 16-bit and 32-bit Windows versions are available. HTML Writer A simple, useful non-WYSIWYG HTML editor that cooperates closely with most web browsers is HTML Writer, . "Donationware." SoftQuad HoTMetaL SoftQuad's HoTMetaL is a WYSIWYG HTML editor designed from the ground up to edit HTML. Unlike HTML modes for existing word processors, every aspect of HoTMetaL reflects this purpose. Visual HTML++ Ellussion offers a basic, very easy-to-use WYSIWYG HTML creation tool. Visual HTML++ can create attractive, simple HTML documents but cannot edit existing HTML pages. Shareware. WebEdit WebEdit is a non-WYSIWYG editor (it does include a WYSIWYG editor for HTML 3.0 tables). Spell-checking is standard, and support is claimed for all HTML 3.0 features. See: Emissary Wollongong's Emissary is a complete Internet software suite which includes WYSIWYG HTML editing features (see ). html-helper-mode for EMACS Users of the EMACS editor will want to consider html-helper-mode, an EMACS "mode" for HTML editing (see ). HTML Editors for Unix (non-graphical) html-helper-mode for EMACS Users of the EMACS editor will want to consider html-helper-mode, an EMACS "mode" for HTML editing (see ). HTML Editors for the X Window System NaviPress NaviPress is a combination WYSIWYG HTML editor/Web browser with remote save functionality, an unusual convenience. Version 1.1 supports much of HTML 3.0, and it includes site and link management features. TkWWW (URL is ) supports WYSIWYG HTML editing; and since it's also a browser, you can try out links immediately after creating them. Phoenix 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. ASHE A WYSIWYG HTML editor which takes advantage of the NCSA Mosaic HTML "widget" (URL is ). htmltext htmltext supports WYSIWYG HTML editing. More information is available at the URL . html-helper-mode for EMACS Users of the EMACS editor will want to consider html-helper-mode, an EMACS "mode" for HTML editing (see ). WebAuthor A fully WYSIWYG commercial HTML editing product from Silicon Graphics (URL is ). SoftQuad HoTMetaL SoftQuad's HoTMetaL is a WYSIWYG HTML editor designed from the ground up to edit HTML. Unlike HTML modes for existing word processors, every aspect of HoTMetaL reflects this purpose. Miscellaneous editors html-helper-mode for EMACS Users of the EMACS editor will want to consider html-helper-mode, an EMACS "mode" for HTML editing (see ). HTML DTD Another option, if you have an SGML editor, is to use it with the HTML DTD (URL is ). NCSA's L