Message from discussion New X-based information systems browser available.

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From: ma...@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Subject: New X-based information systems browser available.
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 12:18:30 GMT
Message-ID: <MARCA.93Feb16071830@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu>
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NCSA is developing a new X/Motif-based networked information systems
browser called X Mosaic.  Comfortably stable beta versions of it are
now available, including full source code and binaries (for SunOS 4.x,
SGI IRIX 4.x, AIX 3.2, and DEC Ultrix), at ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in
/Web/xmosaic.

X Mosaic provides a consistent and easy-to-use hypertext-based
interface into a wide variety of information sources, including
Gopher, WAIS, World Wide Web, NNTP/Usenet news, Techinfo, Texinfo,
FTP, local filesystems, telnet, tn3270, and others.  A canonical list
of current features follows:

 o Friendly Motif user interface.
 o Color and monochrome default X resource settings.
 o Multiple independent toplevel windows.
 o History list per window (both 'where you've been' and 'where you can
   go').
 o Global history with previously visited locations visually distinct; global
   history is persistent across sessions.
 o Hotlist/bookmark capability -- keep list of interesting documents,
   add/remove items, list is persistent across sessions.
 o Personal annotations with GUI annotation entry dialog; annotations can
   later be edited or deleted, and hyperlinks to existing annotations are
   inlined into subsequent accesses of an annotated document.
 o Options for new window per document (aka TurboGopher interface) --
   always, or via middle mouse button.
 o On-the-fly font and hyperlink style selection.
 o Many common document and data source choices accessible via menubar.
 o Keyword search capability.
 o Cut and paste formatted text into other X windows.
 o Smart handling of documents too big for single X window -- virtual
   document pages via inlined hypertext.
 o Save/mail/print documents in several formats.
 o Online hypertext help.
 o No config or resource file installation required; self-contained
   executable.
 o Extremely customizable.
 o Integration with NCSA Collage and NCSA DTM to broadcast documents
   into real-time networked workgroup collaboration sessions.

We are continuing to develop X Mosaic, with the end goal of making it
a useful tool for networked asynchronous collaboration specifically,
and global hypermedia and information system resource discovery and
retrieval in general.

Comments and suggestions on X Mosaic's capabilities and interface
would be very much appreciated.  We are releasing new versions about
every 7-14 days, so your feedback has an excellent chance of directly
influencing near-term development.  (Support for handling GIF, JPEG,
MPEG, audio, DVI, and PostScript will be in the next version, so don't
suggest that. :-)

Cheers,
Marc

--
Marc Andreessen
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
ma...@ncsa.uiuc.edu