Network Computingwww.networkcomputing.com

Netscape Surfs The WorldWide Web Better Than Mosaic

Mosaic and the WorldWide Web (WWW) have played a significant role in the recent explosion of interest in the Internet. Developed by the government-funded National Center for Supercomputing Applications (or NCSA), Mosaic has been called the "killer-app" of the '90s, serving as a friendly front end or ``browser'' for the vast amount of information accessible from the Internet via resources such as WWW, Gopher, FTP and Usenet News. NCSA Mosaic is also a terrific value -- it's free.

Now, several commercial software vendors are beginning to market their own Internet/WWW browsers. All bear a similar feel to Mosaic, but usually offer special enhancements as well as support. We spent several weeks using a commercial browser that holds tremendous promise: Netscape from Netscape Communications Corp. Although both programs are available for multiple platforms (Windows, Macintosh and many Unix platforms), we focused on the Windows version. Our last tests, at press time, were of Mosaic v2.0Alpha7 and Netscape 0.9Beta. Netscape was excellent. Fundamentally similar to Mosaic, it was faster over dial-up links and had better Usenet News support.

Attention, Modem Users: Net Surfing With Netscape Is Fast

In addition to brute force speed, Netscape incorporates other enhancements to improve responsiveness. Netscape displ ays and lets you interact with the WWW document before it has been downloaded completely. For example, a typical WWW document contains text and in-line pictures. Usually the pictures take far longer to download than the text, so Netscape fetches and displays the text first and places correctly sized boxes, or frames, where the pictures should go. Then, while you interact with the text, Netscape goes back and fills in the frames with the images. You can scroll the page and even click on another link and leave the page while the pictures are downloading.

Netscape can also display pictures in real-time while they are being downloaded, letting you get a rough idea of a large picture without necessarily waiting for the entire image to download. Finally, while both Netscape and Mosaic can handle in-line images in Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), Netscape can handle in-line images in Joint Photographic Experts Group format (JPEG). This can be another time-saver since the JPEG files are far more compressed than GIF files.

Vastly Improved USENET News Access

Netscape, on the other hand, provides all the functionality you need to become an active Internet newsgroup participant. Netscape can present an up-to-date list of available newsgroups, keep a subscription list of the newsgroups you want to follow and keep track of which articles you have already read in previous sessions so that you can continue where you stopped. It also supports threading, or sorting the articles by subject. Most important, Netscape supports active two-way communication by easily letting you post new articles, or respond to existing articles either through the newsgroup or via Internet e-mail.

Security and the Lack of Printing

Upon digging useful information out of the Internet, both Mosaic and Netscape support saving the information to a file, or just saving the Internet network address (or URL) of the information into a so-called hotlist. Netscape takes the hotlist idea one step further by using "bookmarks," which are more than just a list of locations in that they can have a hierarchical organization, as well as information such as the date the information was accessed last. Netscape also lets you easily forward the information along to a coworker via e-mail. However, sadly missing from our 0.9 Beta release of Netscape is a print option. Mosaic supports printing, complete with a print preview window. We hope Netscape will provide printing support.

With the exception of printing, Netscape takes everything that Mosaic does and adds many thoughtful improvements, superior functionality and superior stability.

Todd Tannenbaum is the Unix systems manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Computer Aided Engineering Center, where he administers and programs on Unix and Novell networks. He can be reached at tannenba@engr.wisc.edu.

MOSAIC from NCSA is available via anonymous FTP on the Internet to ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in directory/Mosaic . Price: Free to individuals for personal use, educational institutions and commercial companies for internal use. Platforms: Windows, Macintosh and Unix.

NETSCAPE from Netscape Communications Corp. is available via anonymous FTP on the Internet to ftp.mcom.com in directory/Netscape. Phone: (800) NETSITE; fax: (415) 254-2601 Price: Free to individuals for personal use and free to approved educati onal institutions. $99 for any commercial/corporate use. For more sales information, call or e-mail sales@mcom.com .

Platforms: Macintosh with System 7; Microsoft Windows, Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT; and Unix X Window System.