Contents

Top Middle Bottom some more text.
The next line of normal text.

This is a test of forms and the pre element:

        Name:   
        Date of birth 

    Select cone size: singledoubletreble

    Favourite ice cream:

            Vanilla
            Strawberry
            Rocky Road
            Pecan Surprise

 Click here for a double cone: 
 Select cone size: singledoubletreble

Text Area <textarea>
and more  <textarea rows=10 cols=45>
</pre>
<UL>
<LI> <A HREF="#meta-info">Information about this document</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#www-hypertext">What are WWW, hypertext and hypermedia?</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#url">What is a URL?</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#access">How can I access the web?</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#provide">How can I provide information to the web?</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#compare">How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS?</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#out-there">What is on the web?</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#more">I want to know more.</A>
<LI> Credits
</UL>

<H1>A test of different emphasis tags<H1>

<UL>
    <LI> <CITE>cite'ed text</CITE>
    <LI> Some code <CODE>for (i=0; i < 8; ++i)</CODE>
    <LI> An inline quote: <Q>Twas brillig in the slthy tove</Q>
</UL>

<H1><A NAME="meta-info">Information about this document</A></H1>

This is an introduction to the World-Wide Web project, describing the
concepts, software and access methods.  It is aimed at people who know
a little about navigating the Internet, but want to know more about
WWW specifically.<P>

This informational document is posted to news.answers,
comp.infosystems.gopher, comp.infosystems.wais and alt.hypertext on
the 1st and 15th of every month (please allow a day or two for it to
propagate to your site).  The latest version is always available on
the web as http://www.vuw.ac.nz:80/overseas/www-faq.html (see the
section titled "What is a URL?" to understand what this means).
<P>What is WWW and hypertext?
The most recently posted version of this document is kept on the
news.answers archive on rtfm.mit.edu in
/pub/usenet/news.answers/www-faq (the URL for this is
<HP1>ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www-faq</HP1>).  For
information on FTP, send e-mail to <HP1>mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu</HP1>
with <LISTING>  send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources</LISTING> in
the body, instead of asking me.
<P>
<A TYPE=HTTP
HREF="http://www.vuw.ac.nz:80/databases/people/Nathan.Torkington.html">Nathan
Torkington</A> maintains this document.  Feedback about it is to be
sent via e-mail to Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz  <P>

In all cases, regard this document as out of date.  Definitive
information should be on the web, and static versions such as this
should be considered unreliable at best.

<H1><A NAME="www-hypertext">What are WWW, hypertext and hypermedia?</A></H1>

WWW stands for the "World Wide Web".  The WWW project, started and
driven by CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics), seeks
to build a distributed hypermedia system.<P>

Built on the Internet, the approach is simple: 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.<P>

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.<P>

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 -- you clicking on a part
of the text, and you are presented with the text that is pointed to.<P>

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.  <P>

<H1><A NAME="url">What is a URL?</A></H1>

URL stands for "Universal Resource Locator".  It is a draft standard
for specifying an object on the Internet, such as a file or newsgroup.
<P>

URLs look like this:<UL>
<LI> file://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip
<LI> file://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors
<LI> http://www.w3.org:80/default.html
<LI> news:/alt.hypertext/*
<LI> telnet://dra.com
</UL><P>

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).  <P>

<H1><A NAME=access>How can I access the web?</A></H1>

You have two options -- either use a browser that can be telnetted to,
or use a browser on your machine.  <P>

<H2>Browsers accessable by telnet</H2>

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.

<DL><DT>info.cern.ch<DD>No password is required.  This is in
Switzerland, so continental US users might be better off using a
closer browser.
<DT>ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu<DD>
   A full screen browser "Lynx" which requires a vt100 terminal.
   Log in as www.
<DT>eies2.njit.edu<DD>
   (or telnet 128.235.1.43) Log in as www. A full-screen browser
   in New Jersey Institute of Technology. USA.
<DT>vms.huji.ac.il<DD>
   (IP address 128.139.4.3). A dual-language Hebrew/English
   database, with links to the rest of the world. The line mode
   browser, plus extra features. Log in as www. Hebrew
   University of Jerusalem, Israel.
<DT>sun.uakom.cs<DD>
   Slovakia. Has a slow link, only use from nearby.
<DT>info.funet.fi<DD>
   (or telnet 128.214.6.100) Not available when tested in
   O29-Oct-92. (FINLAND)
</DL>

<H2>Obtaining browsers</H2>

The preferred method of access of the Web is to run a browser
yourself.  Browsers are available for many platforms, both in source
and executable forms.  Here is a list generated from the authoritative
list, http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html ...

<DL><DT>Terminal based browsers<DD>
<DL><DT>Line Mode Browser<DD>
   This program gives W3 readership to anyone with a dumb
   terminal. A general purpose information retrieval tool.
<DT>"Lynx" full screen browser<DD>
   This is a hypertext browser for vt100s using full screen,
   arrow keys, highlighting, etc.
<DT>NJIT's Browser<DD>
   Assumes a character-grid terminal with cursor addressing,
   and provides a full-screen interface to the web.
<DT>Tom Fine's perlWWW<DD>
   A tty-bbased browser written in perl.
</DL>

<DT>Graphic User Interfaces<DD>
<DL>
<DT>XMosaic<DD>
   Browser using X11/Motif. Beta, but works well.
<DT>Macintosh Browser<DD>
   Browser for the Macintosh. (Alpha.)
<DT>"Cello" PC/Windows client<DD>
   Browser for windows. (Not yet released)
<DT>"Erwise"<DD>
   Browser for X/Motif. (Unsupported).
<DT>"ViolaWWW" Browser for X11<DD>
   Browser for X11. (Beta, unsupported)
<DT>tkWWW Browser<DD>
   Browser for X11. (Beta)
<DT>MidasWWW Browser<DD>
   WWW browser for X/Motif. (Beta, works well.)
<DT>Browser-Editor on the NeXT<DD>
   A browser/editor for NeXTStep. Allows wysiwyg hypertext
   editing. Requires NeXTStep 3.0
</DL>

<DT>Unreleased<DD>
<DL>
<DT>Browser on CERNVM<DD>
A full-screen browser for VM. Nonexistant. Use the line
   mode www.
<DT>Dave Ragget's Browser<DD>
   Unreleased. For X11, (later PC?)
</DL>
</DL>

<H1><A NAME=provide>How can I provide information to the web</A></H1>

Information providers run programs that the browsers can obtain
hypertext from.  These programs can either be fully-fledged servers
(best if you are creating your information database from scratch), or
can be "gateway" programs that convert an existing information format
to hypertext.  <P>

CERN's server is available for anonymous FTP from:
<UL>
<LI>info.cern.ch
<LI>ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu
</UL>

and many other places.  Use archie to search for "www" or "WWW" to
find copies close to you.  <P>

See http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Overview.html for more
information on writing gateways and for servers in general.  <P>

<H1><A NAME="compare">How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS?</A></H1>

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
hypertext document which may be searchable.<P>

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.<P>

The principal difference between the three systems, it turns out, is
deployment.  WWW does not have as large a user base as gopher, mainly
because of the small number of WWW browsers that are out.  This is
changing as WWW slowly reaches critical mass.  Furthermore, users can
look forward to a merging of the three protocols so that both gopher
and WWW understand hypertext, which is served using the WAIS
protocol.<P>

<H1><A NAME="out-there">What is on the web?</A></H1>

Currently accessable through the web:
<UL>
<LI> anything served through gopher
<LI> anything served through WAIS
<LI> anything on an FTP site
<LI> anything on Usenet
<LI> anything accessable through telnet
<LI> sundry hypertext documents
</UL>
  <P>

One of the few limitations of the web is that there is currently no
way to find out what has changed, what is new, or even what is out
there.  As a result, a definitive list of the web's contents is
impossible at this moment.

<H1><A NAME=more>I want to know more</A></H1>

To find out more, use the web.