Grex Internet Conference

Item 5: NCSA Mosaic - the ultimate Internet Surfboard

NCSA Mosaic is a client program for WWW (World-Wide_Web).

I would love to have anyone who has experienced this to add to what
I know about it. My understanding is that WWW brings together all
of the internet protocols into a meta-protocol. If this is true,
a client program for it would be capable of replacing client
programs for all of the other protocols.

I do not know for certain which client platforms Mosaic has been
ported to, but I certainly do know that there is a Mac version. It
can be found (as I recall) in /afs/umich.edu/group/itd/mac/util/comm
or by ftp from mac.archive@umich.edu in util/comm

It requires MacTCP, of course, and if your Mac is not on the
internet, you must gain access via a LAP/mdev like PPP.
Anonymous PPP will not cut it for using this program, so I am out of
luck and have never used it and cannot tell you how cool it is.

I have posted this partially because rcurl prompted me to do so, and
partially in hopes that someone (perhaps even rcurl) will get a
copy and go surfing with it. If anyone does this, or has used it,
please post any comments they have.

By the way, we will not see a Mosaic program here on Grex, because
you need a full graphic interface. (Maybe one day when we all dial
into a PowerPC 620 - based Grex via ISDN lines and all use X servers.) 

I found Mosaic in ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu   along with all the associated
viewers. 

Yesterday I downloaded an example "movie" and "sound", and also
easyplayer, via the U AppleShare backbone, by means of ARNS (AppleTalk
Remote Network Server). The folder was 1.3 MB and took 80 minutes to
download (FTP runs at ca. 1.2KBps for me, normally). The "movie" ran
for about 45 seconds, as did the music. And the "movie" was really a
"slide show" (of art from the 1920s), which didn't look so hot on my
B&W powerbook. I may not have the technology needed to take advantage
of Mosaic.

I guess I was assuming you had a color Mac with high-speed internet
connection in your office. Sorry.

I do, but what I'm supposed to be doing in my office is something else
;-). Well, anyway...I've run Mosaic, and can see that I'll have to
devote a dayay (or more...) to it. I'll also have to get all the "viewers"
(GIF, TIFF, MPeg, AUSound, etc) to have everything work. Mosaic connects
automatically to the mosaic server (somewhere...), and presents narrative
menus pointing you to many options ala libraries, exhibits, etc. You
can choose main sources, or just click on underlined phrases, and mosaic
then *downloads* the material relative to your selection - from servers
someplace around the world - and presents it to you. The new material
has new general and "underlined" options - and so it goes. The available
material does not appear to be highly technical, but the sort of things
you would find on exhibit in libraries, museums, etc - general education.
I can see many possible applications for general education.

drool

(srw slinks away convinced he has contributed to the delinquency of
 a chem-E prof.)

I suppose I should tell someone when I enter mosaic, so they'll know
where to come look for me. Well, I have the viewers now, so soon.....

Rane, how are you connected to the internet?  Through Grex or through
the University?  I was under the impression that Mosaic requires a
direct connection.  I'm guessing that Mosaic is not accessible through
Grex--do you know if that's right?

I know that you're right carl. rcurl has a Mac that's on the internet.
That's partly why I drooled on my keyboard while reading his response.

I have MichNet access by virtue of being a UM employee. My powerbook
becomes a host on the Internet by virtue of dialing in with MacPPP. I
even get assigned an IP number when I sign on -though its different
each time. 

Anyone can do the MacPPP trick, but only to access MichNet hosts.
I do this too, but my Mac won't run Mosaic, as it needs to go beyond the
MichNet perimeter. Since I am not a UM employee, they want $35/month
for the service, and that's too steep for me.

I was playing on mosaic, and encountered a limit on what I can do: my
PB has "only" 4MB RAM, and System take 2MB, and Mosaic 2MB, so no
viewers will open. I suppose I could load only MacTCP, MacPPP and prefs,
and recover a little from INITS - but it looks like one needs a machine
with 8MB RAM for really surfing mosaic.

  (or you could use virtual memory)

Thank you. I had completely forgotten about virtual memory, since I have
not had any need for it previously (even though I had seen mention of
it in the manual - it said it slowed things down, so of course I didn't
want *that*.) I guess the time has come.

VM on a PB drains the battery, too, 'cause the disk runs all the time.
It's still a good way around your limit if you are using AC while surfing,
and I don't know see how it could be otherwise. You aren't surfing
by cellular phone, I presume.

Interesting. The manual says in one place to use VM only when the power
adapter is plugged in, and in another place that VM reduces battery life,
and in neither place why. But I don't see the connection with using a
cellular phone for surfing - a cordless phone, maybe ;->.

With a cordless, you'd still be around your own place and could probably
keep your PB plugged in, so VM would still be OK.
With a cellular phone, batteries would seem essential.
What do I know? I don't even own a portable computer!

I am back (temporarily) from another trip into the m o s a i c .. ..
Virtual memory broke the jam. It is difficult to know where to even
browse. Randomly, I guess. I spent a little while wondering around the
natural history museum at UC Berkeley. The images are pointilistic -
fair, but not scientific, representations. However including the images
makes things really slow, over just 14.4KBps and MacPPP, so I turned off
the image downloads, and went looking for interesting text. There is
a large section of university gophers to choose among, but when I tried
to open one, it said it could not open Telnet - good heavens, Telnet too
over Mosaic. My Telent is Versaterm, so its no wonder it couldn't open
it. Looks like another download - of NCSA Telnet. Is there a Mosaic
Guru here, to provide hyperguidance, for us as yet enlightened mosaics?

I think you're showing *us* the way on Mosaic, Rane.
I use NCSA Telnet daily at work, so if you need help there I can help.
I have also used it with MacPPP from home too, on occasion.

I downloaded NCSA Telnet 2.5.1B, but haven't read all the little docs
that came with it (600K worth). I use it at the office, but haven't
learned its configuration stuff. What are the minimum set of instructions
for a) configuring for MacPPP, and b) creating a sessions file? (I learned
that one can use other Telnet tools in Mosaic, from one of the menus,
but haven't looked at that yet).
,

I haven't gotten back into the Mosaic yet (though I hunger for it....),
but thought I'd report on one or two things. Virtual Memory  is great,
and it does *not* cause the HD to run continuously, at least when one
isn't occupying any. I opened RAM (fixed+vitual) to 8 MB. This has also
cured a problem I had of a game quitting with an error when I tried to
restart it. Also, with the help of Steve and others, I installed NCSA
Telnet, and look forward to exploring the world-wide-gophers again.

Its been a while. But the time was ripe, so I got on my board and took
off down the Mosaic trails. I started out with no particular objective
in mind, but found a page listing hypertext maps, but Michigan wasn't
among them, so I settled for New York. The full-page map showed the
location of all SUNY sites, so I found Oneonta, where I know someone,
and looked around there. I noticed a lead to IRS tax forms, so browsed
that, and settled on a 2688 (extension of time to file), which we need.
It was only 2 pages, but 89Kbs, and arrived in *PDF format*, whatever
that is. There was a little apology in the list header, about the less
than friendly format. Does anyone here know how to decode this into the
form? Here are the first few lines of the file, opened in WORD 5.1a:

%PDF-1.0 
19 0 obj
/Length 20 0 R
/Filter [ /ASCII85Decode /LZWDecode  ]

There was some code that was untranslatable to ASCII, which did not
come through there, and some translations, but it gives the general idea.

i was wondering if the grex dialins support ppp or slip?
THen we could run mosaic on our home machines.

No, they are just serial modems. However anyone at the U can get an
account to MichNet - and there are other local SLIP or PPP providers,
though that starts to cost money. 

Grex cannot supply packet services because of contractual requirements.
Msen offers it for $20/month + $2/hour
Michnet charges $35/month + $0/hour 
There are others, too.

Steve, so I can understand this better, what would Grex have to get
to offer PPP internet access?

An Internet connection from a different service provider, with
a contract which allowed us to provide direct IP connections.  This
would likely be much more expensive than our current connection.

Would we need anything different at the user side - like a high-speed
modem with compression and error correction? 

You'd need software that can communicate via PPP, of course (or a
packet driver that does).  I've used PPP (KA9Q) with my 2400 baud
non-compression, non-error correction modem, and it works fine.

But like molasses in winter? ;-). I use the 19.2Kbps serial Michnet
number in preference to the 57.6Kbps NAS, for telnet, because the
PPP link is the slower. I would think it would really crawl at 2400.

Sure it's slow, but you were asking if compression/error correction
were required.  They only are in the sense of getting a faster
connection.  For PPP, though, they are required, just nice to have.
Basically, with a 2400 baud PPP connection you can only have one,
maybe two max sessions going at once.

Oops, that should be "they aren't required" in the 3rd line of :29

And Mosaic is supposed to be the cyberspace sensation? If anyone has
been doing any surfing, how about some travelogues?

NCSAMosaic 2.00a8.68k has arrived. I suppose it does some new neat
things on a machine that can show them, but on this PB 145, it looks 
and acts much the same as 1.03. 

You probably saw the news splash about  www.whitehouse.gov. Its
true - you can tour the White House, hear welcomes from Clinton and
Gore, and get access to a plethora of documentation from all the
federal agencies (the latter in a gopher modality). 

However, the "First Family" documentation has been much
abbreviated. They were probably accused of taking political
advantage, or at least "exposure". And, Socks' statement to the
nation is gone too.

In truth, I find I use Mosaic mostly to impress friends that haven't
seen it. I can go "hunting" on the net more easily with TurboGopher,
but also I haven't found Web sites that I need to return to
frequently.

I'd sure like to know where you've been on the Web, what you've found,
and what you recommend for either fun or edification.

For those of you who who have been wondering about this Ann Arbor place
where Grex is, you can get a photo tour of Ann Arbor on
http://http2.sils.umich.edu/AnnArbor/AnnArbor.html

How does one use an address like the one in item #32 above from Grex?
I've noticed that http:// is a common beginning for addresses, but
are they addresses that can only be accessed with certain software?
(From an as-yet hopelessly ignorant Grexer)

Use those "http://" addresses in lynx (they're hypertext addresses).
You can also use "xxx://" address in lynx, but it's possible to
pull telnet, gopher, ftp, etc. informatioon from them for use with
the specific program xxx.

Due to limited bandwidth, although you could get the text at that address
from Grex, you would not be able to get the pictures.  A much better bet
would be to find a computer somewhere with an Internet connection and
Mosaic, and look at the pictures with that.

LeAnn, that kind of address is called a URL, which stands for
"Uniform Resource Locator". The part before the colon, which is often 
"http", is the protocol type. Http is hypertext transfer protocol.
Other protocols that can appear are 
ftp: (anonymous ftp), telnet:, gopher:, and
probably many many others. These are the hypertext pointers that the
World Wide Web uses. Behind every selectable link on a page of hypertext
is a hidden one of these URL's. Selecting the link delivers what the
URL points to.

The general form is...  protocol://host.domain/full/path/of/file.ext
Where the extension of the file name tells the browser what kind of
file it is, and thus how to format it.

A URL allows you to specify any document of nearly any type accessible
by a wide range of protocols, on any internet-connected computer
in the world. It's a nice little addressing scheme.

If you are a member and run lynx on Grex. You may type g (for goto)
and then enter the arbitrary URL, and lynx will fetch the contents,
then format and display it for you. If the URL points to something lynx
can't show (like sound, a graphic, a movie, or the like), then it will
ask if you want to download it to your PC, Mac, or workstation.

You can get pictures this way, but as scg says, Grex's bandwidth to the
net is slow, and life may be too short.

LeAnn, find someone with a IP/TCP link to MichNet (which requires
an authorization), and have a look at Mosaic itself in action. Lynx
pales (but is lots faster!).

Alpha 17 of NCSA Mosaic 2.00 has appeared. I thought it was more
polished than Alpha 8 (some irrelevant progress boxes were gone),
but it bombed on initiation on my Powerbook when it tried to
do something with "font widths". The font it didn't like was
DJ CG Times, one of a bunch of MacPrint 1.03 fonts for driving a
DeskJet 500 (PC-type), with a Mac. Probably encountered a control
sequence that wasn't "proper Mac". I've informed NCSA - which wasn't
easy as the README for Alpha 17 had an invalid e-mail address!
  
Has anyone here used HTML.edit? I need to be told how to get over the
get-my-feet-wet hurdle, to write HTML with it (not having written any
HTML without it - though I have looked at .html files).

I really don't see the point in an HTML compiler.  It's such an easy
language to learn that anything short of writing in HTML sounds to me like
cheating.  I found the best way to learn it was to look at other peoples'
homepages and see how they had done things I liked.  It only took an hour
or two to learn, and was well worth the time.

Yes.  Run lynx, find a neato page, select "o" to install your favorite
editor, return to the page, check your short one page cheat sheet on html
commands, select "e" to load the page into your editor, and start hacking.
 You can save the output in your own directory and run it with "lynx
filename" anytime, and have it for an after dinner hack.  yum yum.

Yup.

An enhancement to that suggestion. "e" only works when you're browsing
a file on the local machine. If you're going out on the net via http
you need to use lynx's \ command. \ rereads and displays the html
unformatted. So you can scan the html at CERN or NCSA or wherever.

I'm assuming there's 

Usually...  :)

Hello, I'm going to tell you something that may knock your socks
off. Netscape Navigator 1.oN is available from ftp.mcom.com.
It is much better than mosaic, because it doesn't have those nasty
bugs, and because it was designed to work  over a modem connection.
I use it over ppp at msu, and I can view the graphics and everything.
mosaic 1.0.3 never did this for me. (note: I have a 14.4 kbps modem
with data compression. I connect at 19.2 kbps) This thing makes
mosaic look almost as bad as mosaic made lynx look. ( I waven't seen
mosaic 2.0.x alpha y yet) Netscape is made by the original programmers
of mosaic.

My socks are still on, since Mosaic 1.0.3 gives me graphics, music,
and all...but I'd be glad for a smoother and faster interface (given
the limitations of ppp). Also, Mosaic 2.0xalphay bombs on some font.
So (sigh) thanks for the info!

Netscape is highly recommended.

I've been using NetScape 0.96 exclusively for the past two weeks.  It's
faster, more responsive and "peppier".  I haven't tried 1.0N, yet, though...

I just tried it (1.0N) and like the interface. Should we have a new
item for Netscape? My only immediate question is - I used a couple
of hotlist to .html converters to convert my Mosaic hotlist to Netscape
bookmarks, but they did not work - and Netscape says you may have
to do a HTML "tweak" - anyone know what needs doing?

I just copied the names of the sites from the hotlist to the bookmarks.  But,
then again, I only had a list of about 6 sites.  I suppose if you had
hundreds, this would be a problem.

That's what I thought I was doing - after converting to a .html file.
Do you mean I don't even have to convert the file?

After finally getting PPP set up on my home PC 3 days ago, I've been
doing some internet surfing.  Tried both Mosaic and Netscape, and agree
with the remark above that Netscape is superior.  It's really a slick
program.  It does some very intelligent caching and incremental display
updating that make it much more pleasant to use at modem speeds.  You
don't have to wait for a whole document to arrive before you start
scrolling through it and following links.  Images are displayed, and
updated incrementally, *after* the text has been put up on the screen.

Netscape is shareware but is free for educational professionals, another
attraction for me.

Also found a nice shareware package that does telnet/ftp/nntp/mail --
netqvt16.  I'm Grexing at this moment using their telnet client, which
has excellent vt220 emulation.

RE: #51.  What I did was have both programs open at the same time and copied
between them.  I didn't mess around with the bookmarks *file*.

Good idea - since I've upgraded to 8M...;-).

        I see that I'm in the minority here, but I prefer Mosaic. 
Netscape has some nice features, like letting the pages be used while the
images are loading, but I don't like it nearly as much once things have
loaded.  For one thing, I've noticed that in Netscape, the images aren't
nearly as sharp as they are in Mosaic, making them not look as good.  I
also really like how Mosaic spawns an external viewer for images that are
by themselves rather than in Web pages, meaning that I can play around
with the image a lot more than I could in netscape, and can easily keep
the image on the screen even after going on to other Web pages. 
        That is not to say that Netscape doesn't have its good points. 
For one thing, it supports more text formatting than Mosaic does.  The way
it loads documents is nice too.  I also really like Netscape's news
reader, and its ability to handle mailto: URLs.  When I get a modem fast
enough to handle it, I expect to be using the X Windows versions of both
Mosaic and Netscape.

I use both Mosaic and Netscrape, and both like and hate each of them for
various reasons.  Both have simple, dumb bugs that the programmers and
designers should have known better than to engage in.

Incidentally, a couple of mornings ago I saw an on-location interview
with VP Al Gore on The Today Show.  He was showing folks how to
web-surf using Netscape on a MAC, and plugging www.whitehouse.gov.

I got PPP running on my linux partition the other day and acquired the
linux/X version of Netscape.  Minor differences with the Windows
version, but basically pretty much the same.

I was able to set up my Netscape/X bookmark file initially by simply
copying my Netscape/Windows bookmark file to it -- linux can see my dos
partition, and the bookmark file formats are identical.  So I thought
I'd be clever and keep the two in sync by making my linux bookmark file
a symbolic link to my Windows bookmark file.  Alas, it didn't work --
Netscape/X let me add bookmarks without complaint, but didn't retain
them between sessions, and the new bookmarks never found their way to
the Netscape/Windows bookmark file.  If Netscape wasn't going to save
my bookmarks, the least it could have done was give me an error
message.

Hm, I just thought of something I may have overlooked.  Think I'll give
the link trick another try.

Does anybody know where to find the Linux version of xmosaic (I prefer
that over Netscape).  I looked around on ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu and found
versions for some other versions of Unix, but not Linux.  I'm also looking
on sunsite.unc.edu, but I haven't found it yet.

I recently looked too.  Even sunsite doesn't appear to have it.  Odd --
considering linux's popularity, I'd have thought NCSA would have built a
linux version.  Source code is available; you may need to get that and
compile it.

The problem with keeping my Netscape/X bookmark file on the DOS
partition turned out to be file permissions -- everything on the DOS
partition is owned by root and writeable only by root.  There probably
isn't a way to change that, due to inherent limitations of DOS, which
doesn't understand things like different ownerships and Unix's 3-tier
permissions scheme.  I suppose I could run Netscape/X suid root...

I just downloaded and fired up the new Mosaic 2.0 beta for Windows.
Quick impressions -- it looks considerably slicker and seems faster
than previous versions.  They've taken a cue from Netscape and
display the text of a document while still downloading the images.

There's an X Window version compiled for linux, but I couldn't get
it to run.  It complained about a missing library.

        That sounds like they've fixed the major drawback to the older
versions of Mosaic.  I'll have to take a look at it, if it can be gotten
to run under Linux. 
        I just got Netscape 1.1b1 for Linux, and had trouble getting that
to run.  It loaded my homepage fine, but just sat there when I tried
loading other things.  Since Netscape 1.0N works fine, I didn't try very
hard to figure out what was wrong with 1.1b1, although I have a few ideas
for what to try if I ever feel like it.

Hmm, it runs okay for me under Linux.  How much memory do you have?

join classified

OOPS!.....
I'd sure like to see a working configuration of Netscape with Windows/WinSocks
that worked with PPP on Merit.  I've used a SLIP version to ICNet, but Merit
has apparently dropped SLIP support and I've been unsuccessful sorting out
the configuration for PPP.

(PPP under Windows works for me, using Trumpet Winsock for the TCP transport
layer.  The files login.cmd and bye.cmd, in /home/remmers, are my auto-login
and logout scripts for it.  Mail me if you have any questions.)

I've got 16 megs of RAM, plus another 20 of swap, so I don't think it was
that.  It would load up fine, and everything, but then it would just sit
there saying contacting whatever host I was trying to get an html page
from until I interupted it.  Sometimes I gave it several minutes.  All the
pages it was having trouble getting came up fine on Netscape 1.0N.

What's the deal with some Web sites NNEDING netscape to view them.
Like blackhole for instance. You can't even get into it with Mosaic.
What's the differnace in the two that would call for that?

Oh ,I ofrgott  osay...Woha,

Forget that last entry. My backspace key isn't wroking right.
Anyway, what I was goping to say is...If you don't have ppp
you can still access the web with a browser that allows inline graphics
and form, map functions. It's called slipknot.zip and works similar
to the offline newsreader for mac. Slipknot is only available to pc's right now
but should be available to macs soon. What is does is, you go into
lynx, go to your favorite URL and then turn on this slipknot
program. Viola, you have web browsing capabilities. The oprogram
itself is very similar to mosaic. Worth chacking out for you non-ppp
people.

The reason for having sites that only can be browsed with Netscape is that
Netscape has a lot of features that Mosaic doesn't, meaning Netscape can
let you look at things that you couldn't look at with Mosaic.  Due to the
differing capabilities of the different browsers, there's a real tradeoff
when writing html documents.  You can make it look really neat, but it
won't be usable in some web browsers, or you can make it work with
everything, but it may not look quite as good.  It's generally possible to
get around that with the alt= flag that tells browsers to do something
else if they don't understand the main instruction they are given.  This
doesn't cover every case, though, so it's sometimes necessary to do two
versions of a page; one that will work with everything, and one that will
only work with full featured browsers.  My preference when writing html is
to make sure it will function with everything adequately, and then add
other things that wil make it look better in some web browsers, but which
won't detract from the functionality of the page when seen through
something simple like Lynx.

I've seen one book recommend using the alt= with a <pre> to insert ascii
art as substitute graphics.  I assume if a page works with Lynx it will be
safely readable through most any browser?  Any ideas on good Mac html
editors?  I realize the advantage of writing html by hand, but I may
eventually be working with a large number of files and would like to build,
test, and see pages/links offline.  An editor that will function as a
browser *I think* is what would do that trick, probably minus zpeg and
other fancy file types.  Or is there a way to run a full function browser
offline?

        I haven't actually tried it, but running a browser off line should
work.  If nothing else, you could make all your links that you wanted to
test point at localhost, but there's probably a better way of doing that. 
        I know nothing about html editors, since I have never felt the need
to use one.  I do like to be able to see what I'm doing, but my method of
choice for that is to have a normal editor and Netscape open.  Whenever I
want to see what I've done, I just save and hit Netscape's reload button.

Hmmm, I don't understand all the html stuff, I'm currently learning it right
now so I can make an homepage. Do eithor of you have any literature that would
help me out. An html manual perhaps?

NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML is at
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html.

Excellent reading, peacefrog, and on-line.

Thanks guys

Can anyone tell me how to obtain - Copy - the web address in the
bookmark menu of netscape, when it exceeds the little window width?
I finally read it from the preferences file with an editor. 

Click on Bookmarks, View_Bookmarks, select desired entry, press EDIT, select
Location and while continuing to depress left mouse button move past the right
edge of the window.  The entry will scroll to reveal the remaining characters.

Where is "EDIT"? There is no EDIT button in the dialogue, nor in the
menus. (I am using Mac Netscape 1.0. - there isn't a "left" mouse button
either - just the only one left (?)). 

I am using a windows based PC (for which the above applies)  Sounds like you
have the "fruity" one.

I guess I should also point out that I'm using Netscape version 1.0 N beta.

Rane, can't you click on the URL bar and drag over until it starts scrolling
the rest of the address?

No, it does not scroll. I tried various things to bring the url up in the
GO dialogue, where more than one line is allowed, but NO go. The address
in use also does not stay in the bottom ribbon, although it is shown when
you point. Maybe they'll fix this in the next version (I'm using 1.0N).

I upgraded to Netscape 1.1N, and the URL window scrolls. Now, Netscape
1.1N has its own Item (88), so I'll move there. I've dumped Mosaic.

(The validity of this item's title has fallen victim to the
rapid progress of technology...)

heh

It sure has - I'm running Netscape 3.0 on 2 machines and 2.02 on a third. 
Is it about time to retire/delete/zap this item?

Nah.  It's interesting historical reading material, if nothing else.  Reading
from the beginning was interesting.

Then perhaps we need an archive for "obsolete technologies"?

This item is less than three years old. The internet is a great
delivery medium for obsolescence.

NCSA Mosaic is up to v2.7 for Unix, and the authors/programmers are
planning on further improvements.  I still use Mosaic, even the Win3.1
version for some things, mostly for viewing pages with high graphic
content (since, at least as far as I've been able to finagle things under
FreeBSD, Mosaic has excellent color rendition compared to Netscape's so-so
color).  I'd hardly say it's obsolete, but right now it has a few problems
with Netscape-enabled pages (which is to say, HTML plus some things).
The developers have said they'll be adding such HTML extensions in the
next release.  If they come through, I'll use Mosaic more often.

Mosaic is a labor of love, isn't it? They are certainly not joining the battle
of the Titans.

Well, Rane, are the titans writing Unix versions?

I don't know if MSIE has a Unix version in the works, but
Netscape has been releasing Unix versions of its browser all
along. I currently run Netscape 3.01 on my linux box.

I've been told there is a way to "up" the number of colors supported by
Netscape for *nix (as in an X resource setting) however, I've been unable
to find a good way other than -install which makes the screen go crazy
whenever the pointer isn't on Netscape's window (and even with a private
colormap the color isn't as good as Mosaic's for the same page).  It might
just be the way it was compiled (since you can only get binaries).
Have you had a similar experience with Netscape under Linux, remmers?

My experience with Netscape and Mosaic has generally been that the X versions
of Mosaic have worked better than the MS Windows versions, and the MS Windows
versions of Netscape have been much better than the X versions.

That sounds about right.

I haven't run Mosaic on either platform in such a long time that
I don't remember how it compares. I remember having had problems
with Netscape colors under Unix in the past (either problems in
Netscape or problems outside of Netscape or both), but I haven't
had any problems like that at all on my current platform. The
colors seem fine at 16 bit color depth.

These things might be a function of what versions of Netscape and
X Windows you're running, and/or your video hardware. I'm running
Netscape 3.01 under XFree86 3.12, and have a Diamond Stealth 64
video card with 4mb memory.

I'm stuck at depth 8 color, which I'm sure has a lot to do with it,
but it still amazes my how much better Mosaic looks than Netscape.

I don't have access to a system running X these days, since that part of my
UM account no longer works and I wiped out my own X setup, so I can't test
modern versions of the X browsers.  My impression way back towards the
beginning of this item, that Mosaic was wonderful and I didn't understand why
people were liking Netscape was from a time when the computers I could surf
the web from were RS/6000s at the UM with ethernet connections.  At the time,
Mosaic was handling gifs pretty well, and was using xv (even better) as an
external viewer for jpegs.  Netscape, on the other hand, was doing all of its
own image processing and coming out rather dim and blurry.  Yeah, Netscape
was letting people see pages before it finished loading the images, but I had
a fast enough connection that it didn't really matter.  I don't think it had
really occurred to me what it would look like on a 14.4 modem.  With the 2400
bps modem I had at the time, it didn't seem worth trying.

The web was very different back then, both in content and design.  The rampant
commercial sites were rather few and far between.  Graphical stuff was being
for the most part kept to a minimum, there only where it was needed, for the
most part.  In line images were often just little thumbnails, and users could
click on them to load a big version of the picture.

<sigh>At times when I'm waiting for a huge graphical page to load, I often
think modern web page designers could learn something from the peopel who were
doing it a few years ago</sigh>

Netscape has its own 6x6x6 (216 color) palette, which causes a lot of
consternation (and crappy-looking color). It's designed in, I thought.

Hm, I haven't noticed any color problems with recent versions
of Netscape on Win 95 and Linux platforms.

Since for Unix platforms we are stuck grabbing a binary instead of the
usual source code, maybe it's a difference in how the Linux binary
was compiled versus the "generic" BSD binary I'm using.  Dunno.
Under Win 3.1, Netscape looks fine; I don't have a Win95 machine
handy to see what it looks like there.  I guess that's what was bothering
me: why, on the same computer, same monitor, same graphics card, does
Netscape look fine under Windows, but terrible under FreeBSD (while
Mosaic looks fine under both systems).  If Netscape uses its own
colormap, would that limit the quality of its graphics even on systems
with >8 depth graphics?

Netscape looks great on my Win95 system.  Mosaic doesn't.

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