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[previous article] [next article]Gary Irick
Most of us have by now heard of GOPHER, WAIS, World-Wide Web, HYTELNET, ARCHIE, and other tools used to search the resources of the Internet for information. Daily more and more people use these tools to retrieve information; however, some Internet explorers have discovered frustration when attempting to sort through the myriad locations and vast stores of information. Now, there is a tool that makes it easy: Mosaic.
To run Mosaic, you must be under X-Windows or OpenWindows. If
/usr/ecn is in your search path, type "Mosaic" otherwise type
"/usr/ecn/Mosaic" .
Screendump shown here
A window similar to the one shown should appear with the initial Mosaic menu. From there, navigating the Internet is as simple as pointing and clicking. To access any item in the current menu, move the mouse pointer to that item and click the left mouse button once. There are several kinds of items, each denoted by a distinct icon. A few of the basic icons are:
... Folder: This will open up another menu.
... Document: This is a text document, which can be viewed.
... Question mark: This will start a search of some kind.
... TEL: This will use 'telnet' to connect to another site.
... Underlined text: Underlined text within a document
usually denotes a link to another item. To follow a link to a
new item, simply point at the underlined text and click once.
Each menu will usually offer several submenus. Mosaic
maintains a history of the menus and items that you have
visited, and provides several buttons at the bottom of the
window to help you get from place to place:
Back: This moves back one item in the history list.
Forward: This moves forward one item in the history list.
Home: This moves back to the 'Home' menu.
Open: This allows you to open any local file.
Clone: This creates another window exactly like the
current one.
New Window: This creates another window, which will start
at the HOME menu.
SCREENDUMP shown here
In addition to these buttons, there are also four pull-down
menus at the top of the window: File, Options, Navigate, and
Annotate.
File menu
allows you to open, save, print, and mail documents. It
also allows you to search for a string in the current
document.
Options menu
allows you to set various options.
Annotate menu
allows you to add personal annotations to items. An
annotation will appear as a new link added to the bottom of
that item.
Navigate menu
has several options:
Home Document: This moves back to the HOME menu.
Window History: This shows the list of all items you have
visited.
Hotlist: This shows a list of all the items you have
marked as "Hot." The Hotlist will remain intact for
future sessions of Mosaic.
Add Current to Hotlist: This allows you to mark an item
as 'Hot.'
Internet Starting Points: This is a menu of several
Internet resources, and a good place to start if you are
just browsing or looking for specific information about
the Internet or its resources.
Internet Resources Meta-Index: This is an index that has
been compiled of many Internet resources.
Of course, this is only an overview of Mosaic. To learn more
about this powerful tool, I recommend you try it out on a
workstation near you. If you don't have easy access to a
workstation, there is also a program called lynx that provides
a limited subset of the capabilities of Mosaic. It exists on
the Sun workstations only. You can run lynx from any terminal,
and its use is similar to Mosaic except you will be using the
keyboard instead of the mouse.This is an example of using Mosaic to locate the telephone number of the Australian Embassy. The search took me throught sixteen screens (there may be a faster path, but I'm new at internet travel). In total the search from beginning to end took between 2 and 3 minutes!
As you know, the Internet is full of information. My greatest challenge was not to get side-tracked with all the other offerings I noticed on my menu adventure.
Go ahead, try following this path. Type "Mosaic" then select
the directory mentioned. This will cause the next screen to
be opened.
Screen #1--"Other Information Servers on the Internet" Screen #2--"Academic Resources on the Internet (by location)" Screen #3--"Gophers--by Location (from Univ. of Minnesota) Screen #4--"North America" Screen #5--"USA" Screen #6--"Washington DC" Screen #7--"Library of Congress" Screen #8--"Government Information" Screen #9--"Federal Information Resources" Screen #10--"Information By Agency" Screen #11--"Executive Branch" Screen #12--"State Department" Screen #13--"State Department Travel Advisories" Screen #14--"Current Advisories" Screen #15--"australia" Screen #16-- EUREKA!!!
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