World Wide Web Browsers

There are many World Wide Web browsers available for navigating the Web (a list is available at http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html). Some are free, and can be downloaded using ftp (or a Web browser, if you already have one). Others are available commercially, for example from commercial Internet access providers.

If your computer already has the appropriate software libraries installed, you should be able to just download and run the executable program appropriate for your computer. If not, you will need to check the installation guide for the particular browser.

You will also need the appropriate external viewers to display things like image files, MPEG movies, audio files, etc. Public domain versions of these programs should be available along with the browser software.

Popular Web browsers

NCSA Mosaic was one of the earliest Web browsers, and is credited with initiating the huge growth in the use of the World Wide Web. It is available via anonymous ftp from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic.

Netscape Navigator is a commercial browser from the team that originally developed NCSA Mosaic. It is currently the most widely used Web browser. It is available via anonymous ftp from ftp.netscape.com in the directory netscape1.1.

Lynx is a text-based Web interface which can be used on computers which do not have graphics support. It is available via anonymous ftp from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in directory pub/lynx.

Hints on configuring your Web browser

The details of how to configure your Web browser are specific to the browser you are using, so use the Help menu to check the on-line documentation for your browser for detailed information on how to set preferences and configure your browser correctly. Some examples of things you may need to set up are given below.

When you start the browser, the first page it displays will default to the ``home page'' for the browser. You can configure the browser using a preferences menu to start at the Web page of your choice.

If you have a slow network connection, downloading images may take a long time. You can switch off the auto-loading of images so that the browser only downloads the image when you request it.

You may need to configure you browser so that it calls the right extension programs to display images, audio, video, etc.

If your browser supports mailto (a hypertext interface to email), you should configure it so that it uses your correct email address.

Running Web browsers over a dial-up connection

Web browsers can be run over a modem and a dial-up connection to the Internet. This is usually done using some software like SLIP, which makes your computer act like a node on the Internet. Once you run your SLIP software, you can fire up your Web browser just as you would on a computer directly connected to the Internet.

Paul Coddington, Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, paulc@npac.syr.edu. Last updated 24 May 1997.