9.2 ALRIGHT, ALREADY, LET'S GO!


We're almost there. But first a word about graphics.  If you've heard of 
the Web, chances are good you've also heard of Mosaic.  Mosaic, developed 
at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University 
of Illinois, brought a graphical, point-and-click interface to the Web, 
and in less than a year became almost synonymous with it. 

There are a couple of problems with Mosaic (and related programs), 
however.  One is that you need a machine capable of providing a graphical 
user interface, such as those running Unix, Windows or the Macintosh 
operating system.  MS-DOS users are out of luck.  So are the blind.  
Also, Mosaic requires a fairly large chunk of computing and network 
capabilities to work well, so forget about using it on your old 2400-bps 
modem).  

If you do have these capabilities, we'll talk about how to set up Mosaic 
and similar programs in a bit.  But for now, let's look at Lynx, a text-
based program that gives universal access to the Web -- via a simple 
dial-up connection in most cases.  It doesn't give you the pretty 
pictures (although you'll be able to download many of them) and it 
doesn't work with a mouse.  But it's simple enough to use -- and one 
could argue that if you're using the Web just to find information, you 
might not want pictures, anyway, because they can take so long to get to 
your computer and display. 

Lynx, the creation of Michael Grobe, Lou Montulli and Charles Rezac of 
the University of Kansas, will remind you of gophers in many ways.  As 
with gopher, probably the best way to learn how to use Lynx is just to  
dive right in. At your host system's command prompt, type 

     lynx

and hit enter (Free-Net users: go into the "Teleport" area and look for 
the "Communications Tower").  If you're lucky, your system administrator 
has already installed Lynx and you'll see something like this: 
                          
                                                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE WEB [IMAGE]

   There is no "top" to the World-Wide Web. You can look at it from many
   points of view. Here are some places to start.

   [IMAGE] by Subject
          The Virtual Library organises information by subject matter.

   List of servers
          All registered HTTP servers by country

   by Service Type
          The Web includes data accessible by many other protocols. The
          lists by access protocol may help if you know what kind of
          service you are looking for.

   If you find a useful starting point for you personally, you can
   configure your WWW browser to start there by default.

-- press space for more, use arrow keys to move, '?' for help, 'q' to quit
  Arrow keys: Up and Down to move. Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
 H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


If nothing happens, consider asking your system administrator to get Lynx 
(tell him it's available via anonymous ftp at ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in the 
pub/lynx directory).  Until he does, you can try out Lynx by using telnet 
to connect to this address: 

     sunsite.unc.edu

When you connect, log on as: lynx

This is a popular site, so it can be slooow at times. Alternately, you 
could use telnet to connect to 

     ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

with a log on of: www

However, this site (the home of Lynx's creators) will not let you use all 
of Lynx's features.

As you can see from the above, the Web has no real menus, at least not in 
the sense that gopher does.  Instead, the system is composed of documents 
or "pages"  (the "title of contents" or opening page on a Web site is 
known as its "home page"). If you are using VT100 or similar emulation and 
a color monitor, the above screen would have certain words in a different 
color than the others.  These words are the hyperlinks.  By moving your 
cursor to one and then hitting enter, you'll move to a new page -- which 
could be located on a completely different computer somewhere else in the 
world.  

The above main page, which comes from the CERN, the European High-Energy 
Physics Research Center (where Tim Berners-Lee developed the Web) has 
three main hyperlinks: 

     [IMAGE] by Subject
     List of servers
     by Service Type
      
The first one contains a list of various Web resources around the world, 
categorized by subject.  The second one lists them by continent, country 
and then city.  The final one lets you browse among non-Web services, 
such as our friend gopher and Wide-Area Information Servers (in fact, 
you could live your entire Internet life within the Web; not only does it 
let you connect to gophers, ftp sites and the like, but with some Web 
software, you can even read and reply to Usenet messages as well). To 
call up any of them, you move your cursor to it (with the down or up 
arrows) and hit enter.

Play with the Web! Move your cursor around, hit enter, and see where you 
pop up.  The key navigational keys are your arrow keys.  
The up and down arrow keys let you hop among highlighted links. The right 
arrow key is the same as enter -- it sends you to the highlighted service.  
The left arrow key is analogous to 'u' in gopher -- it takes you back to 
the previous document.  This arrangement can take a little getting used 
to.  If there are two hyperlinks listed on one line, you would use your 
down or up arrow to move between them -- NOT your right or left ones! 

There are additional navigational commands that will come in handy in a 
hypertext system (without them, it would be easy to get lost rather 
quickly).  A key one is your backspace or delete key.  Hitting that will 
bring up a list of links you've made in the current session; you can then 
choose one if you want to get back somewhere.  Hitting m will bring you 
back to your "main page," that is, the first page you saw when you 
started up Lynx.