THE BIG DUMMY UPDATE ==================== V.1.0, March, 1994 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ An online publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS: 1. Welcome! 2.1 Lynx -- The World-Wide Web for the rest of us 2.2 Imagine that -- downloading pictures 2.3 Addressing a problem 2.4 Some interesting WWW servers 2.5 Lynx commands 2.6 When things go wrong 2.7 FYI 3. Services of the Month 4. Contact info ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WELCOME! The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet was never meant to be the definitive work on every possible facet of the Internet. For one thing, the Net is growing so rapidly that any book that tried to list all its resources would be outdated the day it was published. But more important, such a guide would be so long that a beginner could easily get lost in it trying to learn such fundamental things as how to log on. That's where the Big Dummy Update comes in. Every month, it will look at topics not covered well, if at all, in the original guide -- topics that, as you become more comfortable as a net.surfer, you'll want to know more about. And because the Internet continues to grow exponentionally, the Update will also carry news of interesting new Net resources and tools. I welcome your comments and questions -- thanks to all who have already written. If there's a particular topic you'd like to see covered -- or one that you would like to write about yourself -- drop me a line. And if you run across a new service that you think is great and that others should know about, let me know that, too! Adam Gaffin adamg@world.std.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.1 LYNX -- THE WORLD-WIDE WEB FOR THE REST OF US If you've wandered around the Net much in recent months, you probably couldn't get away from the talk about the World-Wide Web (WWW). Everywhere, it seems, you read about all the nifty new services available through it -- all wrapped up in a beautiful, easy-to-use interface called Mosaic. There was just one problem. If you connect to the Net by having your communications software dial a public-access provider, you couldn't tap into any of this. All those fancy graphics and documents require some hefty Net processing power, which means the Web was basically limited to those with direct Internet connections or with the inclination and money to set up what's known as a SLIP or PPP connection. Yes, you can sort of browse the Web via a standard modem connection (telnet to info.cern.ch), but the basic interface is clunky and ugly, and doesn't give you access to any of the online images. Fortunately, Michael Grobe, Lou Montulli and Charles Rezac of the University of Kansas are on the case. They've created a character-based interface to the Web, called Lynx, that is easy to use and even gives you ready access to many of the available images. In many ways, it'll remind you of gopher; in fact, you can use it to access gopher servers. But the World-Wide Web has a unique way of presenting information. And because there are a growing number of Web-only resources out there, from real-estate listing to postings from student expeditions to Belize to descriptions of archaeological digs along the Aegean, it's well worth getting to know your way around. As with gopher, probably the best way to learn how to use Lynx is to just dive right in. At your host system's command prompt, type lynx and hit enter. 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 telnetting to one of the following addresses: ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu www.twi.tudelft.nl millbrook.lib.rmit.edu.au For the first one, in Kansas, log on as: www. For the other two, log on as: lynx. The Kansas site is set up more to demonstrate the software than to serve as a heavy-duty public Lynx service, so try to go easy on it! 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." 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 (for example [IMAGE]) are known as 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. Think of it as an online encyclopedia that lets you flip very quickly through its pages when some you read makes you want to look up a related topic. This is perhaps the biggest difference between gophers and the Web. The above main page 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 you can even use it in many cases to read and reply to Usenet messages as well). 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. 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. 2.2 IMAGINE THAT -- DOWNLOADING PICTURES As you play with Lynx, you'll notice that some pages will have entries that look like this: [IMAGE]. If you put your cursor on one of these and hit enter, you'll get one of two messages. One says something about how the "client" can't display an ISMAP image. In that case, there's not much you can do, except hit your left arrow key to get back to the previous page -- Lynx at this point can't handle this particular system for displaying maps. The other message also looks potentially frustrating: "This file cannot be displayed on this terminal. D)ownload or C)ancel." This is actually good news, however, because it means it's an image you can retrieve. If you hit d, you'l be asked if you want to save the image to your host system, or if you want to use ZMODEM to download it directly to your own computer. If you're using a communications program with ZMODEM, selecting the latter will immediately start the process of transferring it to you. The file names will always look something like: L23015.HTM. In most cases, the files will be GIF images, occasionally JPEG images, and, rarely TIFF images. You'll obviously need a GIF/JPEG viewer on your computer to view these. If you don't have ZMODEM, save the image to your host system. Interestingly, when you do this, you'll get a more descriptive file name, for example, instead of L2015.HTM, you might get OLDBONES.GIF. In either case, when done transferring the file, hit your left arrow key to get back to the previous page. Before you actually download the file, you'll see a message indicating how large it is -- handy to know if you're using a relatively slow modem. A related function to downloading is retrieving a copy of a document. To do that, hit p within a document. You'll be given several choices as to how to retrieve it, including sending it to yourself via e-mail or saving it to a file in your home directory on your host system. 2.3 ADDRESSING A PROBLEM One feature Lynx has that gophers do not is the ability to go directly to a service by typing in its address. You get to this by hitting g at any point in Lynx. And here's where you run into the mess that is Universal Resource Locators (URLs). The idea behind URLs is actually a good one: to create a universal system for accessing information on the Internet, no matter if it's a single file on an anonymous-FTP site, an entire gopher server, or a Web image. Unfortunately, that means that, in WWW, you're going to have to get used to seeing, and typing, things like: http://www.germany.eu.net/books/bdgtti/bdgtti.html (which is actually the Web address for a version of the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet). Ack! The "http" means you're dealing with a WWW resource -- it stands for "hypertext transport protocol," which is the particular way the Web moves information around the world. Other common prefixes you'll run across are "gopher" (to get to a gopher), "ftp" (to get to a particular FTP site) and "file" (to get to a specific file). Always, these prefixes will be followed by :// and then the name of the resource you're trying to reach. In the above example, notice how the last item ends in ".html." That stands for "hypertext markup language," which is the coding used to create hyperlinks. You'll often find Web addresses ending in that, because they will be pointers to main pages for particular resources. If you are trying to reach a service without a main HTML page (a gopher, for example), you would end the address with a /, for example: gopher://gopher.eff.org/ Fortunately, in many cases, you will have to type these long names only once. Recall how hitting your backspace or delete key creates a list of hyperlinks to services you've tried in a particular session. You can also create a list of "bookmarks" to speed you to particular services in the future. To add a page to your list, hit a while on that page. To see your bookmark list, hit v. You'll then be able to zoom to any services in the list by moving your cursor to its highlighted name and hitting enter. One thing WWW does not yet have is an equivalent to gopher's veronica function. Until then, the best way to find a particular resource is to keep up with the postings in the relevant Usenet newsgroups (see FYI below) and Web services (see the next section). 2.4 SOME INTERESTING WWW SERVERS When using the g command, preface all of the following site addresses with http:// GENERAL www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html You'll find all sorts of new Web and Internet services listed and detailed here. An excellent resource for keeping up with the Web. sunsite.unc.edu/expo.ticket_office.html A virtual World's fair that lets you tour exhibits from around the world and, at the end of the day, hop on a computerized shuttle bus for a trip to the official Expo restaurant. 141.214.4.176/uwi/reviews.html Look here for "What's Hot and Cool" on the Web. www.cen.uiuc.edu/ The College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, maintains a variety of Internet guides here. DINOSAURS www.hcc.hawaii.edu/dinos/dinos1.html Look here for images of dinosaur skeletons. ENVIRONMENT www.econet.apc.org/lcv/scorecard.html See how your local congressman/woman is ranked by the League of Conservation Voters. seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/JASON/JASON.html Follow the exploits of a group of scientists and students on a research expedition to Belize to study the rain cycle. LAW www.law.cornell.edu/lii.table.html Cornell University's Legal Information Institute provides a variety of law-related documents, from information on specific legal issues to copies of U.S. Supreme Court decisions. LEGOS legowww.itek.norut.no/catalog/index.html Yes, it's a set of documents and pictures all about the little plastic blocks with the pegs on top. MOVIES www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Movies/moviewquery.html You can search for filmographies for particular actors and directors here. NEWSPAPERS www.service.com/PAW/masthead.html The Palo Alto (Calif.) Weekly, makes copies of its articles available at this address. NEW ZEALAND www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/People/mjw/NZ/MainPaige.html Your personal guided tour of New Zealand, complete with pictures of its cities, scenery and people, begins here. REAL ESTATE www.gems.com/realestate/ Real-estate listings from several cities around the U.S. SLOVENIA www.ijs.si/slo.html Learn more about the former Yugoslav republic in words and photographs. SPACE sspp.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Look here for info ondiscount space flights from NASA, like the "Get Away Special" -- only $27,000 to launch a 90-pound cannister aboard a space shuttle. 2.5 LYNX COMMANDS Down arrow Highlight next topic Up arrow Go to previously highlighted topic Right arrow Same as hitting enter on a highlighted topic Left arrow Move back to previous topic + Scroll down to next page - Scroll back to previous page ? or h Help a Add current page to bookmark file c Send a comment to the creator of the document d Download the document on your screen g Go to specific resource (you'll have to type in its address) m Return to main screen o Set personal options (for example, your e-mail address) p Print, save or download a document. v View your bookmark file z Cancel document or image transfer backspace View your past links in the current session delete Same as backspace = Get address information for current file or link 2.6 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG * You try to connect to a site, but get an error message that "The requested URL was not found on this server." Re-check the spelling of the site address you entered. WWW addresses are case-sensitive, so that might be a problem, as well. Hit your left arrow key, then g then try entering the address again. * You try to use g to get to a new site and nothing happens. Lynx does not seem to let you go to sites from error-message pages and some other pages. If that happens, hit your left arrow, then try again. 2.7 FYI Once a month, Thomas Boutell posts a WWW FAQ (answers to "Frequently Asked Questions") in the news.answers and comp.infosystems.www newsgroups in Usenet. You can also retrieve a copy via anonymous ftp (or ncftp) at rtfm.mit.edu. Look in the pub/usenet/news.answers/www directory for a file called faq. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SERVICES OF THE MONTH Adam Curry, MTV VJ, has apparently stopped updating his rock/celebrity gopher, putting all of his online effort instead into a similar WWW server, which you can reach at http://mtv.com/ FTP Connect to these sites like this: ftp site.name or ncftp site.name BUSINESS ON THE NET netcom.com Look in the pub/GUIDES directory for Dave Taylor's Internet.Mall list of businesses that now advertise and sell stuff on the Internet. GOPHER Connect to these sites like this: gopher site.name ART gopher.cs.ttu.edu Those of us old enough to remember the '70s probably still wonder about those people who managed to create pictures of Snoopy or naked women entirely out of ASCII characters using only a keyboard, a printer, and a $70,000 mini- computer. Today, anybody with an XT clone and a cheapo graphics program can turn out strikingly complex and colorful pictures. But there's life yet for the old school of computer graphics. Just ask Abdul Malik of Texas Technical University, who has assembled a library of hundreds of images built entirely of keyboard characters. We're not sure why you'd ever need an ASCII picture of Toucan Sam or of a 16-ton weight, but if you do, here's the gopher for you. When you connect, select "Art and Images" and then "ClipArt/ASCII." This site also has numerous other artistic images for the taking. ENVIRONMENT minerva.forestry.umn.edu The University of Minnesota's Forestry Library maintains an extensive bibliography of documents related to the care and preservation of forests, from maintaining trails in the wilds to keeping trees alive in urban forests. Also runs a bibliography of material on blood-sucking arthropods. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTACT INFO The Big Dummy Update is published monthly by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and is available by several routes. It is posted monthly in the comp.org.eff.talk, alt.internet.services and news.newusers.questions newsgroups. To receive the newsletter by e-mail, send a message to big-dummy-update-request@eff.org As the message, write: add big-dummy-update (don't include your name). Back copies will be available by anonymous ftp at ftp.eff.org in the /pub/Net_info/Big_Dummy/Updates directory; by gopher at gopher.eff.org (select Net Info, then Big Dummy then Updates); and by WWW at http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_info/Big_Dummy/Updates/ To obtain a copy of the entire Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet, use anonymous ftp to connect to ftp.eff.org and look in the /pub/Net_info/Big_Dummy directory, or use gopher to connect to gopher.eff.org and then select Net Info and then Big Dummy. For general information on the Electronic Frontier Foundation, send an e- mail message to info@eff.org. To ask a specific question, write ask@eff.org.