Netscape™ for Macintosh® Springer New York Berlin Heidelberg Barcelona Budapest Hong Kong London Milan Paris Santa Clara Singapore Tokyo Richard Raucci Netscape™ for Macintosh® A hands-on configuration and set-up guide for popular Web browsers With 183 Illustrations Springer Richard Raucci 435 Eureka Street San Francisco, CA 94114 USA rraucci~well.com rraucci~interramp.com http://www.well.com/Community/rraucci/raucci.html Netscape, the Netscape logo, and Netscape Navigator are registered trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation. Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. NCSA Mosaic is a registered trademark of the National Center for Supercomputer Ap plications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. PLUSMosaic is a registered trademark of White Pine Software. MacWeb is a registered trademark of TradeWave. NetShark is a registered trademark of InterCon. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Raucci, Richard. Netscape for Macintosh: a hands-on configuration and set-up guide for popular Web browsers / Richard Raucci. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Netscape. 2. World Wide Web (Information retrieval system) 3. Internet (Computer network) I. Title. TK5105.882.R381996 025.04-<ic20 95-47549 Printed on acid-free paper. © 1996 by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. Softcover reprinf of the hardcover 1s t edition 1996 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 175 Fifth Av enue, New York, NY 10010, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone. Production managed by Bill Imbornoni; manufacturing supervised by Jacqui Ashri. 987654321 ISBN-13: 978-0-387-94662-7 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-2382-5 DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4612-2382-5 Contents Introduction . . 1 1 Getting Started 5 2 Netscape and Other Macintosh Web Browsers: A Summary 23 3 The Access Provider. . . . . . 49 4 Modems and ISDN Adapters 63 5 Venturing onto the Net . . . . 75 6 Gophers, Web Encyclopedias, and Search Engines 89 7 Files on the Net and Great Mac Web Sites . .105 8 On-Line Magazines, Journals, and Books .119 9 Art, Games, Music, and More · 141 10 Serious Productivity .. · 157 11 Closing Considerations . · 171 Index ........... · 177 Introduction Netscape, since its introduction as successor to the original Web browser Mosaic, has captured the lion's share of the Web browser market. Its advanced features make it the premier Internet nav igation tool you can use. The Internet, in tum, is the real Info Superhighway-a place to exchange information of all types with people allover the world, find files, search extensive databases, play games, and more. The Macintosh is ideally suited to take advantage of the fea tures of a Web browser like Netscape and the rich informational resources available over the Net. Most Macs are already set to run with the basic capabilities you'll need, including graphics and sound. All it takes is an inexpensive modem, an Internet ac cess provider, and a copy of Netscape. This book will show you how to set up and configure Netscape, as well as a representative variety of other Web browsers for Macintosh, including NCSA MacMosaic, PLUSMosaic from White Pine Software (a version of Enhanced NCSA MacMosaic from Spyglass), MacWeb from TradeWave, and InterCon's NetShark. Netscape followed the successful introduction of the original Web browser, NCSA Mosaic. This was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana as a part of the World Wide Web Introduction (WWW) project. The WWW was conceived as a way to manage the vast amounts of information on the Internet. Mosaic was designed to be a Web browser, an application that could load in formation from a variety of sources (server file directories, text, and images, for example) into a common interface. Previously, Internet information of different types had to be accessed from several different applications, resulting in too many steps for the process to be efficient (for example, you had to download a pic ture file from a remote site, then open it up in a paint program to view it; this meant that you couldn't see the image before you downloaded it). Web browsers changed all of this. Finally, indexed multimedia information could be displayed in a common interface. Browsers not only display picture and text files internally, they also incor porate a hypertext interface. This means that a Netscape home page (an Internet document) can contain links to other Internet sites and information. This interface is in a standard point-and click format. Highlighted images and text contain the links. To continue the example given above, Netscape can now load in a series of small, thumbnail in-line images for browsing pictures at a remote site, so you can see what the picture looks like be fore downloading. Each small picture can be linked to a larger version; clicking on the picture will start the download automat ically, and Netscape will even launch an external viewer (when configured properly) to display the big picture. Great stuff! Also great was at the time that the original Web browsers were designed, the programmers at NCSA decided that the technology had to be available for all users. Versions for the three main platforms (Windows, Macintosh, and Unix) were de veloped at the same time by different teams. The Macintosh ver sion grew out of this, and Netscape's first releases included a strong Mac version. Further development included a PowerPC Native port, and development work on including plug-in support for standard Mac software technologies (like QuickTime). Netscape Communications' strong focus on compelling graph ics in their Web sites-used as an adjunct to the software releases -is a sure sign that they won't leave the Mac behind. The Mac is still the best design tool available, and it runs Netscape to its full potential as a client as well. Netscape's partnership with cable 2 Introduction companies developing home video versions of Internet access via cable modems also would seem to bode well for the Macintosh. There's no better operating system than MacOS to keep the fu ture Netscape platforms easy to use and comfortable to navigate with for all levels of users. 3 1 Getting Started To get started using a Web browser like Netscape on the Macin tosh, you'll first need to make sure your system meets the min imum configuration. Most alternate browsers will use the same Mac setup as Netscape for Macintosh. These all are being devel oped as either 68K or PowerPC Native applications, or combined versions that will run on both systems. 6SK or PowerPC? The 68K code base is what's standard for pre-PowerPC Macin toshes that use the Motorola series of 68XXX processors. Na tive PowerPC software is designed to run on the RISC PowerPC CPU at much faster speeds, with support for advanced operating system features like multitasking. The benefits of running a Web browser in PowerPC Native mode are clear, but that doesn't mean you absolutely need a PowerPC system to run Netscape well. The Mac's design makes 68K standard software run well. You should also realize that PowerPC Mac systems incorporate a 68K code emulator, meaning they can run both types of software. 1. Getting Started System 6 and 7 Most browsers need the more advanced features of System 7, and some also need the features in System 7.5 (not System 7.1). This may be even more true for certain helper applications that Netscape uses to view pictures and play sound files. You could conceivably use Web browsers with System 6, but you may not be able to get the same amount of functionality. System 7 will use more of your Mac's main memory, so you may want to consider increasing your system RAM or using virtual memory (use the RamDoubler utility to increase this even further). How Much Mac Do I Need? The Macintosh setup you'll need to run Netscape and other Web browsers is fairly straightforward. Most Macs capable of running in 256 color mode are perfectly suitable, from the Mac II (with an 8-bit color card installed) to the latest Performa. Macs that can support "thousands of colors" mode (and beyond) are more suitable for Web sites with intensive graphics. A screen resolution of 640 x 480 (the base level for most Macintoshes) is fairly good for viewing Netscape, but you should see if your system is capable of 800 x 600. DTP systems with 21-inch monitors running at 1120 x 1280 are also a plus. The more resolution you can afford, the more of a Web page you can see on the screen at one time without scrolling. Use the Options button in the Monitors Control Panel to change your system's resolution settings. You may need to switch to a monitor that supports higher screen settings, add a higher resolution video card, or increase your system's video RAM (for Macs with built-in video). Systems that can run grayscale video (like Powerbooks) are also suitable for limited Netscape use. You can also use a 640 x 400 screen (as on the Color Classic and some Powerbooks), but you may find yourself a bit cramped. Make sure you have at least 2 MB of RAM above what you'll need for your operating system to allow Netscape enough mem ory to run properly. For example, an older Mac running System 7.5 could need at least 4-6 MB of total system RAM to run the 6