Guide 7: WWW

Guide 7: Accessing the World Wide Web

As Netscape is newly available as part of the Windows suite of programmes,
I should let you know a little about using it to access the World Wide Web
which you may well be familiar with, if only the concept.  Essentially the
WWW consists of a constantly increasing and already huge number of
individual Homepages, which in turn are linked to other pages and so on,
forming a virtual web of interconnected sites and information.  Unlike
Gopher, the WWW supports graphics and sound, and Netscape is able to
display graphics and sounds incorporated into a page, providing a suitable
player is available and the machine you're using is capable. 


A page will generally indicate the presence of a link in the text; the
actual place you need to aim the pointer at to click on is the part of the
text which is coloured differently from the rest.  Pictures may also be
links to other pages.  When you select a link the program will look for
the page given as the link's destination and once it has downloaded it you
will be able to view it.  In some cases you will have to prepare yourself
for an extremely long wait, especially for access to popular pages. 
Graphically intensive pages from abroad will generally be the worst in
terms of loading time.  The small bar at the bottom right of the Netscape
window indicates its progress in receiving the document.  The icons at the
top of the screen are self explanatory. 


By default Netscape will load the Durham University Homepage.  This is a
good place to get used to using the Web and contains links to society
homepages, departmental homepages and many others.  Note the information
displayed in the location (URL) window: 

  http://www.dur.ac.uk/

This is the address of the University's homepage in WWW terms; all Durham
based pages have this as their starting point.  You are allowed to create
your own WWW pages, although personal pages cannot be linked from the
University's homepage.  Details are given in the University homepage about
how to do this; not necessarily for beginners.  My own homepage has the
URL: 

  http://www.dur.ac.uk/~d41ykx/

You should find it user friendly and fast even when using Netscape on an
older PC; you could try accessing it by clicking in the URL window and
altering the details there from the default setting.  URLs, like
mailnames, must be exact or the programme will not be able to find the
right page.  I do have some reference materials for URLs; if there's a
particular subject you'd like to see a site on I may be able to help.  My
E-Mail address is given later and is at the bottom of all my homepage
pages, which also contain a link for beginners to introduce themselves to
the WWW (Don't Panic).  You can also carry out electronic searches for
sites with keywords in their title, similarly to using Veronica on Gopher. 
These searchers are available from the University homepage and my homepage. 



Netscape on the Novell system is not your only and best option for
accessing the WWW in Durham.  I've already mentioned lynx; while it is not
capable of displaying graphics, it is faster as a result.  If you want to
view WWW pages in style you need to find one of the large screen
workstations scattered around; these are more powerful than the LAN PCs. 
When you've found one, log in as for Unix.  Then type in xwin.  This will
create a windows style environment.  Typing in netscape at the prompt will
give you Netscape as before, but with a better quality and larger viewing
capability.  To exit, close both windows (just exit as you would from Unix
having closed the Netscape window) and then holding down the right mouse
button select quit from the blue menu that appears.  Click on OK, wait
until the previous prompt appears and then type in exit again.  You must
do this, otherwise you will still be logged onto the machine.  Note that
the window initially opened by the xwin command is virtually the
equivalent of a normal Unix prompt, so pine, rtin and so on are all
available on a workstation.  One slightly more primitive graphical browser
is also available on workstations; this is Mosaic, and can be found on the
list of items which pops up when the left mouse button is held down.  One
final item of note is that you can open more than one Unix style window on
workstations by using the New Window or Xterm options from the mouse
menus.  You can therefore have pine, rtin and Netsape all running at the
same time with little speed loss if you wish.  This is useful when waiting
for slow pages to load. 

Note that to use mail and newsgroups on the Novell version of Netscape, 
you will need to give certain preferences.  The relevant host names are 
venus.dur.ac.uk for mail and nntphost.dur.ac.uk for news.

If you have any queries about any of the above, help contacts can be found
in the last of these guides. 

Written by Andy Thomas, A.G.Thomas@durham.ac.uk